Robin Beck

Absent Minded Parents, Criminal Justice, and Mindfulness Cultivation

The number of children who have died of heat exhaustion has risen dramatically since the mid-1990s, totaling around 340 in the past 10 years. According to an Associated Press analysis, one reason cited was a change made to protect children by putting them in the back seat away from air bags, where they are more easily forgotten. "We all multi-task. We have so many things on our mind's it's always rush, rush," Glenn Victor of the Central Florida Safety Council said. -- WESH.COM.

"Child Left In Car Dies." Do a google search. While not of epidemic proportions, this is becoming more common. The stories I am seeing were not about bad people on dope. They were not about poor people who needed Government Day Care Centers. The people who left their babies in the car were multi-tasking professionals and good parents with resources, who simply forgot. I can sort of relate to this. Some things I have done in the past: make coffee without placing the carafe under the basket, left the bath tub running until it ran over on the floor, bent over a candle and lit myself on fire, put the milk in the dish cabinet, threw my keys in the waste basket ... practicing the four {4} foundations of mindfulness in recent years has made a difference for me. I do such things much less often. The one area that multi-tasking professionals tend to neglect is mindfulness of vedana, which means sensation. And that neglect is not quite as simple to fix as it might seem. that can be largely self taught. Here are a couple:

Pivoting a bit, one of the controversial elements of these cases is that the parents are not necessarily being charged with crimes. In the cases I refer to, the parents' routines were thrown off; the kids normally would not have been in the car with them, at those times. There is now some movement to change the laws in some states; based on these Absent Minded Parents cases. This is symptomatic of a recent trend, here in the USA, to criminalize negligence, to prosecute people for accidents. It as if we need to blame someone; and get revenge. This revenge is known, euphemistically, as closure. My take is that accidents are accidents; crimes are crimes. If we start mixing the two, it can get very dicey. Criminal negligence generally involves knowingly taking an unacceptable risk. In these cases, the parents did not knowingly leave the kids in the autos; they completely forgot the children were there. It seems bizarre, but I have come home and left perishable groceries in the car. I have even paid for groceries and walked out of the store without them.

In this connection, while I was reading Kaimoku Sho {Opening of the Eyes by Nichiren}, I noticed a tension in Nichiren's moral thought; between Confucian Morality and Buddhist Ethics. Confucian morals are shame based and involve sins of omission. Confucianism is about fulfilling duties to parents, teachers, & the ruler. Consequences are more important than intent. Buddhist Ethic, on the other hand, is guilt based and involves sins of commission. On the ABC level, there are lists of certain acts which one should not do. It is not quite that simple though; there is also a higher ethic {abhisila} behind that; an act is right or wrong based on intent. From a moral standpoint, in Buddhism, intent is more important than consequences.

My take is that if the parents simply got too busy and forgot them, then I do not think that is criminal. If they remembered them, but just decided it was the worth the risk, or too inconvenient to make other arrangements, then that might well be criminal negligence. Placing kids in a car on a hot day, with the intention to harm them, would, be a 'sin of commission' -- a act with criminal intent. Leaving them, knowing it is risky, but deciding to take a chance, is willful negligence, another 'sin of commission.' However, forgetting they were even in the car is a 'sin of omission' -- there was no intent to harm them; it is an accident. The key is whether there was a willful and harmful act.

Again, there are three scenarios:

• A willful act with intent to farm, a crime
• A willful act with no intent to harms, but which a reasonable person would be aware causes harm. In other words, a reckless or heedless act.
• An accident caused by being absent minded. 

In the first scenario, the issue is morality. In the second case, there is a moral element, and an element of poor or heedless judgment. In the last scenario, there is no moral element; nor was it a matter of poor or reckless judgment. The issue is mindfulness; especially those of the first mindfulness, that of body {rupa-skandha}; and the second mindfulness; that of physical sensation {vedana skandha}.

In some previous entries, we discussed sensation or vedana. Eighteen Sensory Realms, Dharma Dhatu, Juhachi Kai give a general overview of how sensation operates. In Mind as a 6th Sense?, we discussed the role of mind as Mano-vijnana, the mind sense that coordinates sensory input, and perceives phenomena. Some refer to this level of mind as manas, but that is another discussion. Back on topic, the 5 senses give us the individual trees; the mind-sense gives us 'the forest' or 'the big picture.' Mano-vijnana or mind-sense is the aspect of the mind that is dysfunctional when people are absent-minded. The same people who tend to be 'spacey' often possess advanced cognitive or conceptual and emotive mind skills. They are often buried in abstract thought, operate the body-skandha on auto-pilot, and just forget to {can not afford to?} pay attention. I know this from personal experience.

I think what has happened, is that the complexity of modern life has desensitized most of us, to varying extents. Our senses are assaulted with way too much data. Some drink or use drugs to numb the senses and block out the 'Dukkha.' Others learn learn to go on auto-pilot and tune most of it out; we look at the forest, but miss the trees. When someone rearranges those trees, look out. My wife came up with a simple cue to be be more mindful -- do what we were taught to do at street corners, in grade school: Stop, Look, & Listen. In the cases I refer to, there was no need for the parents to even remember they had the kids with them; if they had just paid attention; if they had simply stopped to glance around the car for a few seconds; before and after exiting, they would have seen the kids there.

If only it were always that simple; habits are hard to break. Buddhism has an answer; practice the four {4} foundations of mindfulness {Satipatthana}, especially, to start off, mindfulness of body and of sensation. For advanced training, one might need to seek out a personal Guru, Acarya, Master, Coach, Trainer, or Sensei. Fortunately, there are several relatively simple techniques

Focus the Senses; the Mind Follows

Six Sense Purification; 6 Beat Mantra Powered Visualization

There are more advanced methods as well. One reason we tend to tune out physical sensation is precisely because it is ultimately dukkha -- it is suffering, painful, confusing, unpleasant, and almost always ultimately unsatisfactory. Initially, we may need to learn to be patient, tolerant, and forbearing, which is the function of Bodhisattva Jizo {地蔵}{Ksitegarbha} {Earth Matrix]. However, we can also tap into our inherent blissfulness; which is the power of Bodhisattva Anryugyo { 安立行}{Supratisthita Caritra} {Well Established Conduct}. We can then begin to heal the wounds of this world; this healing power being the function of Bodhisattva Yakuo {薬王} {Bhaishajyaraja} {Medicine King}.

At any rate, I do not think locking people up in jail for being spacey self absorbed air heads, no matter how appalling the consequences of their forgetfulness, is the way to heal the world.

Posted by rbeck at September 9, 2007 10:23 AM