Dealing with Terror Outfits

The best way to deal with drug barons, terror outfits and professional criminals (by that I mean persons who commit crimes for a living) generally speaking is to lock them up. However, if the criminal justice system is unable to do that then the following may be useful.

There is a famous sentence in Edward Gibbon’s book – Decline and Fall of the Roman empire:

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

The Roman empire survived 1,500 years and all countries can in my opinion learn very useful lessons from Gibbon’s history.

In addition to promoting religion amongst the people governments world over can reach out to criminal gangs and terror outfits and explain the following facts to them. This will not, I think, end criminal and terror activities but will hopefully tone down the worst excesses.

The facts are:

1. That all of us are going to die. And that includes the criminals etc.
2. According to the Tibetan Buddhism when a person dies then following the death of the physical body the he or she experiences some sort of a life review in which they experience all the suffering for which they are directly or indirectly responsible.

Quoting from Sogyal Rinpoche’s book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:

Some who have studied the near death experience in detail, and especially the life review that is one of its common features have asked themselves: How can we possibly imagine the horror of the bardo experiences of a drug baron, a dictator or a Nazi torturer?

Not only that Tibetan teachings tell us that our future rebirths are influenced by our bardo experiences and the judgment that we form of them. So the professional criminals might find themselves in a very unfortunate rebirth indeed.

Another source for people wanting to research the Intermediate bardo of Becoming is the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is a basic text of Tibetan Buddhism that had served as a guide to Buddhist spiritual aspirants for well over a thousand years.

Study of Near Death Experiences in recent years also corroborates the fact of the life review. So we have this fact confirmed by an independent source.

Now the question arises – should we rely on these sources and why?

Obviously we don’t have conclusive proof that this is definitely going to happen. The only way to get that proof is to die and go through the experience ourselves and that will be too late for it to do us any good. But we can rely on the testimony of others.

Courts of law do this all the time – they rely on the testimony of credible witnesses. The judge has no way of knowing what has happened if it wasn’t for that testimony.

So we need to form an opinion regarding how reliable the testimony of these spiritual classics are. Following are my reasons for regarding them are credible:

1. First point is that the Tibetan Book of the Dead is a book that has survived more than a thousand years. If it had been a tissue of lies then it would have been thoroughly discredited by enlightened mystics who have lived in the intervening years.
2. Secondly spiritual aspirants have been guided in their practice all through these centuries by The Tibetan Book of the Dead. As the Bible says: By their fruits shall you know them.
3. Lastly we have evidence from another source that corroborates these findings. Near Death Experiences have been studied by scientists in the West these past few decades. Their studies confirm the findings of the Tibetan mystics.

Then there is Blaise Pascal’s wager. Pascal said that if you believe in God and it turns out that he exists then obviously you have made a good decision. If he does not exist and you believe in him then you have not lost anything. But if you don’t believe in him and it turns out that he exists then you are in serious trouble. A similar argument can be made regarding the life review.

All of the above are nothing more than detailed reasons for fearing God.

If we present these facts to professional criminals and members of terror outfits they might be willing to tone down their activities. At any rate there is no harm in trying.

I will be emailing a link to this blog to the Home Minister of India, the Police Commissioner Mumbai and some others. If you have the contact details of powerful people who may find this article useful, please share it with them.

Update: Following is a chat with my cousin on the above article that is relevant:

My Cousin: what if someone does not believe in Buddhist philosophy?

Me: This is not philosophy. This is a description of what is going to happen according to Tibetan Buddhism. It is up to you whether to believe it or not. Similar to the judge in a court of law

And I have stated my reasons why it can be regarded as credible in my article

My Cousin: you can believe it and I can believe it. but those who carry out terrorist attacks like jihadi attacks…don’t believe it, because they believe their actions are as per the teachings of the Quran which does not match with Buddhist teachings

Me: That is true but there is no harm in presenting them with these facts. Just a little time wasted. And the potential upside may be huge.

Every person will have to decide for himself

My Cousin: yes

Update two: My email to the Mumbai Police Commissioner was forwarded to the Joint Commissioner (Law and Order) and the Additional Commissioner (Crime). I received an acknowledgment to the email I sent.

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