No Man Can Save Another

Saturday, August 3, 2013:

By self alone is evil done, by self alone does one suffer.

By self alone is evil left undone, by self alone does one obtain

   Salvation.

Salvation and perdition depend upon self; no man can save

   another.

Dhammapada 163

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I won’t give him the honor of mentioning his name, but, I saw a few clips of the trial of the guy who kidnapped three girls and held them captive in his basement for over a decade of their lives. He abused one to the extent that he caused a miscarriage (i.e., in other words, murdered the child inside of her womb by repeatedly punching and kicking her stomach). The court allowed him to enter a plea of guilty to 22 counts, in lieu of charging him with murder too, thus relieving him of a death sentence. He was, however, allowed to make a statement at his sentencing in which he tried to excuse these monstrous acts by insisting he is a sex addict and not a monster; that he has a disease and should not be held in contempt; as though this wasn’t enough, he also insisted that he did not rape these girls but that the sexual acts he forced on them was consensual.

            While this whole charade is outrageous, many of us use identical claims when caught with our hands in the cookie jar. “I couldn’t help myself… the cookies were so tempting… and it was mom’s fault; the jar should not have been left out within my reach… she actually wanted me to take them!” We see the Mayor of San Diego making similar claims, as well as many celebrity alcoholics and addicts, doing so too.

The medical community is still debating whether there is such a thing as sex addiction (most consider it to be tangential to an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). It doesn’t really matter much at all. Calling sex addiction, alcoholism, drug abuse or gambling, a disease doesn’t excuse anyone from responsibility for this behavior… especially on the scale of this monster. It means that we need treatment and, because it is causing all kinds of repercussions in our lives, we need to take responsibility for it. I.e., it is no excuse to say to one’s wife or husband when one’s wiener is caught exposed to the world at large via a text message, “Sorry honey, but I have a disease and can’t control my urges.” This is the worst form of denial because we think we have solved our problem by confessing to it when we are actually just making an excuse for it. Confession is only good for the soul when we become willing to do something about it. Furthermore, disease or not, two weeks in a recovery spa ain’t gonna do the trick either.

Thankfully, this monster is going to spend the rest of his life in prison. In such cases I can’t help but to think of Richard Speck. He was the monster that killed several nurses back in the sixties. He served a life sentence… got breast implants… even made a video in his cell with his butt-boy that was put out to the public in which he taunted us by claiming he was having a great time at our expense. I believe that loving kindness must extend to all involved (his victims as well as this walking bag of dung) and that it might even to be more merciful to take this particular turd out. A death sentence might be a shortcut for his karma and give him a chance to work it out on a cosmic level. There is no way to eradicate his karma in this lifetime... and mine for judging him so harshly.

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