A friend writes eloquently about his anger and compassion for a murderer...revealing his wisdom

I received this email on Wednesday night:

I need to share something with you, Joe.

I felt so sad today after reading another article in the Chronicle about the guy in Oakland who beat and killed a three year old child and then killed her mother and his girlfriend, to stop them from reporting him to the police. Evidently he had tortured, beat and killed another small child several years ago but wasn't sent to the prison because of some legal technicality. So this was the second small child that he had done this to.

I was thinking about how painful it must have been for them and how fearful those small children must have been as this man did what he did to them. We don't even know all that he did to them. Can you allow yourself to imagine their pain and fear? Kids are so open and trusting at that age. And so beautiful. It must have been awful for them. This realization made me feel so very sad and I stayed with this sadness until it became too painful for me. I was only able to let go of that sad feeling when i thought about how emotionally tortured the guy himself must have been, and probably still is, to be able to do something that cruel to such young and innocent children. What horrors he must have gone through in his mind to be able to do that to them? Surely he is suffering inside. I just can't fathom that he did this because he enjoyed doing it or got any kind of pleasure or boost out of it. He had to be terribly deluded and in extreme pain himself to be able to do that...

My friend's words poignantly touch on the issues raised by the brilliant movie "Precious", which I blogged about earlier this week. Is the perpetrator a victim too? What are the causes of violence and anger? How can we reduce the suffering of all beings?

Make no mistake, I don't believe there is any reason to justify violence and cruelty...especially against children. But unless we have the courage to look deeply into the underlying causes of such suffering -- ours and others, we will be blind, lumping people into "good" and "bad" camps and creating more criminals in the process.

Recently, I came across an inspiring non-profit counseling organization, the Insight Prison Project, that works with San Quentin, bringing together inmates and victims of crime. By better understanding each other, hundreds of people from both sides of this equation have been able to heal, forgive, and live better lives. Some argue that we need to build more prisons and throw people away, but that approach won't work in the long-term. In the end, there is no escaping the spiritual truth that everyone is interconnected and we need to be our brother's (and sister's) keeper and vice versa. There are no shortcuts when it comes to love.