The Sage's View of the Murderer

The trial ended amid the crowd's angry shouts. The murderer was led to the prison van, his face cold and his deep-set eyes filled with hostility. Society condemned him fiercely, and the press called him "a devil in human form." Amidst the crowd, an elderly monk stood silently, fingers moving through his prayer beads. His eyes showed no disgust or contempt, only a profound stillness.

A young Buddhist layman, himself harboring much resentment toward evil, approached the monk. His voice trembled with anger: "Venerable Sir, how can you be so calm? He killed an innocent person so brutally! Why don't you show outrage? Do you not value the victim's life?"

The monk smiled kindly and invited the young man to sit under an ancient tree by the road. A gentle wind blew, and leaves rustled softly, as if whispering tales of time.

"My child," the monk spoke in a warm tone, "if you look with worldly eyes, you will see an evil doer who deserves punishment. But if you look with the eyes of wisdom, you will see a painful circle of cause and effect (karmic law)."

The monk explained that across countless past lives, a deep debt of enmity may have existed between the perpetrator and the victim. Perhaps in a past life, the victim had killed the perpetrator. In that moment of death, the perpetrator may have clung to intense hatred and a burning vow of revenge. That hatred did not vanish; it followed the stream of karma into rebirth, forging a bloodthirsty instinct in this life. The act of murder today is morally a crime in the world's eyes, but from the perspective of universal karmic law, it is a painful "settling of debt" within a cycle of karmic obstruction.

"When you hate the murderer," the monk emphasized, "you are nurturing the seed of hatred within your own mind. The law of cause and effect is perfectly fair: what you sow, you shall reap. If you constantly harbor resentment and despise the wicked, you are creating karma that may cause you to fall into their circumstances in future lives, or to endure the contempt of others. A bodhisattva does not hate the evil person; they only hate the evil act. They see the suffering of the one who commits the crime—the suffering of a mind controlled by karmic force, blinded and in pain."

The young man listened, and the anger in his heart gradually subsided. He recalled his own malicious comments on social media, the scornful words aimed at people with different lifestyles. He suddenly realized that such venomous speech was quietly eroding his own merit and the quality of his mind.

The monk rose, brushed the dust from his robe, and offered a final teaching:

"Forgive, not because the evil one deserves forgiveness, but because you deserve peace. Look upon them with compassion, for they are drowning in the darkness of ignorance. That is the true wisdom of a student of the Buddha."

As evening fell, the monk's silhouette faded into the sunset, leaving within the young man a profound lesson on transforming one's consciousness and seeing through the surface to the true nature of cause and effect (karmic law).

**Meaning of the Story**

The story clarifies the enlightened perspective on the law of cause and effect: all evil acts have deep causes rooted in past karma. Hating or feeling outraged at evil only causes the hater to sow more seeds of hatred, leading to negative karmic consequences in the future. True wisdom lies in seeing the underlying causes, cultivating compassion instead of hatred, and thereby keeping one's own mind pure while avoiding the creation of further evil karma.

Compiled from a dharma talk by Venerable Thích Chân Quang.