What if there is an unrepentant bully, who threatens one’s home and even life, who is however ‘difficult’ for the law to apprehend? What if ending the person’s life seems to be the ‘only’ way for one’s own life to move on in peace? What if there is a ‘simple’ way to end the person’s life, seemingly ‘naturally’? To answer all three questions, there should be more deliberate but fair ‘entrapping’ of the evil, with non-violent legal processes and resolution, without oneself becoming evil, a bully too, however tempting and easy it might be to do so.
With a shocking counterintuitive twist, the protagonist narrates at the end, as a subtle way to justify the extreme path chosen in the middle of a marsh she lived in… ‘It has always been enough to be part of the natural sequence of things. Sure as the tides. Nature, my guide. The marsh knows all about death and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy. Certainly not a sin. It understands that every creature does what it must to survive. And that sometimes, for prey to live, its predator must die.’
To be part of the workings of nature does not mean to purposely and viciously kill anyone, what more another human being. Why so? Because we as human sentient beings are supposedly closer to our Buddha-nature, the loftiest aspect of nature, which is pro-peace; not violence. Even if nature is ‘familiar’ with death, it does not decide any life or death, to be tragic or otherwise, right or wrong – as nature is indifferent; just natural; as it is, according to natural laws. ‘There is no morality in nature, just life’ and death ‘pushing on’… However, we humans can decide, and Buddha-nature does have perfect morality.
And to decide a sentient life only deserves death is perhaps the greatest tragedy — for both the killer and the killed, since it is by nature that all treasure their lives. Is this not exactly why ‘every creature does what it must to survive’? ‘Sometimes, for prey to live, its predator must die.’ However, if humans are craftly enough to devise means to make predators prey, they should be able to come up with skilful means to apprehend and reform bullies without killing too. If not, how are humans different from, thus nobler than, the birds and beasts, of the marsh and beyond?
