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Unfortunately today's shooter was Theravadan Buddhist
vinlyn
Colorado...for now Veteran
It's been learned that today's shooter at the Washington Navy Yard was a practicing Buddhist who was also learning Thai.
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If he was doing great compassionate things, we'd be happy to call him a Buddhist. We have to face the truth that Buddhists are not always good people who do kind things.
Some take these 'labels' and use them to their own end when things like this happen. I know I will hear this incident used where I work to denounce Buddhists, yet I have known Christians, Muslims, and Jews guilty of terrible things, even some criminal.
While I agree it is saddening and makes no sense, you never really know what one is capable of regardless of how they appear before something occurs.
I assume the media is going to pick up on the whole Buddhist thing and run with it like they tend to do with such things, like blu3ree said, it is just a label and these labels gets used too often in a way that puts people into stereotypical boxes.
I always said freedom of religion was a bad thing. If they could only outlaw Buddhism, such behaviour would never arise!
It's understandable to get this wrong Tom. I am just trying to point out the reality of mental illness. http://psychcentral.com/lib/schizophrenia-and-violence/000711
But part of my reason for starting this thread is to remind some of our friends who always want to come down on Muslims for violence...it can happen to any religious group.
I just saw this story on the Thai news, they are saying 13 people have been killed now. My girlfriend did not understand it all, she was asking things like 'why did he do that'? 'Who was he fighting' and these sorts of questions. It is pretty uncommon here for this kind of things to happen I guess. I remember it happening once in England and in China there have been several incidents of people going into schools with knives or machetes.
@jeffrey I myself have done a lot of studying and research into mental illness and psychotics. Around 1 in 100 people are though to be psychotic, they do not feel stress or anxiety as much if at all but that does make them murderers of course. There needs to be other combining factors that could include
>Childhood and abuse
>Other metal illnesses
>Intoxicants
>Brain damage and trauma following an accident
>Brain tumors
It is like a fire, a fire needs 3 things to get going. It needs oxygen, a spark and fuel. A serial killer or mass murderer needs to have more than one problem going on upstairs.
Is the killing of 80 norwegian children a Christian act? Just because Breivik called himself a Knight Templar?
I do not think so. Christianity Islam or Buddhism. They do not kill people. They are just illusions like all other illusions in the head of people.
People kill people. The induvidual confused self illusions. Due to lobha, dosa and moha.
This is what the dhamma teaches.
/Victor
This guy was not a Buddhist, Buddhists don't shoot people, if you selected a huge group of people and asked them what religion they think a murderer was none of them would say they were sure he must be a buddhist.
He may of involved in some Buddhist practices but none of that matters if you behave like that.
Perhaps he was just a person who had issues and was trying to better himself through a Buddhist practice.
Isn't that what we are all doing?
And since when did Victorious or TheEccentric get to be the decider of who is Buddhist?
I respect anybodys right to call themselves "Buddhist". As long as they respect my right to call them "No you bl**dy h/well aint!!!".
Sounds fair to me.
/Victor
PS
But I was not actually challenging anybodys right to call themselves buddhist.
That was not at all the meaning of what I said.
I said that the label of Buddhism is in everybodies heads and an illusion like everything else.
It is best to see reality as it really is. Otherwise you start believing things like "Islam kills people" or a "Buddhist Shooter killed 13 people"
This is dhamma view, Ne?
DS
How do you know what I know?
Anyone can claim to be a Buddhist. Just like anyone can claim to be a school principal. It doesn't make it true.
Buddhism is something you do, not something you are. Actions speak louder than words.
Christians, Muslims, and people of just about any group often do this when faced with the glaring fact that there are good and bad people in any group and no teaching or practice or belief has the power to insure nobody performs an evil deed or misuses the traditions of the group. My mother is a fine woman and a Christian who, when she sees church groups holding signs like "God hates fags" only says, "They're not true Christians" and this response serves her well.
In the case of this latest tragedy, a picture has already emerged of a man who had trouble forming relationships (he was the typical loner) with lots of anger issues and who usually owned a gun and used one in the past against at least one person he was angry at (he admitted to shooting out the tires of a man he was angry at). That is not something a balanced mind does. That is a recipe for trouble.
But, many thousands of men who are loners and own guns and have some anger issues don't go on a killing rampage. Most of them are satisfied with fantasies and role playing by watching violent movies or playing video games where animated zombies are blown away. Apparently so did this guy. It's called "sublimation" and one of our most basic defense mechanisms in the mind to control our antisocial behavior, especially when it comes to violence. What do you think football is all about?
But one day it wasn't enough for this man. So what makes this guy different? Nobody really knows, in spite of what TV pundits try to make you believe. That unpredictable human mind is at work.
Now, was the man a real Buddhist? All I can say is, "He's not my kind of Buddhist." My kind of Buddhist would have known anger was a huge problem and gotten rid of the guns or not bought them to begin with, since all they do is focus the anger and give the mind something to make the fantasies a reality. My kind of Buddhist would have looked for a Teacher somewhere, anywhere, and been honest about the demons inside.
Metta
I also feel very sorry for his victims! It's not easy to be born human and their lives are cut short! I hope they will be able to be reincarnated again soon!
I think of them and I pray for all of them.
Honestly it's a testament to the tolerance of humanity that none of those people have been seriously hurt.
what difference does it make whether the shooter
is mahayana, vajrayana or hollywood-banana???
And somehow I think that Buddha himself would have been a little less likely to go around telling people they weren't fit to listen to his teachings and try their best to emulate them.
Frankly, some of the attitudes expressed here about whether or not someone can call themselves a Buddhist sound very much like certain Americans before (and after) the Civil War who thought they had the right to decide who was human. For some of you it's the old concept that we have our own little club, and you're not worthy to be a member.
That's the Banana Vehicle of Master Andy Warhol.
The one I was referring to is very similar to Vajrayana,
except their hats are made of bananas and they dont
believe in reincarnation.
S Korea and Taiwan are wealthy countries.
S Korea ranks 27th in the world
while Taiwan ranks 19th.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Everyone has a line. Thankfully most of us do not get pushed to ours. But we all have them, and whether you want to believe it of yourself or not, we can all be pushed beyond our line. We are all as capable of committing bad acts, but some people have conditions where they are pushed over their line to a greater extent. We are all also capable of committing incredibly good acts, but most of us don't do that, either. We mostly ride the average line, doing some good, doing some bad (but not really bad) and don't fall on the outlier of the bell curve of behavior on either end.
FWIW, 13 died, *including* the shooter. He killed 12, then was killed by police.