From the Buddhist point of view, there is no beginning point. It’s like coming in on the tail end of a movie: You don’t know who got their just desserts. Kamma itself doesn’t go around dishing out just desserts.

 "You’ve got to change your views, that strong sense of offended justice. You’ve got to look into that. We’ve talked about this before, how justice requires that you know the beginning of the story. You can tabulate who did what to whom, whose actions can be justified, whose actions cannot, and then you tally up the score. But from the Buddhist point of view, there is no beginning point. You can’t say who did what to whom in the beginning, who was the first mover in a particular story. It’s like coming in on the tail end of a movie: You don’t know who got their just desserts.

Kamma itself doesn’t go around dishing out just desserts. Think of the case of Angulimala. He killed all those people but then he had a change of heart. The Buddha saw that he had the potential for a change of heart, so he went right to him and taught him, and Angulimala became an arahant. He ended up not getting punished for all those murders. There were people who were upset and would throw things at him when he went on his alms round. But as the Buddha told Angulimala when he came back from his alms round with his head bleeding, his robe torn: “This is nothing compared with what the pain would have been if you hadn’t gained that attainment.”

This should be our attitude toward people who we think are getting away with murder, getting away with injustices. We should hope that they see the error of their ways, change their way of action, because that’s how goodness gets established in the world — not by going around and punishing all the wrong doers, because often the punishment won’t make them see the fact that they were wrong to begin with. You can pile up all kinds of evidence, but if they’re unwilling to admit the evidence, they’ll be more and more firmly entrenched in their wrongness, their harshness, and their cruelty. The ideal attitude is to wish for them to have a change of heart — and for that, you have to have a change of heart too."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "When Your Will is Ill" (Meditations11)

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