Yes, that's more difficult. However we have to try to understand what may cause a person to do such actions. Sometimes it is motivated by greed. Sometimes it's motivated by hatred. And sometimes it's motivated by ignorance. All the time it's actually motivated by ignorance. If we look at the force at these types of hindrances in our own mind, we start to realize how difficult it is sometimes to let go of these qualities, these forces in the mind.
Take, for instance, the power of greed. Even the desire for a candy bar can be pretty difficult to let go of, can't it? So we look at the force of greed in the mind, we try to understand the feeling of lack that we feel within ourselves, then we multiply this particular feeling maybe by 10 or even 1000 times. Because most of the time these types of actions are caused by greed. Greed for power being one of the biggest.
A lot of it is caused by idealism, having an ideal and believing the ideal is more important than the people that one is forcing to follow this ideal. So attachment to an idea becomes more important than the people and it's very difficult for people blinded by this to see this. They may have started out with a good intention "Oh, I'm going to cause less suffering in the world." But then when idealism takes over the heart, the heart starts to close and then the idea becomes more important than the process.
Hatred - we just try to remember how difficult it is sometimes to transform this energy in the mind. Have you ever had aversion towards someone, and then seen how difficult it is to let go of the justifications and actually be honest enough with ourselves to see that the cause of it lies within ourselves. This depends on a certain amount of truthfulness arising in the mind. And being truthful to oneself is sometimes very difficult. We may try to find all sorts of justifications to put the blame outside for our own suffering. And if we actually don't know that the cause of the suffering is within ourselves, this is ignorance.
Fear, have you ever felt fear? Pretty difficult energy isn't it? Often these actions are caused from fear. Fear of other people who are different. Fear of losing what we think is ours, which is all based in ignorance because nothing is really ours in this world. So fear, examining fear in ourselves, we start to understand its particular suffering, trying to have compassion for ourselves, and then we can multiply this feeling by 10 or 1000 times to get the amount of force it has in a lot of peoples' minds that do these actions. Because most of us can have a certain amount of control in our mind with these energies, yet when it comes to people harming others in the world, they don't have the control.
So when we start to understand and contemplate in this way, we see these forces of energy in our own mind. If we can have compassion for ourselves, we're much more able to have compassion for the people who are causing harm in the world.
We can also contemplate Kamma. In the scriptures Sariputta, who was the wisest of all of the Buddha's disciples, likened these people to a very sick person on a long road. There are villages far in front of them and far behind them. They have no medicine and no guide to the village. If you were to come along this sick person who is lost, no guide to the village, very sick, very ill, could we establish sympathy for this very sick person? And wish them to obtain a guide to the village and medicine to cure their ills? It's like they're walking toward quicksand and don't even know it. Lost deep in a jungle.
So if we start to understand this, we can start to have compassion for these people and not have what we call selective compassion, only having compassion for the victims, and then our compassion starts to become more universal. Understanding the Law of Kamma. If Kamma is true, and we have started to understand how cause and effect works in our own mind, they will have to receive the results of their actions.