Forgiveness

One of the things that I enjoyed the most about teaching is that I tend to get inspiration myself. The time when I used to prepare the materials, the time that when I sat quietly pondering what to say, and the actual time when I am teaching, at times, I realized that strangely I have learnt things myself. Below is the reflection that I had while preparing today's material:

This morning, the topic of this morning's lesson is about Maha Mongallana, the left hand man of the Buddha. He is of course traditionally known as someone that is exceptionally strong in spiritual power. If you have known Superman, you will definitely compare between Maha Mongallana with him, and somehow felt that Maha Mongallana's power is even beyond Superman (at least in the story). Some of them are:
1. He has the ability to see things far away, like Superman but even more as he can see even to other realms (1-0 for Maha Mongallana)
2. He has the ability to listen to sounds from far away, just like Superman, but even more as he can listen to sounds from other realms (2-0 for Maha Mongallana)
3. He has the ability to do mind reading, (well Superman can't so 3-0 for Maha Mongallana)
4. He can teleport (Superman can only fly, so 4-0 for Maha Mongallana)
5. He is exceptionally strong (I don't know how to compare so I decide to make it a tie with Superman =P).

However, to me, the most moving story of Maha Mongallana is not about the story that he is stronger than Superman, but it is about his background. From both canonical sources as well as non-canonical sources, we can gather that Maha Mongallana did many wrong deeds in the past, two of the most terrible of those are:
1. He is Mara, the evil one himself during the first Buddha's dispensation (our current Buddha is the fifth in this  kappa/aeons). - This is story is canonical, found in Majjhima Nikaya sutta no. 50 (I guess Mara is the Buddhist version of Devil/ Satan).
2. He killed his own father and mother before. - I guess this story is non canonical, found only in commentaries as a justification that he lost his power leading to the fact that bandits managed to kill him.

Contemplate on these two facts more carefully. Have you ever heard from other religions that Devil can be in Heaven? Have you ever heard that Satan can be in Heaven? To me, I have not. But this is the real beauty of Buddhism from philosophy from of view. Everybody has the capacity to be enlightened even Mara, the evil one himself. Not only did Maha Mongallana did enlightened, he even became the chief disciple of the Buddha!
Similarly, someone who killed even his own father and his own mother, if he realized his mistakes and changed, he also has the capacity to be enlightened.

I am not suggesting that it is okay to do wrong deeds. From the story, Maha Mongallana suffered greatly because of these two deeds. Due to his wrong deeds of becoming Mara the evil one and killing his own father and mother, he had stayed in hell for very very long time. However, this does not end his capacity to be enlightened and to be Arahat.
In summary, in Buddhism, there is no bad person, only person doing bad deeds. eg. Osama bin Laden is not bad person, but he do commit bad deeds. Saddam Hussein is not a bad person, but he do commit bad deeds, etc.

This is a very positive way of looking at the world today, and it is the greatest expression of forgiveness. Similarly, no matter how bad someone has treated us (even to the degree of killing our beloved ones), it is refreshing if we can forgive that person, though we will not forgive the deeds.
And if more and more people able to practice this, I believe the world will be a more peaceful and less hateful place to be. (Otherwise vicious cycle like this might happened. If someone killed our loved ones, we killed that person. And as the result, that person's loved ones will kill us, prompting our loved one to killed that person, and so on...)

Therefore, as a Buddhist, contemplate this. Maha Mongallana has enlightened, though he has done many bad deeds many lives before. Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or anyone that has did many terrible deeds to us, just like Maha Mongallana, has the capacity to become enlightened, and therefore forgive them!