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March 16th, 2007
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I Am Only A Murderer From Your Limited Western Point Of View |
By John Bentley Clarkson, Convicted Felon
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John Bentley Clarkson |
You're so quick to judge me. You've tried me and convicted me according to your "laws," which are written, passed, and enforced by white males. While it is a fact that I fired the bullets (and swung the chair) that killed Mr. and Mrs. Patel and their four children, I am only a "murderer" from your limited Western point of view.
I can't condemn you simply because you're trapped in an ignorant belief system that society has imposed upon you. (That would be a particularly Western thing for me to do.) Unlike most people, I try not to see the world in black and white. I seek out different perspectives and radical viewpoints. And I avoid simplistic labels like "sociopath" and "homicidal maniac."
While some people feel threatened by unfamiliar beliefs, I find them enlightening. That's why, in my ample free time, I like to study Eastern religions and philosophies. I like to absorb the wisdom that those societies have cultivated over thousands of years. That wisdom is so much deeper and more spiritual than modern intellectual fads, like the trendy notions of "crime" and "justice."
Eastern thinkers would be baffled by the concept of judging a man merely because he caused a half-dozen people to suffer a violent, painful death. In fact, our very idea of death is largely a Eurocentric phenomenon.
In the Buddhist point of view, a human life is merely a state of being that changes from one life to the next according to your karma. The notion that the Patels have "died" would make any Buddhist scratch his head. They have not died, they have merely continued on to another state of being. To a Buddhist, I didn't murder anyone. I merely helped people move from one state to another. I'm sort of a cosmological real estate agent – only I don't take six percent of anything.
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| Eastern wisdom is so much deeper and more spiritual than modern intellectual fads, like the trendy notions of "crime" and "justice." |
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All right, but suppose you believe that the Patels are now "dead" as a result of my actions. That would be typical of the Western tendency to obsess about material things while ignoring the spiritual. But if you're trapped in that groupthink, you probably consider the Patels' death to be a tragic event.
A Hindu wouldn't think that at all. Hindus believe that we go through a cycle of birth and death as we seek lasting happiness, or ananda. After living many lives, we finally learn that ananda cannot be achieved through worldly pleasures. We are then liberated from the birth/death cycle and reach a state of moksha, or salvation. The Patels, being of Indian origin, were probably Hindus, although I didn't have time to ask them before I unloaded my nine millimeter into their brains. As Hindus, they surely would have thanked me for bringing them one step closer to salvation.
Of course, a lot of people – especially those who were brainwashed in American schools – say that I didn't have the right to decide when the Patels would end their current birth/death cycle. Many people call me an evil man, and say that evil men like me must be locked up and cast out of society. Obviously they are ignorant of the Chinese concept of yin and yang.
Yin and yang represent the balance of opposing forces: light and dark, male and female, good and evil. The yin and yang depend on each other; you can't have one without the other. So, even if I am an "evil" man, my evil nature is a part of the universal balance. And since most people consider themselves good, that means evil people are in the minority. We're going to need a lot more people like me if we're ever going to have balance in our society.
I can see that I haven't changed your mind. But your condemnation doesn't bother me. I'm continuing a long family tradition of being condemned by society. My father was convicted of "murder" before me, and his father was convicted of "murder" before him. I'm proud to honor their tradition.
Never mind. You'd have to be a Shintoist to understand.
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