BPF | Talk given by Diana Lion at the Execution Vigil for Donald Beardslee

Buddhist Peace Fellowship
P.O. Box 3470, Berkeley, CA 94703
(510) 655-6169 • www.bpf.org

Talk given by Diana Lion at the Execution Vigil for Donald Beardslee
San Quentin State Prison East Gate (CA), Jan 18, 2005

Good evening. I bring you the support of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which has been committed to ending the Death Penalty for a long time.

Tonight we are here marking the 11th time the state of California is choosing to end a human life since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. This time, we are gathered to mark the execution of Donald Jay Beardslee—a man who is profoundly brain-damaged, as other people have already mentioned. He was one of several men who murdered Paula Geddling and Stacey Benjamin in 1981. I will speak briefly about a few things.

The first is Interconnectedness. Yesterday was the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. So he's been on my mind a lot today.

In his Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech in 1964 Dr. King said:

"We're all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. And whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. John Donne coined it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: "No man is an island entirely of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And then he goes on toward the end to say: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I'm involved in Mankind"…
(of course today we would say "person" instead of man. But his meaning is clear.)

Dr. King was referring to the basic truth of interconnectedness -- a foundational Buddhist teaching that reminds us that we're all in this together. It reminds us that we share the same planet, the same air, the same water, and the same resources, and that our lives are inextricably interwoven with each other's.

Each time there's an act of violence or harm, like is happening here tonight, the toxicity ripples out to touch every single one of us.

As Dorsey (Nunn of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children) mentioned earlier, at each execution vigil you see a whole bunch of people sitting silently on cushions on the ground. Most but not all of us are Buddhist practitioners. What we are doing sitting here on our cushions is "bearing witness".

We are engaging in a radical act of inclusion.

We are sitting, willing to include everyone and everything in our circle, without exception. We are saying that we recognize everyone's humanity and capacity to change.

This is not an easy thing to do especially when we disagree with people's actions so completely. It is a rigorous practice.

Tonight our circle includes Donald Beardslee and his family and friends; Paula Geddling, her family and friends; Stacey Benjamin, her family and friends; the correctional officers who served on Mr. Beardslee's tier during his sentence, and those who will carry out the execution in a few minutes; the warden who is overseeing this act; the clemency board who did not recommend Life Without Parole in this case; all the lawyers involved, including those who read magazines during the trial while defending Mr. Beardslee; any doctors who are involved; and the Governor of the State of California who chose to deny clemency in this case. And it includes all of us who work tirelessly to end this barbaric practice of executing people to show that murder is wrong. As well as everyone else I haven't named.

So I ask for a minute of silence, for everyone associated with this case, and everyone who has ever been touched by violence in any way.

The last thing I want to mention is that this is heart-breaking work.

However one of the dangers of doing this work is that it is so horrible and draining that we may notice that it becomes heart-numbing work instead. One of my hopes is that we keep having our hearts broken about the people in this poor broken system. And that we keep transforming that broken heartedness into renewed dedication for this struggle.

So again, in keeping with a Buddhist tradition: I want to dedicate any good that comes out of our gathering here tonight towards opening the hearts and minds of everyone here at San Quentin and in this whole state and country around the issue of ending the death penalty. May all people WITHOUT EXCEPTION be filled with clarity, compassion, wisdom, and justice.