Fire is one of the most destructive and fearsome processes in nature. In Buddhist teachings, fire is often used as a metaphor for anger and hatred, due to its ability to spread quickly and burn out of control, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
Two horrific stories today illustrate the close relationship between fire and hatred.
In Thailand, the Islamist terrorists continue to target civilians. From The Nation:
Nont Chaisuwan, 51, the director of Bang Kao School in Pattani, was shot while driving home after school. His car crashed into the roadside after the attack. The gunmen then set fire to the car and burned him alive, police said.Meanwhile, in Iraq, the cycle of revenge continues. From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Four men and a woman were injured in a bomb blast at a grocery shop in Yala's Yaha district at 2pm. Police said the bomb was hidden under a stall in front of the shop, which is at the mouth of a lane leading to the Yaha Pracharam Buddhist temple.
Shop owner Apinan Yothinkamchornchai was severely injured, along with his customers.
Insurgents burned down a Provincial Electricity Authority office in Yala, causing a Bt15-million loss.
Security guard Manwan Ismail said at least 10 hooded insurgents wearing black arrived at the authority's office in Bannang Sata district at around 3am.
One forced him to crouch at gunpoint. The others destroyed the closed-circuit-camera control room and then other rooms before setting fire to the building. They also used burning motorcycle tyres to set fire to five cranes and trucks.
Police suspect the attackers were the same group that burned down the district's Land Office on Monday. Their faces were captured by closed-circuit cameras during that attack.
In Narathiwat, a building at Ban Bo Thong School in Rangae district was set on fire just after 1am.
School director Banyat Tannu said the 10-year-old building with five classrooms was for 261 students in kindergarten and first and second grades. It also had a prayer room. He said he would find tents to use as classrooms.
The arson attack occurred despite the best efforts of the village chief and defence volunteers to protect the school, which made people feel discouraged, he said.
Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking Baghdad today.The insurgents in Thailand and Iraq are in fact contravening an injunction by the prophet of Islam forbidding the use of fire to burn one's enemies. From the hadith collection of Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57:
The attack in the Iraqi capital came a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's main Shi'ite district.
Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in yesterday's assault by suspected members of the Shi'ite Mehdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same area, the volatile Hurriyah district in north-west Baghdad, said police Captain Jamil Hussein.
Most of the thousands of dead bodies that have been found dumped across Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq in recent months have been of victims who were tortured and then shot to death, according to police. The suspected militia killers often have used electric drills on their captives' bodies before killing them. The bodies are frequently decapitated.
But burning victims alive introduced a new method of brutality that was likely to be reciprocated by the other sect as the Shi'ites and Sunnis continue killing one another in unprecedented numbers.
The gruesome attack, which came despite a curfew in Baghdad, capped a day in which at least 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence throughout Iraq.
In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said. [...]
But Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, confirmed Hussein's account of the immolations. He told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were drenched in kerosene and then set afire, burning to death before his eyes.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organisation in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque. [...]
Narrated 'Ikrima:See also Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260.
Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"
The insurgents claim that they are fighting for Islam. The least they can do is to refrain from violating the dictates of the religion. (That they murder apostates is abhorrent — but it is not also hypocritical.) But they are so consumed by hatred that they likely won't care about such technicalities.
The Buddha taught that there is only one way to overcome hatred. From the Dhammapada [法句經], Chapter 1, verse 5:
Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.When someone has wronged you, it is extremely difficult to maintain a feeling of loving-kindness [Pali mettâ; Sanskrit maitrî मैत्री; Chinese 慈] towards that person. And yet, this is a lesson that the terrorists must sooner or later learn. Their current habit of acting out in violence not only causes injury and death all about them, but will ultimately visit destruction and ruin upon themselves.
在這世上，恨絕不能止恨，唯有慈愛方能止恨，這是永恆的真理。
南無阿彌陀佛
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