What the Buddha taught can only be relevant and beneficial to those rape victims who are are benefitting from the Buddhas teachings, for the rest it is unfortunately useless.Annapurna wrote:Annapurna,chownah wrote:[quote="Annapurna
Chownah,
You might of course lose a bit from that Buddhist Pollyannaism if your own daughter got raped...
You are probably wrong about this......this is the way I live my life......the Buddha taught that we should have no doctrine of self whatever and I am doing my best to realize this in my life and to discuss what I see as different aspects of this teaching with others so that we might gain a better understanding. In my life when I feel hatred or disgust toward someone I often stop and reflect on my attitude as one more instance of creating a doctrine of self....a doctrine of self towards that person......I remind myself of the Buddha's teachings that everything happens because of conditions and this reminds me that what I see as unsatisfactory in that other person is a result of conditions and not a result of any "self" which I might construe. I thought that people understood how this works but I guess I was wrong.....and believe me it does really work....the conditions which created the hatred or disgust can perhaps be viewed more clearly and the stress which those emotions create fades away......in my view this is what victims need to learn....in my view this is what we all need to learn......seems like a good thing to me but then this is all only my view....
chownah
Another aspect is, that we can analyse something in a rational way, but we can't tell our emotions what to do.
"Sit".
"Disappear".
It doesn't work.
Even if physical wounds have healed, emotional wounds will remain.
Rape is often not about sex, but sex a means to exert power, to humiliate, to punish, and to seek revenge.
The humiliation that is felt by a female victim is often extremely hard to understand for a man, because he finds nothing to compare it to.
For her, (ideally) her genital organs are there for someone she loves and admires, a partner. She trusts him not to hurt her, and any man can hurt a woman with his penis, unless it's a very small one.
If a woman is raped, then usually by someone who is beneath her and whom she would refuse to have sex with.
To be entered by such a man constitutes the gravest humiliation a woman can experience.
Some women start questioning themselves, like if they were not careful enough, dressed in the wrong way, or walked in a wrong area alone.
This leads to a loss of trust in herself and in all other men.
This is a grave loss of liberty, joy of life, , but none of this is her fault.
It is only and alone the rapists fault.
Even for Buddhist women it may not be all that easy to process this in a way that will allow her not to see a potential rapist in each man she is alone with in an elevator, a street, or a bus.[/quote]
Annapurna,
The original post asked only one question and here it is, "So as a noob, I'd like to ask you what your response would be as a Buddhist. Before delving into the dhamma, I would also have bayed for blood in anger ... and in fact, I still find it difficult to suppress my feelings of anger against this man. How do you deal with this anger?" The main point of my posting has been to address the questoin of how to deal with the anger which arises in someone who becomes aware of a violent crime. For some reason people seem to think that I am advising giving a dhamma sermon to rape victims......let me dispel this once and for all....I am not advising this....I have not advised this...I will not advise this.....I'm still hoping that Ben will present what he seems to think is my response to a rape victim....I don't know where he got the idea that I had suggested one but I did not.
You wrote, "What the Buddha taught can only be relevant and beneficial to those rape victims who are are benefitting from the Buddhas teachings, for the rest it is unfortunately useless."...I think you are wrong...if the Buddha's teachings make sense then they are beneficial and relevant.......also.....you wrote this as if there is a time limit on how long a person can be classisfied as a rape victim.....my view is that a person can maintain the status of rape victim for as long as there is a traumatic reaction to the event....maybe even longer I guess....do you think that there were any rape victims that became arahants?....almost assuredly there were...and presumably at the time of the rape they were not already benefiting fromt the Buddha's teachings but then at some later time found his teachings beneficial and relevnt....I guess this disproves your idea.....
chownah