Jonah 4:2 · World English Bible
He prayed to Yahweh, and said, “Please, Yahweh, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and you relent of doing harm.
Diṭṭhi: Fixed view An opinion gripped as though it were the truth itself. "Wasn't this what I said" sits at the center of the prayer, a man who bought passage to Tarshish mainly to keep his forecast of ruin from being spoiled.
From the Buddhism reading below.
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
BUDDHISM
Diṭṭhi: Fixed view An opinion gripped as though it were the truth itself. "Wasn't this what I said" sits at the center of the prayer, a man who bought passage to Tarshish mainly to keep his forecast of ruin from being spoiled. It is the gambler still insisting on his number after the wheel has stopped: Nineveh stands whole, and the argument continues anyway.
Byāpāda: Ill will The wish that harm come to someone. Underneath the polite "Please, Yahweh" runs a preference for a city in ashes, so that mercy toward a hundred and twenty thousand strangers arrives as a personal insult. Ill will likes to hide inside a complaint about fairness, the way a grudge dresses itself up as principle.
Karuṇā: Compassion The heart moving toward what hurts. Relenting of harm follows from having already gone toward Nineveh's fear and its sackcloth, closer to the trembling than to the record. Compassion never stops to check whether the sufferer earned the suffering, which is why a prophet hoping for a fair sentence found the outcome unbearable.
Khanti: Patient endurance Being wronged and staying steady. Slow to anger is a long fuse, forty days allowed to run their course with the listening kept open the whole way. Jonah's fuse is short by comparison: one sermon preached, one result he disliked, and within a day he is arguing on a hillside about a plant.
Mettā: Loving kindness Goodwill with no one left out. Abundant is exactly the trouble, since abundance spills past his own country and washes up in the capital of the empire that terrorized it. Boundless warmth has no border where it agrees to stop, and knowing this before he ever bought his ticket is why he ran west.
Muditā: Gladness at another's good fortune Joy when things go well for someone else. A whole city is spared and the man who preached to it can only assemble a case against the sparing. The gladness was right there and went untouched; the same news came through as good fortune to Nineveh and as grievance to the one who delivered it.
SUFISM
Here is a strange sickness: a man angry that God is kind. Beneath his complaint hides wounded pride, the wish to be proved right weighing more than the wish for others to be spared. He knows the mercy by heart and still resents it when it lands on someone he dislikes.
The cure begins by turning that same mercy inward, admitting his own second chance was given freely too. The gracious One he describes so well is present in the very forgiveness that offends him, the giver and the gift too close to tell apart.
Buddhism lens
Where am I calling it fairness when what I really want is for someone to lose?
Do not judge another person until you have stood in their place. What looks like a verdict on someone else is usually a report on where you happen to be standing.
The sage treats the good and the not yet good with the same kindness, and makes no sorting of who has earned it. Goodness that keeps a list of exceptions is not yet goodness.
People do wrong out of ignorance of what is good for them, so meeting them with patience costs you nothing and gains you everything. It is strange to be angry that someone was treated better than you thought they deserved.
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