Chapter 13 crime and punishment

A judge in the city came forward and said, Please tell us about crime and punishment. He replied: When your souls are blown by the wind, You have mistreated yourself by alone and unintentionally anchoring others. For the faults committed, you must knock at the door of the Blessed One, and be left in the cold for a moment's waiting. Your divine selves are like the sea; Never be tarnished. And like the sky, it lifts only the winged ones. Your divine self is even like the sun; It does not follow the paths of rats, nor the caves of worms and snakes. Yet there is not only divinity in you.

Most of you are human, but much is not human, Rather, it is an unformed dwarf, sleepwalking in the mist, seeking his own awakening. What I say now is for the humanity in you. For it alone, and not your divinity or the dwarves of the fog, can understand crime and punishment. I have often heard you accuse someone of making a mistake, as if he were not one of you, but a stranger among you, an intruder in your world. But I want to say that even a sage and a great virtue cannot be higher than the supreme in each of you. Similarly, even a wicked person is weak and weak, it is impossible to be lower than the humble in each of you.

Like a solitary leaf that does not wither and yellow without the acquiescence of the whole tree, Behind the rampage of the perpetrators is not without the hidden promise of all of you. You advance like a procession to your divinity, You are the way and the walkers. When one of you stumbles, he stumbles for those behind, making them take heed of the stumbling stone. Oh, and he also stumbled for the sake of those before him, who, though light and firm in their step, did not remove the stumbling block. And, though it weighs heavily on your hearts: The slain was not entirely free from responsibility for his killing,

The robbed is not blameless for being robbed. Those who do good and obey the law are not innocent in the evil deeds of the wicked. A man with clean hands is not necessarily innocent of the crimes committed by the perpetrator. Indeed, the convicted are often the victims of the dead, More often, the condemned bear the burden of the innocent and impunity. You cannot mix justice with injustice.separate good from evil; For they stand side by side in the sun, like black and white threads woven together. When the black thread breaks, the weaver should inspect the whole fabric, and he should also inspect the loom.

If you bring an unfaithful wife to court, weigh her husband's heart in scales, and his soul by the same standard. Let him who flogs the criminal look into the soul of the victim. If, in the name of justice, you punish and cast an ax upon the tree of evil, look also at the roots of that tree; In fact, you will find that roots of good and roots of evil, roots of sterility and roots of fertility, intertwine in the silent heart of the earth. And you judges who try to do justice, What is the sentence for the man who is faithful in body but a thief in spirit? And what punishment will be given to those who injure another's body when in reality they themselves suffer mentally?

How do you prosecute a person who has committed fraud or oppression but who has been violated and abused? And how do you punish those who are bitterly remorseful, and tormented more than their faults? Is not remorse just the justice of the laws you serve? You cannot lay remorse upon the innocent, nor spare the sinner from the torment of remorse. It comes uninvited, it calls in the middle of the night, and people wake up and examine themselves. As for you who try to understand justice, how can you understand justice unless you look at all actions in the most clear light? Only then will you understand that what rises and what sinks is but the same one standing in the twilight of its dwarf night and divine day.

And the cornerstones of the temple are not higher than the lowest cornerstone.