Some things to consider...

After yesterday's detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me -- our neighbor calls him Ben but that's not the name he's being held under -- I thought much more about what happened, who those of us involved are, and what may be the larger meanings of it all, or if there are any.

One thing that instantly popped out was the absence of police brutality. The officer who arrested "Ben" or whatever his name is arrived within five minutes of my call. I saw him in the front courtyard of the house across the street apparently idly chatting with "Ben" who appeared to be sitting calmly on a bench shortly after his arrest. 

At the hearing yesterday, the officer stated that he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest. He didn't say what for, but I assume it was the joyride "Ben" took in the police chief's car in April. 

He described the most recent arrest this way: he saw my wife in the street and asked her where the suspect was. She pointed to the house across the street from ours. He got his automatic rifle and went to the front door and... knocked. "Ben" opened the door. The officer said he saw two knives, one in each pocket of "Ben's" jeans and that "Ben's" left hand was concealed behind the door. He ordered him out of the house and onto the ground. "Ben" did not immediately obey, but was somehow persuaded -- without violence -- out of the house and onto one knee in the front courtyard. The officer handcuffed him and relieved him of three weapons, the two knives in his pants pockets and the hatchet/tomahawk he'd assaulted me with.

And then they waited for backup. "Ben" sat on the bench; the officer stood beside him. The officer said that, yes, he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest.

During the hearing, an extensive arrest record was mentioned as well as sentencing to prison and probation for previous offenses. "Ben" is no stranger to The System.

He is, however, arguably severely mentally ill. While he rattled off a litany of diagnoses, it comes down to paranoid schizophrenia and addiction with violent tendencies. They are only partially controlled by medications and counseling. And in this case were not controlled.

I had this grand notion of how I would want him to be treated post-conviction. Held in prison for up to a year, then in a locked mental health care facility for up to three years while he undergoes training and therapy to manage his condition. then in 24/7 supervised release where essentially his is under observation of a minder all the time for as long as necessary. 

Seems, at least in outline, that's the treatment he was under, and yet he was able to slither away from custody rather easily and engage in mayhem.

He'd been remanded to a locked Department of Corrections drug and mental illness treatment and recovery facility (for I don't know how long) and after two days he was out and about. He said he was denied his anti-psychotic meds at this facility and he began to act out so much that he convinced the staff to transfer him to a hospital where he may or may not have received any treatment (apparently no treatment and did not receive his medications) and where he was able to call our neighbor to come and get him. This is not quite the story she tells, but anyway... he said that someone else came and picked him up and took him to our neighbor's house where he had stayed without meds for he didn't know how long (a few days) before he was arrested for assaulting me. 

He was on probation, he was under court order to complete treatment at the locked recovery facility and to report to his probation officer regularly. He did neither, and he was able to basically walk away from the hospital where he was taken when his psychotic behavior manifested at the treatment facility.

The treatment I suggested was actually partially under way, and it was ineffective; given what I heard, it was grossly counterproductive.

So.

Where do we go from here? That'll take a while to come to grips with.

A Few Further Thoughts on Being Assaulted Last Week

I've tried not to dwell on the incident though I occasionally find myself mulling over what happened, trying to remember and trying to forget simultaneously. "Trying" is probably a waste of time, but I seem to spend so little time on it, with so many other things to think about and to get done, that it doesn't seem like any loss to me to occasionally ruminate on the topic of being assaulted and what it may mean in the larger scheme of things.

At the simplest level, it was a "knock upside the head." It left a mark, yeah, but primarily it was a reminder of the need for redirection in my life and activities. This has happened to me repeatedly and it probably happens to others in different ways. We become complacent and habituated to whatever routine we're following. It's our lifestyle. We may not even think we should be or need to be on a different path, following different needs and desires, serving ourselves and others differently than we have become used to.

After that "knock upside the head" I was talking to the neighbor the guy was staying with. She's a friend. We're not close, but we get along fine and we have mutual friends and so on, and we help each other out when we can. We're neighbors. 

One of our mutual friends was for years my "helper" Wes. He came around first when I was in a very bad state from rheumatoid arthritis and could literally barely move. He offered to take care of whatever I needed, and I was very grateful for his help. I paid him for his trouble, and he was very grateful for the extra money and for my company for he'd been having many problems himself.

He was about 50, a diagnosed schizophrenic, on disability and living with his mother. She was a retired nurse. He had a son who he loved dearly who lived with his mother (the boy's mother) in Arizona. 

Wes's mother received his disability checks and doled out very little cash to him because she didn't think he'd be responsible with it, and she was probably right. For example, he'd buy cigarettes with the money I gave him, even though he had bronchitis, COPD, emphysema, and sometimes showed clear signs of walking pneumonia. I counseled him against smoking tobacco repeatedly, and sometimes he'd stop for a while, but then inevitably, he'd start smoking again. Having been a heavy smoker myself, I knew how hard it could be to quit, and I told him how I did it, recommended he try it and offered to help him through the rougher parts of the process. He tried but ultimately failed in part because he continued socializing with people who smoked cigarettes and who mocked his efforts to quit. 

Come to find out tobacco wasn't his only unhealthy habit. He didn't drink that I was aware of, but I would learn he used just about any illicit substance he could get his hands on. And it would kill him.

According to my neighbor, he was partying with "friends" one night, and he injected a cocktail of drugs -- she didn't know exactly what -- and went unconscious and never woke up.

I can well imagine how it happened; I can put myself in his place and recognize how vulnerable he was to a partying culture and recognize how tempting and easy it would be for the partiers he was with to take advantage of him and in effect cause his death. "Here, try this! You'll love it!" And he'd do it because why not?

And I can also well imagine that the partiers he was with had no remorse at all. They probably didn't even feel the loss.

Wes was less than nothing to them.

Just so when it came to my own brush with Death last week.

This time wasn't the End, but who knows how close it came? I felt -- absolutely -- the first time I encountered this dude the day before he assaulted me that his intention was to murder me. I didn't think he would do it, but there was no doubt in my mind of his intent.

Where did that come from? On my end, there's a long karmic chain. I can trace it back to 1904, but it probably goes back much farther. My mother's maternal grandfather was murdered (as it happened by his mistress) in 1904, and it's possible but not certain that my mother's father was also murdered in 1916. I actually had long thought that the accident that killed him was no accident, but the more I learned about it, the less sure about it I became. So I don't know. One of my mother's uncles was also murdered (I believe it was in 1898.) He was a police officer who was shot by one of the combatants when he tried to break up a fight in a bar. On the other hand, my mother's father was chased through the streets of Downtown Indianapolis by a police officer who was firing his gun at him. Didn't hit him, but caused quite a lot of damage and mayhem before the chase ended.

An uncle -- my father's older brother -- was accused of murdering his wife, and some of my relatives are convinced he did it and got away with it, but again, I'm not so sure. It's possible, but so is his alibi. So I don't know what really happened there, either.

I've had plenty of brushes with Death throughout my life. How many, I can't say. But enough to constitute a common theme, and it's something that I think most people never experience. I've been shot, mugged, robbed, assaulted, threatened, etc, etc, etc, many times. So far, I've survived every one of these incidents. 

I wrote "many times" and until now, I don't think I realized how often these things have happened to me. And how unusual it is in most people's lives. At least I assume it's unusual.

Part of it is due to my own rebel nature, something I have little or no control over. I tend to be a rebel, I tend to resist convention, I tend to prefer alternatives to expectations, and some of those alternatives lead directly to trouble, including life-threatening trouble. I suppose it's related to dare-deviling. Maybe I get an adrenaline rush from pushing the limits. I'm not sure what the reward is, but the risk is something I have often taken, more or less automatically. There is essentially no conscious intent on my part. 

In the recent incident, I sensed immediately that I was looking Death in the eye. I wasn't frightened. More concerned once he got in my house to keep him occupied so he didn't go looking around and finding my wife. Just keep him occupied. He was clearly fucked up on drugs, couldn't figure out how to do simple things (like working a doorknob or a lock) but he had a fixed idea: to dispatch me with his tomahawk. Maybe somewhere in his mind he saw himself as a hero. I don't know.

I don't remember him saying more than a few words the whole time, most clearly I remember him saying "Sit down" shortly before he struck me on the forehead with his tomahawk. Afterwards, I thought: "Is he counting coup?" But I think that's too sophisticated an idea for the state he was in. No, I don't think he was thinking at all. Some other process was going on, driven by drugs, his mental disabilities, and by something deep inside him. I asked him repeatedly, but he could not tell me what was wrong. 

So here I am, still recuperating. The wound is healing, and the black eye the doctor expected to develop is very faint. There's some pain now and then, I sometimes feel disoriented and dizzy, but it passes. I suspect PTSD, but on the whole, each day is just another day, plenty of tasks to get done, and remember to lock the doors and keep the gates closed. 

I contacted the Zen center to get more information on their prison outreach program. I'd heard about it from one of the Zen priests some time ago. He said, if I recall correctly, that it was focused on drug and addiction rehabilitation through Zen practice in the prison setting. I thought that might be something valuable for the guy who attacked me. I'm pretty sure the Zen priest himself has gone through rehab, probably more than once. Which is no negative reflection on him. What I recall being told about the guy who assaulted me was that he had "gone AWOL" from the rehab program he was in (probably by court order) and he had been partying with friends, got fucked up on something -- who knows what -- and had been flying high for several days. He had not been taking his anti-psychotic meds. And he had threatened or run off several other men who'd come to the house of a neighbor where he was staying. He believed, I was told, that every man was a predator on children.

So what do you do? Just send him back to prison and forget about him?

I'm sure some people would do just that, but that's not the way I think about these things or about people in crisis.

I was listening to an interview with Thich Nhat Hanh the other day. One of the topics was "terrorism" and how a Buddhist responds. Or should. He said, "Listening. Deep listening. Compassion." Not with violence. Of course, that's an ideal. It may not work, and it's not always possible, but without even trying, you're sure to see the cycle of violence repeat. Again and again and again. Why not stop?

The question is how to do that without enabling further violence. I was using tactics of Zen compassion and listening during the encounter with the guy who attacked me. I could see a little bit of a change in his behavior every time I asked him "What's wrong?" But it was only for a few seconds at a time, then he'd revert, we'd go around again, and finally he whacked me on the head. I suspect Thich Nhat Hanh would probably laugh at the outcome, and at times, I have laughed too. He would also say, I think, that simply by asking and listening and staying in the moment, I was moving the situation in a positive direction. Yes, some blood was shed, my own, but think how much more there might have been had I not done what I did.

But how to do that without enabling his demon-mind? I know there are ways, but I'm not skilled at them. That's why I'm reaching out to people who might be. 

One thing I didn't think of is the golden Kamakura Daibutsu 

By User: Bgabel at wikivoyage shared, CC BY-SA 3.0

that sits in the Buddha-shrine in the living room, something he must have seen though it may not have registered. In other words, he probably didn't know what it was, but he must have seen it, and eventually, just the sight could have profound effects. 

Who can say?

So. 

That's all I can say for now. 

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A bit of an update. Ms. Ché and I have been subpoenaed for a custody hearing on the guy who thwacked me with the tomahawk. Apparently the prosecutor wants us to testify as to what happened and why we think he should stay in custody and not be released on bail while awaiting trial. 

It's fairly simple. He's a danger to others and himself. 

We learned while discussing the case with the police captain that the dude has a history we knew nothing of. He was, for example, arrested in April for stealing the police chief's car and joyriding. He returned the car but refused to surrender his person, so he was tased, trussed up, and taken into custody. At the bail hearing the judge released him into a supervised rehab program which he left a few days before he assaulted me.

Police are very concerned that this not happen again with this dude. 

They want him locked up and not allowed to roam free. We do too. Clearly the rehab didn't work. If he is schizophrenic and he refuses to take anti-psychotics, but will self-medicate with drugs that enhance psychosis, then he's not really capable of handling freedom of any sort at this point.  

I told a friend that what I'd like to see happen is that he is imprisoned for up to a year, then put in a locked mental health care facility where he learns how to manage his condition -- maybe 3 years minimum; then if he demonstrates that he can and will manage his condition with medication and meditation, let him be on supervised release with a minder, essentially 24/7, for up to five more years.

She laughed. "There are no facilities, and no programs like that." I said, "Sure there are if you're rich enough. He's not. So what happens? Turn him loose? Or put him in prison for years and leave him to rot and let him continue to be a threat to others when he's let out?"

We'll see what happens.

-----------------------------------

There was a pre-trial detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me. We attended by telephone and both Ms. Ché and I testified. She was was traumatized by the experience and retraumatized by telling the story to the court. I felt terrible for her. Wasn't there an easier wasy? Well, I guess not, and by tomorrow I hope she'll feel better. I realize how much she's been holding in. She was in a terrifying situation, and though she handled it masterfully (she'd trained for years) she was really badly shaken.

Dude got to tell his side, and what a tangled tale. He has quite a record, including assault and burglary. His charges now are aggravated assault and aggravated burglary together with false imprisonment. He rattled off a list of clinical diagnoses for which he is prescribed several anti-psychotic medications. He said he had been in a locked men's recovery program run by the corrections department as a condition of his probation after a conviction. He was denied his anti-psychotics and began to act out. He said he asked that an ambulance take him to the hospital, he was hearing voices and having delusions. He was taken to the hospital. It's not cleat if or how he was treated. 

He said he called our neighbor while he was in the hospital and asked her if he could stay at her house, and could she come pick him up. Someone else came, and he was brought to our neighbor's house on Sunday. He did not have his medication and he was becoming more and more delusional. I first encountered him on Monday. Our neighbor was not home, but he was there with her children. 

On Tuesday, he came into our house uninvited and assaulted me, scared my wife, and returned to our neighbor's house where he was arrested a few minutes later.

I'll say this for him. He was lucid during the hearing. He didn't make sense, but at least he could speak in full sentences. 

The judge decided he would stay in custody until trial -- for the safety of himself and others.

The Zen of Being Assaulted, The Zen of An Assault, The Zen of Being

Those of us who practice some form of Buddhism -- for me it's a sort of slap-dash version of Soto Zen -- do so with the certain or uncertain knowledge that things as they appear to be, things as they are, aren't.

Maybe it was that suspicion that led us to Zen or Buddhism in the first place, the suspicion that what we could perceive was not all of reality, wasn't reality at all. Through the practice of Zen -- or most any form of Buddhism and many other spiritual endeavours -- we come to a better understanding of the incompleteness of ordinary perception, and if we're diligent or lucky enough, we might gain the ability to perceive much deeper or more fully into 'what is.' Suchness.

The practice is a form of training that alters our consciousness, and for most of us, there is no going back once that's happened. What we perceive and the way we perceive it goes through a transformative process which I can't explain though i have experienced it a number of times over the decades  - satori and samadhi they call it -- that is often taken as 'enlightenment' though I doubt it's anything like that of Shakyamuni Buddha's Enlightenment. Or maybe it's the same. I don't know. It can be debated to the finest of grains, and yet cannot be resolved. We know it when we feel it, but what it is, who can truly say?

I came to Zen at a difficult time in my life, the dreaded teen-age years, awkward adolescence. Zen practice helped to get me through it, and it's helped to ground me through an often chaotic life ever since. I'm grateful, since otherwise I probably wouldn't be here to tell the tale. 

Part of Soto Zen and much of Buddhism in general is the recognition that our Buddha nature is to serve. This is often expressed as following the Bodhisattva Way, living a Bodhisattva life. That was the study we engaged in during the intensive Spring Practice Period Ango I participated in earlier this year. 

Shantideva's A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life was our text. He'd run away to a monastery -- run away from the kingship he was supposed to assume on his father's death, run away to the largest and most famous Buddhist monastery and teaching institution Nalanda -- where he found himself beset by bullying and self-doubt. He felt he didn't fit in on the one hand and he was the victim of constant abuse on the other. He felt like leaving the monastery, running away again, but what would be the point? Instead, he stuck it out and in the process formulated the Guide which he presented as a teaching to the other monks at Nalanda, probably to much mockery and derision, but which has long survived him and them and Nalanda itself (destroyed during the Moslem invasion and conquest of northern India in the early 1200s.) 

While bemoaning his fate throughout the Guide, Shantideva argues compellingly for keeping on with the practice and developing bodhicitta, awakened compassion on behalf of all sentient beings, perhaps most especially those which had been his tormentors. 

It's not really necessary to go into all the details, for we have other things to do, but the point is that one on the Bodhisattva path is called to serve with compassion those they meet along the way with the intent of bringing them along to Enlightenment or at a minimum helping them to do so.

I never knew I was on that Bodhisattva path myself, because that really wasn't a conscious part of my practice; compassion, service to those I encountered along the way was simply what I did naturally, or so I thought, and there was no great argument or self doubt about it.

And so time passes, much time, and time came to a few days ago, and an encounter with someone new to me, a youngish man maybe 30 years old, tall, muscular, blond, standing across the street from my house staring at me as I trimmed weeds in my front yard. I greeted him simply and informally and asked if there was anything I could do. He stood still for a moment then came threateningly across the street, getting right up to me, and after some back and forth it appeared that 1) he was on drugs, possibly meth, and not fully aware; 2) he was delusional, paranoid; 3) he had a violent intent. 

What was I to do? I'm a pretty frail old man these days (though I don't like to admit it), and he was young and strong and full of rage and paranoia and whatever substances he had ingested or injected. I asked him, "Is there anything I can do for you?" He fumed and raged some more, ordering me to stay away from the children who lived in the house where he was staying and threatened dire consequences otherwise, and I told him not to worry, I had no interest in the children and that I was going in to my place now. He stomped away back into the house where he was staying.

I didn't think that that was the end of it. I thought there would be more somehow, when or where or how I didn't know, and fleetingly I thought I had met the image of Death -- and not for the first time -- and that he would be back.

Sure enough. 

The next day, I was sitting in my chair in my living room taking a break from trimming weeds in the back  when I sensed someone standing behind me, and I turned and it was him. He'd come into my house through an unlocked gate and door to the laundry room and kitchen, quietly -- I had no idea -- and stood with a hammer or ax in his hand, breathing hard, ready to commit mayhem and violence. I got up and told him to get out of my house. He advanced on me, threatening without words, waving his weapon around, breathing hard, eyes riveted on me. He got within inches of my face. I could smell chemicals in his body, alcohol on his breath. He advanced and retreated, waving his ax or hammer around, passing it from hand to hand, threatening me with it. He said little, maybe nothing most of the time as I remember almost nothing of what he said. The closer he got to me, the more threatening he was, the less I felt fear. 

I said, "What's wrong? You can tell me. What's wrong?" When I did, he seemed to calm down for a few moments, but then he would become emboldened and puff up and wordlessly threaten me again, and I repeated "What's wrong?" several more times. Each time, he would seem to calm down for a moment or two. He went to the french door in the living room and I said, "You can leave that way if you want." He opened and closed it several times and seemed to be bewildered by how to work it and the screen door beyond. He motioned me to come to the door, and I did, and I tried to show him how easy it would be to leave that way, but he pulled me away from the door and shoved me back toward my chair, threatening with his weapon, which I saw now was a tomahawk, and becoming more and more agitated. I asked him his name; he said I didn't need to know. I asked him again what was wrong. He said nothing. I asked about Barbara who lives across the street. He said she wasn't there -- and I flashed on a vision that he'd murdered her. I asked about the kids, Barbara's kids, and he became enraged: "What do you want with them?" and became threatening again. He told me to sit down, pushed me into my chair. "What do you need? How can I help?" I asked him. He breathed hard, waved his weapon around and all of a sudden hauled off and whacked me hard on the forehead with it. I got up, shocked, blood gushing from the wound, and shouted at him "Get the fuck out of my house, NOW!" He retreated, bewildered, but he didn't leave. "Look what you did! GET OUT!" I shouted as blood dropped in big splashes on the floor, down my face and arm. As I shouted at him, my wife came from the bedroom where she'd been napping. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Get out!" she shouted at him, and he seemed to retreat somewhat further, but he didn't leave. She shoved him, but he stood still. I looked around, saw my phone on the chair arm, and took it into the bathroom and locked the door and called 911. 

I could hear my wife at first shouting then talking calmly to the man with the tomahawk in the living room as I reported what had happened to the dispatcher. I staunched the blood from the wound with paper towels while I talked to the dispatcher and listened for anything in the living room. 

I heard my wife say, "Is there anything you need, anything I can do for you?" meaning the man in the living room, the man who had assaulted me. I did not hear him speak at all. But later she would tell me what he was doing: going to the french door, opening and closing it, and seeming to be bewildered by it. Then he went to the front door, she said, puzzled by how to work the lock on the screen door. Then she said he went toward the bathroom door, and she saw an opportunity to escape. She said she ran across the street, calling on Barbara to help but realizing eventually that Barbara wasn't there. She said she saw the man with the tomahawk coming across the street toward her, and she realized she was in a sense trapped and she had to be calm. Suddenly, she said Barbara's huge Pyrenees dog appeared beside her and sat down as the man got to Barbara's front gate. "Is this your dog?" she asked. "Yes," said the man. She said, "You know he gets out and runs around. You really need to keep him inside the gate or he'll get hurt." She said she showed him how to keep the gate latch closed as she inched out of the yard while he went inside it with the dog. They passed so close to one another they touched. He didn't seem to know who she was, and he didn't try to harm her. She would tell me that she thought Douglas, the dog, was her angel at that moment. She said with the guy inside the gate, she could escape and she ran across the street to the house next door to ours trying to raise help, but no one came to the door. The first police car arrived seconds later -- no more than five minutes after I called -- and my wife told him where the man was. He took his AK style rifle and went to Barbara's house where the man surrendered without a fight.

Shortly many police and sheriff's deputies arrived, my wife came back to our house, and I could hear her say through the bathroom door, "Are you all right?" and then "The police are here." I was still on the phone with the dispatcher, who was talking to the police and with my wife. 

I said, "OK," and still bleeding and woozy, I came out to witness the rest of the drama unfold. 

There was of course quite a lot of drama to come, but it was anti-climax, so it's unnecessary in the context of this story.

I'm OK, and I'm extremely grateful that my wife was not harmed and was able to handle the situation so calmly and well. She said she was trained to do it when she worked at the courthouse in California, and she was surprised and delighted that her training came in so handy in real life. 

We had used similar tactics in dealing with this violent stranger. Be calm, express concern for his well-being, offer to help, don't agitate him, don't threaten. My approach was through my Zen training and practice, her's was through professional situational training in a courthouse setting. It's not much different. Someone is violent and seemingly out of it, you do better to try to empathize than to confront and further agitate. 

The fact that I was assaulted and wounded in this encounter with a "demon" was in a Zen context something like the shock that sometimes accompanies Zen training -- of which there are many stories. The shock from the Zen teacher whacking the student or pushing him into the mud or from life-experience is supposed to lead to satori -- sudden enlightenment -- and sometimes it does. Physical wounds can happen, but they heal. The point is to awaken. And by awakening, more fully take in the nature of things. 

I see what happened in those terms, and the awakening is still unfolding. So many layers of lessons. What happened was not the first time I have faced "Death." Far from it. Each time, I learn, but not always as quickly or as much as I should. The lessons and awakening and enlightenment this time is coming in spurts, not all at once, as each layer peels back. I physically sleep a lot since the events described, and I see it as symbolic of my non-awakening. And then when I'm awake, realizations tumble down on me. So much illusion and delusion still to dissolve away.

Just a part of the realization, the Zen of Being, is that "I" am not. Not separate, that is. Each element, every participant, was "me." I confronted myself, I was saving myself, I whacked myself on the head with a tomahawk, I was my attacker, I was my wife, I was the police and medics who came to help. I was the ER personnel who seemed overwhelmed by the crush of patients,  and I was every one of those patients. 

I've since talked to Barbara our neighbor with whom this stranger was staying. He's now in jail on a no bail warrant, and he probably will not be released before trial. Well... you never know. Judges in New Mexico are notorious for releasing people they shouldn't. Barbara says he's an old friend of the family who'd been in rehab but had gone AWOL and he had discovered his brother in bed with his girlfriend. Which was why he was staying with Barbara and her family. Further, he was diagnosed schizophrenic and had not been taking his medication since departure from rehab. He'd self-medicated instead. He'd always been nice to her and she let him stay at her house out of loving kindness  -- and in hopes that he would be able and willing to help her get the house fixed up. But he'd been acting odd since he got there. She knew he'd been partying and suspected he'd taken some drug but she didn't know what. She did not, she said, expect him to be violent, though she said he'd run off a pizza delivery guy and another friend of the family who came to visit. She said he was seeing every man as a predator. But she was shocked he'd invaded my home and attacked me. 

She wanted him to get help because "he's really a good guy" and he's fine when he's taking the right meds and stays away from drugs he shouldn't be taking. But this time he went way over the edge, and she was really sorry for what had happened to me. 

Of course, we hear these kinds of stories a lot, and many of us become numb to them. Too many "really good guys" turn into violent monsters, no? Statistically, no. It doesn't happen a lot. It happens much less statistically than it used to, but it still happens, and the victims are multiple, often whole communities with tragic consequences. "Something should be done," but nothing seems to work, right?

Well, actually, some things do work, and they're not always what we think. The guy who assaulted me is in custody, and he should stay there for a long time. Some are saying permanently, and in a sense I agree. But not in the sense of imprisonment, because I don't believe in imprisonment except for the most incorrigible and the most dire crimes. 

No. If this guy is schizophrenic and if medications do work (I've known a number of schizos who are fine on appropriate meds) then he should be confined for so long as necessary to 'train' him to use the correct medications essentially automatically. And to stay away from self-medication substances. As you might expect, there's a Zen program for that. 😃

There are still many more layers to this incident, and I might describe more in time. But for now, let us be grateful.