Difficult People
Yet another universal experience we share is dealing with difficult people. This feature of life presents another wonderful opportunity to practice.
Recently a friend of mine offered a contemplation on a text by a Zen master which contained the following:
… we can be especially sympathetic and affectionate with foolish people, particularly with someone who becomes a sworn enemy and persecutes us with abusive language. That very abuse conveys the Buddha’s boundless loving-kindness. It is a compassionate device to liberate us entirely from the mean-spirited delusions we have built up with our wrongful conduct from the beginningless past.
Speaking only for myself, when someone directs abusive language at me, my unconsidered reactions are outrage and a sense of moral superiority. These are my mean spirited delusions. After some reflection I may come to the realization that I too have on many occasions acted in the same way toward others and, if I am being exceptionally insightful, when I am the perpetrator of abuse I tend to excuse my misconduct. On the few occasions when I also consider the effect of my actions on others I might entertain the emotion of remorse or even try to make amends for what I have done. But when I am the receiver of such misconduct my state of mind is not as forgiving as when I am dishing out the abuse.
This reflection leads me to one of my favorite stories from the Pali Canon — Angulimala. He was someone whose behavior was not just difficult for others; he was downright homicidal. He was such an effective highwayman and bandit that when people stopped going out on the roads in order to avoid him, he just went to their villages and towns and murdered them there. The Sutta describes him as being:
… brutal, bloody-handed, devoted to killing & slaying, showing no mercy to living beings. He turned villages into non-villages, towns into non-towns, settled countryside into unsettled countryside.
After he encounterd the Buddha he gave up his violent life, became a monk and later an arahat. A completely changed man, one day he went into a village for his daily begging round.
Now at that time a clod thrown by one person hit Ven. Angulimala on the body, a stone thrown by another person hit him on the body, and a potsherd thrown by still another person hit him on the body. So Ven. Angulimala — his head broken open and dripping with blood, his bowl broken, and his outer robe ripped to shreds — went to the Blessed One. The Blessed One saw him coming from afar and on seeing him said to him: “Bear with it, brahman! Bear with it! The fruit of the kamma that would have burned you in hell for many years, many hundreds of years, many thousands of years, you are now experiencing in the here-&-now!”
For the vast majority of us, when we experience the trial of dealing with difficult people we are presented with the opportunity to recognize our own behavior. We can then transform the experience of being abused by observing the greater truth rather than indulge easy sentiments of superiority, outrage, anger and retribution which lead nowhere. Bear with it!
Gassho
