But even the old testament said "Vengeance is the Lord's". I'm not an overly religious person, but there are some lessons taught by Christ that have stood me in good stead. Forgiveness is one of them.
People here are outraged and sickened reliving what happened over 40 years ago and there's much gnashing of teeth in speaking about how they're glad this person is dying in a painful way. And here I am. Calm, cool, collected, almost catatonically mellow, with no stomach pains or tenseness in the shoulders upon hearing of this news.
Susan Atkins has done nothing to me. She made a horrifying mistake 40 years ago and has been paying for it ever since. The victims have long since started their new lives elsewhere. The only person I'd be harming by getting all angry, vindictive or even vengefully glee-filled over her further misfortune is myself.
I have more respect for myself than to allow this peaceful easy feeling to ebb away over a blip on the screen that had nothing to do with my life 40 years ago and still has nothing to do with my life today.
I can change nothing in Susan's or her victim's lives. I can, however, impact my own life. I make the everyday choices that allow me to live in a serene state.
While it's always nice to have the Buddhist point of view added to any conversation (even when mixed in with christian stuff), I think any monk would tell you that once you start going on about how peaceful you are about something when those around you aren't, it's probably time to let those feelings go and stop talking about it.
Like I'm probably going to do in a minute.
Rather than WWJD, it's more, for me right now though I'm not Buddhist and wouldn't be Tibetan Buddhist given that hubby is Korean Buddhist, along the lines of What Would the Dalai Lama do?
This is happening to her naturally.
There's a really interesting train of thought that I explored while learning about non Western ways of dealing with illness, that thinks about how can manifest things in ourselves.
There's a book called Your Body Believes Every Word You Say, written by, IIRC, a cardiologist, who noticed how many people with heart disease say things like "my child is breaking my heart". And theorizes that saying that so many times will actually start the process in your body.
My hubby was a bigtime liar as a child and young adult, but about ridiculously stupid things. He had to twist his mind to remember who had heard what story, and it was really hard for him; he almost always got caught out in his lies eventually. In his mid 20s, he developed a brain tumor. It's an interesting link that he finds interesting, too.
As a chiropractic student I noticed how many people said "they are a pain in my neck" or "I put it to the back of my mind", who were coming in with chronic issues in their spines...
So you, or someone, said something about what she must have done with her mind to make it alright with her to have done such things...and it makes for interesting thinking, that perhaps her twisting her mind around it all might have manifested itself.
Now it's hard to go too far down that thought-road outside of your own head, because dealing with the questions in your OWN mind is hard enough, let alone if others start asking questions. And, of course, for those who believe in karma...another person's karma is none of my business, all I can think about is my own (well, and maybe my family's when I have a free brain moment). So I bring it up as a "hmm interesting" not as something I want to talk any more about.
I was born in October of 1969 in San Francisco, my mom was a hippie, and Manson *freaked* them out so much. She and her group (she and my dad were friends with many people who became famous, or friends of friends with others, it was a big group) believed that anyone with longer hair could be trusted, was peaceful, all that sort of thing. When he was found to be such a horrible person, who had gotten other "trustworthy looking" people to do such hideous things, was shocking to their cores. Changed things forever, she said.
And of course it's a hideous thing to be in the news, when you're 8 months pregnant.
(guess my brain just had a free moment b/c "shocked to the core" came to mind as I thought, again, what caused my mom to get leukemia...and those two just slammed together in a big aha moment. of course it was still the blood thinners that did her in, but she did have leukemia before it went into remission!)
