The man who tried to kill me was just a crazy person. He set fire to my room with me inside because he hated 'philosophers'. He was also a criminal standover-man who would run through the building where I lived with a gun (unusual in Australia). I let him know I was not going to be intimidated by him. One day when I was visiting a friend in the building, he came to the door, then came inside and said he wanted to fight me. I showed no fear, and was getting up from an armchair to meet him outside. So while I was pushing myself up from out of the low armchair, he rushed me, grabbed me by the collar and started dragging me off my feet before I could gain balance, and began throwing serious heavy punches to my head, I kept my nerve and fought back, which surprised him - everyone else was terrified of him. We fought for 15 minutes, leaving blood all over the walls from floor to over head height. Then his girlfriend helped him, and they managed to get me on the floor and he pinned me with his knees on my shoulders while she kicked me in the ribs (she broke one) and he threw dozens of punches to my face and head. When I wouldn't surrender he went crazy. Eventually someone said "if you keep going you will kill him", so he stopped. I spent that night in Intensive Care Unit at a hospital, with serious injuries of various kinds. The police came, and 'recommended' that I not press charges. He came to my room again a few days later to finish me off, but I wasn't there, so he destroyed my room. I spent the next few months carrying a very sharp double-bladed knife. He saw me a few times, but decided not to attack me again. I thought about killing him,. Fortunately it didn't come to that. One day there was a strange event alone in my room, when the 'spirit' of the woman was present taunting me. I killed her in my imagination. She died a few days later of a heroin overdose.Who knows ... ?
A lama said to me once " no bad karma if you kill someone and feel no guilt". He and my main Tibetan teachers were forced out of Tibet in 1959 by the Chinese invasion which began about five years earlier.
However, my favorite teacher of all, Ribur Rinpoche, was a captive of the Chinese for 13 years. He was in his 80s when I met him. He was tortured regularly, and forced to rape nuns in front of his captors, in the street where ordinary Tibetan people were. - otherwise they would kill the nuns. He practiced 'tong len', and forgave them because they were suffering terrible ignorance and creating such bad karma for themselves. When I first met him I was in a bad mood after an awful day at work. Someone said "you must meet this lama, and offer him a kata" (traditional offering of a white scarf, and hands in mudra (gesture) representing flowers, if you know how this is done. I offerd the kata, and he held my hands. He radiated peace. I wept. I had never met anyone so peaceful and loving. It was stronger than any drug, and infinitely more powerful than vengeance.
This is Ribur Rinpoche -
