But too, I got to 'what iffing'. What of the victums. Victim..how can someone be a victim if you use the Law of Cause and Affect? Will they be more likely to return as human because of what transpired? Or, were they somehow reaping their own just karma? Or, could you be more specific, as to why you believe the murderer shouldn't be sent to the back of the incarnation line immediately? Wouldn't that have some benefit in terms of starting over/correcting his karma. Lots of questions come to mind for lack of understanding the frame work of the Buddhist worldview. Basically you have to start from the understanding of having the right intent. Intent is so important. If the intention is to punish that chap, that is a combination of ignorance and anger. Being completely ignorant of the karmic circumstances surrounding this and previous lives feeds a sense of injustice/revenge which has at the core of its intention to cause harm. Forgiveness is not a question of letting someone away with the consequences of their actions - incarcerate them this is fine - thye are a risk and should be managed.   

I wasn't just being sarcastic before, although some smidgen was implicit. e.g., I don't get evolutionists trying to save everything under the sun from extinction, or diminishing habitat, or what have you. Aren't extinctions the normal course of events in the evolutionary frame work? Yes nothing last. The World will eventually destruct, but the way we manage it accelerates our own demise Would we still want dino's running around, if they could be resurrect through science. Or, assuming humans are the fittest, shouldn't humans survive at the expense of everything that gets in our way? (They're only suppostions, not my positions.) Everything and everyone has Buddha nature, is deserving of our full sense of respect and compassion.

Ntl, even if minds cannot be changed Mind can always be changed it is nothing but a bunch of misguided beliefs, habits and energies - and how do we know that fer sure?- perspectives can be expanded.  

Mick: Love and compassion in Buddhism are for both the 'good' and 'evil'.

Could you offer an example, flesh it out a bit. Love for evil, compassion for evil. I haven't been able to put a face to it, so to speak. Good and Evil are both sides of one coin. You cannot understnad one without the other. It is a comparative and relative concept. Absolute wisdom sees through this interplay and accepts it for what it is, nothing more than an ephemerality. You have been 'good' and 'evil' for aeons all of the time ignoring the fact that your Buddha nature is as close to you as your face.  

I remain sincere in my interest of your, and/or your Buddhist perspective Mick.

And yes, my word of God says, if you believe so and so you are saved and if you do not believe, you are not saved. But what you don't understand, at least in relation to me personally, is that I don't view that as making me better than anyone. Better off, yes! in my worldview, but still just as fallable as anyone else. I'm interested in what your worldview tells you. Obviously, not that there is any reward in sending your child off to the bus with a bomb in his back pack, but what.

My primary disappointment with this board -and you specificly- is that I thought it would be more riveting in give and take. Fairly recently, and it's a theme David broached once, someone seemed aghast and dumbfounded that anyone other than lefties(I'm supposing, as republicans were reviled for their interest), in David's perspective. Particularly respecting Triage. I probably missed it, but I didn't see Triage as a pro-lefty statement per se. (But then I consider fascism, communism and socialism all as statist kissing cousins.) Anyhow, from my perspective, based on my perception of Triage, Boomtown and other DB favorites, I was led to believe this would be my kind of place, where folks discuss ideas. And it is, just to a more limited degree than I expected because I saw Davids work as more about observable truths' than ideology. It is a limited form it can only offer so much - if it has outlived its usefulness so be it. If I were you I'd examine that sense of dissatisfaction as completely as possible - that my friend is Samsara....mind turned outwards completely lost in its own projections. Looking for an identity, happinness, freedom from suffering through whatever distraction.  

Ntl, I am pleased I came to play. Yall like family, which ain't necessarily a compliment, lol.

The thing I've come to understand is that even the people I adamantly disagree with(say politics), when up close and personal, are just human, like myself, largely preoccupied with their own interests and concerns. That's why politics, among other human endeavors, should be managed as locally as possible. I agree!