The Buddha and the Terrorist (The Story of Angulimala)

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Once upon a time in northern India, there lived a violent and fearsome outcaste called Angulimala ('necklace of fingers'). He terrorised towns and villages in order to try to gain control of the state, murdering people and adding their fingers to his gruesome necklace.

The Buddha set out to meet Angulimala, and with the power of love and compassion he persuaded him to renounce violence and take responsibility for his past actions.

Thus Angulimala was transformed.

The Buddha and the Terrorist brings a message for our time about the importance of looking for the root causes of violence, and of finding peaceful means to end terror.

This revised edition includes a new Prologue, 'Talking to Terrorists', in which Satish Kumar discusses how we can best deal with the phenomenon of international terrorism.

Venerable Professor Samdhong Rinpoche was born in Eastern Tibet and arrived in India with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is a distinguished Tibetan scholar, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government in exile and the former Director of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, Varanasi.

This book consists of a series of talks given to a group of international students at The School of Wisdom at the Theosophical Society headquarters in Chennai.

AMONG ALL THE EXPERIENCES of the Buddha, perhaps his eye- to-eye encounter with an actual terrorist is the one most rele- vant and vital for those of us caught in the binds of the early 21st Century. By telling the tale of the pitiless blood-splattered Angulimala, Satish Kumar reminds us that when the Buddha deliberately and compassionately faced real fear, the fear in that real face evaporated. He has done a great service.

When the King learns in Chapter Two that the new monk whose teaching skills he finds so impressive is none other than the murderer his entire kingdom has been seeking to kill, he faints. When he recovers, all he can say to the Buddha is: "What we have tried to do by force and with weapons you have done with neither force nor weapons!"

Soon a crowd went to the King and protested that Lady Nandini and the Buddha were harbouring a terrorist. "Either they are with us or they are against us," cried the crowd. Luckily, the leadership in Savatthi thousands of years ago was wiser than that with which we find ourselves burdened today. The temptation to confuse evil and ignorance was ultimately resisted.

THE STORY OF ANGULIMALA is to be found in the Buddhist scriptures. I learned it from Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk, and then from a Tibetan lama. Later I read the story in The Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Nanamoli, and in Old Path White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh. In the classic Buddhist version, Angulimala is described as being born into a high caste, a Brahmin family, his father being called Gagga and mother Mantani, but as part of the oral culture of India, the story has many versions.

In the version which I learned from my mother in my early childhood, Angulimala is born as an outcaste, an untouchable. He suffers from degradation and discrimination, which turns him into a rebel. He uses violent means to seek power and gain control. This version of the story better explains why someone who was named Ahimsaka ('Harmless One') by his parents, takes up the sword and becomes a murderer, nick- named Angulimala ('Wearer of a Finger Necklace'). In retelling the story, I have preferred to use this version.

In the Buddhist version, it is not clear why a Brahmin boy born into a privileged caste should go on such a rampage.