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I've been imagining an alternate universe version of Milarepa where instead of being a murderer he was a pedophile.

For the unacquainted, Milarepa is this really popular figure in Tibetan Buddhism who attained enlightenment and became a Buddha despite having murdered before. I'm kinda going off of a Wikipedia article with respect to him, especially in the grand scheme of things. It seems like he found this guy named Marpa who ordered him to build a bunch of towers to clean up his bad karma. He built and got forced to demolish three towers before he built a fourth that he didn't have to destroy. Whole reason I've been thinking about him is because a reply to a YouTube comment I made mentioned him and I pulled up his Wikipedia article while I was sitting around waiting for a chicken sandwich I ordered. A Michael Jackson song started playing, he's singing "It doesn't matter who's wrong or right." and I just... oof. It really hit me that it's easier for me to forgive a murderer than a pedophile.

So... what would Milarepa have had to do if he was some pedophile rapist? Would building a bunch of towers be enough? Obviously life goes on from all those horrible deeds, it's not like a villain origin story movie where it's over once the final scene plays. If he never does it again then that's a good start, but I'm not some atemporal being who has an omniscient understanding of the future. He's really got to sell it that he's safe from that point forward, it's got to be drastic and climactic. A really memorable point where there's a clear before and after, like a baptism or something. Something where we can all dissociate 'before Milarepa' and 'after Milarepa' as two different people. It can't just be one of those cheap moments at the end of a cartoon movie where the villain sacrifices himself on a last minute change of mind, it's gotta be something that's lived with.

So this guy can't just go find his time's equivalent to Epstein and sacrifice his life trying to kill him, this guy has got to do something drastic. I look at those final sacrifice moments like with Darth Vader and I don't immediately see Darth Vader as some sympathetic guy, I see him as a villain with a touch of more complexity. At least if we're talking about the original trilogy, but that's a whole can of worms... This guy has got to have a really distinct, dramatic moment that absolutely effervesces character development... and then he's got to live with it for the rest of his life. He doesn't get to cheap out and check out the moment that consequences come pouring in, he's got to be alive for all of it. He's got to make sense of all of it, find his own solace in the oasis he's forced to cultivate in the hell of his own making.

That being said... what the fuck can a former pedophile do in order to become a sympathetic character? My mind keeps running laps over and over again and it keeps stopping at genital mutilation. I keep thinking, "Yeah, he's got to cut off his own balls. Maybe nail them up somewhere and let them dry and wither away in the heat of the sun." ...like it feels like the only solution here. It's a problem of sexual expression, and the most intuitive way that a reader might understand someone isn't able to do sexual expression anymore is, seemingly, the character losing their nuts. At that rate, is that really character development? They just lost their nuts, they don't have to actively choose against bad choices for the rest of their lives. The bad choices don't even arise to begin with, it feels like cheating. The lack of balls is doing all the moral work for them.

I think I shouldn't be looking at this from the angle of what an audience might believe, in this case. It seems like the audience probably won't forgive them unless they lose their nuts, but they can't exactly grow enough to solve the underlying moral problem if they spend their whole life on training wheels from then on. They need to absolutely never do it again, that much is for certain. Maybe they grow as a person before they cut off their own nuts? Hmm... Ok, let's say they're capable of overcoming any challenge from that point on BUT to signify that change in an intuitive way they cut off their own nuts... how would an audience know they grew as a person BEFORE cutting their own balls off? I feel like only the character themselves would be able to know that any specific change like that occurred at all in the first place.

Ok, so... scratch looking at this through fictional character redemption arc hermeneutics. If they never do it again on an objective level then it's fine in my book, if they're no longer that kind of malicious factor then it seems irrelevant to even bring that up. My problem is just how impossible it is for a fellow person on a subjective level to know that for sure... How would Marpa know? It's really quite difficult to say. "Supernatural attunement with The Dharma?" It really makes sense how many supernatural elements are added to stories like these, it's like if they weren't there then the story teller wouldn't be able to finish and tell the moral of the story because everyone would be asking question after question about semantic details. Like CinemaSins but for ancient Tibetan wisdom...

I guess it all just boils down to him doing his best while hoping for the best. Maybe others take notice, maybe they don't. What matters here isn't their approval, more that there isn't any more people getting murdered or - in this case - children getting raped. So... maybe building a bunch of towers might be enough? I guess it really does show he cares a lot about learning how to be a better person. Or at least looking like he wants to learn... Maybe he's got to do it enough that a faker would have quit? It's easy to spot a poser over someone who makes something their lifestyle if we're talking about raw endurance. Four towers might just be enough. If I were in Marpa's shoes it might be just compelling enough to put a child's rape past him. Maybe.