Dressed in jeans, sneakers, a black jacket, and a light blue hoodie that was pulled up over his ginger hair, the young man, quite possibly a teenager, opened the door to the small shop that sold cell phones and accessories. He nervously brushed his hoodie back, then immediately jerked it forward as he approached the glass counter behind which a shopkeeper stood. Next to him was an assistant working on a phone.
When the young man asked about a phone, the shopkeeper took one out of the display case, handed it to him, said a few words, and then placed another one on top of the case. The young man also picked up the second phone, held both phones for a second or two, then turned and darted the few yards back to the door he had just entered through and yanked on its handle.
The door didn’t budge.
The thwarted would-be thief cried out as he realized that the security systems were now in place and the door had been locked remotely. Frustrated, and with no other options, he returned to the counter. The shopkeeper calmly held out his hand as the assistant, equally calmly, looked on. Appearing somewhat embarrassed, or perhaps unsure of what to do next, the would-be thief shoved the two phones into the shopkeeper's hand, claiming his mate made him do it.
Agitated, he paced back and forth, then strode back to the locked door and rattled the handle before boldly asking to be let out. After exchanging a few more words, the shopkeeper told the man that, normally, they would call the police. No one spoke for a few seconds. Then, amazingly, the shopkeeper released the door. Realizing that the door was now unlocked, the young man bolted out of the shop. And was gone.
After the news of the attempted theft was made public, a spokesman for the shop said that while they do not condone theft, they understood that many people were currently experiencing financial hardships. If the young man was truly in need, he could contact the shop and they would try to help. The shopkeeper added, “To those on social media asking why we didn’t beat him up—violence is not the answer. The Prophet, peace and blessing be upon him, said, ‘Be merciful to others and you will receive mercy.'"
The whole incident lasted barely ninety seconds. While the young would-be thief was agitated and unsure of himself, the shopkeeper and his assistant remained remarkably calm throughout. There was no change in their posture when the thief grabbed the second phone and ran for the door. They were equally unfazed when he approached the counter a second time, this time to return the phones.
Even though the young man had tried to steal from them, the two men were not angry with him. They even tried contacting him later on—if he was truly in need, they wanted to see if they could help. To those who did not understand why the two men did not beat up the would-be thief, they explained that they had been taught to have mercy.
Mercy is defined as having two components: “compassion . . . shown to an offender” and “kindness extended to someone instead of strictness or severity.”
The first part of the definition is compassion, the desire to alleviate the suffering of others. Initially, our compassion arises when we see someone suffering. We do what we can to help alleviate their immediate suffering. When these needs are met, we might see if there are longer-term ones that we could help with.
The person the two men in our account offered to help was not an innocent young man, but someone who had tried to steal from them. Since everything happened so quickly, he was gone before they could talk to him and learn what his situation was. Perhaps they had wondered why he had done something so foolhardy. Might there really be a need?
Thinking they might be able to help, they posted a notice online asking the young man to contact them. This reaching out to the young man is an excellent example of a problem we often have when we want to be compassionate. What can I do? Is it possible to help? Do I have the wisdom and skills to know how to do so effectively? And on a very personal level, am I doing the right thing?
Undeterred by any such questions, the men went ahead and did the best they could by offering to help if the young man was truly in need. Whether he learned of the offer and then contacted the shop was up to him. Up to his karma and his affinity with the two men. They had no control over whether the would-be thief would even respond.
Like them, when we try to help another person, we do the best we can by calmly considering the situation and our possible options. If we believe we might be able to help, we could proceed the best we can in the hope that it will be enough to alleviate at least some of their suffering. If we are able to help, we should not feel proud of having done so. If we are not able to help, we should not feel disappointed or that we failed. What ensues will be due to the person’s karma.
The second part of the definition of mercy is kindness, which is the quality of sympathy and leniency instead of severity. We saw how the shopkeepers, instead of calling the police as they normally would have done or reacting more forcefully as some people thought they should have, released the door and let the young man go.
In a time when more and more people are giving in to their baser instincts and responding to frustrating situations with anger, how did these two men respond with such leniency and goodwill?
They had been taught that if a person wants to receive mercy and be forgiven, they must first be merciful and forgive others. Believing in this cause and effect, the men acted on their beliefs. Like the Amish mentioned in an earlier account, the shopkeepers chose forgiveness instead of revenge because forgiveness is a basic tenet of their respective religious teachings.
Buddhists also believe in cause and effect because this is a basic tenet of our teachings. Quite simply, if people want certain results, they must first cultivate the causes. Good causes bring about good results, and bad causes bring about bad results. Where there is a result, there must have been a cause. And where there is a cause, there will always be a result. This is a universal truth of causality that knows no boundaries of time or place.
What else can help us better understand why things happen and how we can react?
We can consider what immediate conditions might have led the person to do what they did. In the case of the young man, was he genuinely in need? Or was there a very different reason. Perhaps it was a dare. Maybe an initiation ritual. Possibly it was copycat behavior. Something exciting, something tinged with danger. When the young man failed to get away with the phones, he said that his mate made him steal them.
What about the causes that were less immediate but probably even more compelling?
Cause and effect can help us understand why the attempted theft unfolded as it did. We can delve deeper into the why and the role a karmic connection likely played. We have formed countless relationships, positive and negative, in our innumerable past lives. We do not know the karmic connection of the people in the incident, only that this karmic principle holds true–where there is a result, there must have been a cause.
Such an explanation tells why the young man would try to steal from this particular shopkeeper and his assistant. There was some karmic link to past deeds between them. Conditions were such that they encountered one another yet again in this lifetime.
Whatever the causes, we know practicing mercy asks us to make the right decision, not the habitual, long-ingrained one that arises from anger. Calling the police would have been easy. It might have even been considered the right thing. Stopping the young man from attempting another robbery could prevent some future shopkeeper from being robbed. Arresting the young man might teach him not to steal anymore. Unfortunately, recidivism rates don’t support such reasoning, so that solution would all too likely not help the young man.
If the reason for calling the police, or beating up a potential thief, was to teach him a lesson, thus helping him to change his behavior, isn’t there a better way? How about by offering to help him? By giving him a chance to realize that he was about to be turned over to the police while his mate remained free and how he needed to choose his mates more carefully, not to mention not to steal.
The shopkeeper and assistant practiced mercy in two fundamental ways.
First, through their compassion and kindness, and the letting go of any thought of retaliation, they offered the young man the opportunity to choose the direction he would head in. Would it be jail? Or a life where he wouldn't always be running away. Whether he accepted the opportunity to choose one or the other was now up to him. The two men had done all they could.
Second, but actually more importantly, through forgiveness, kindness, and letting go of retaliation, they had severed a victim-perpetrator enmity they shared with the young man. There would still be karmic retribution for what had already been done in lifetimes past, not just this one, but the link of animosity between them had been broken.
Such is the power of forgiveness and mercy.