Sometimes you can't help but say to yourself....Why is everybody always picking on me?
The haze of laziness has lifted somewhat, although its no where near a total success.
For sometime I had been wondering why is was that I was surround by a bunch of crazy people. I’m not kidding. It didn’t take me long to notice that many of the people who hang out here in India, attending teachings, gathering guru’s and intricate networks of friends are really bonkers.
And it didn’t take me much longer after that initial realization, that not all Buddhist are Buddha’s, to wonder why so many were like that.
And after four month I have come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no idea. But it was a question that was taking up a bit of time for me and yesterday I finally clicked so I thought I would tell you all about it.
The day before yesterday I had a run in with a notorious nun who lives here in the nunnery with me. She is one of those people who oscillates between mother Goddess and all round good guy to screaming banshee, and once you have experiences the banshee element you generally try to avoid her at all costs, even when she’s in her 'I love everyone and everything' moods.
The day before yesterday was definitely a banshee mood and it was coming thick and fast. No matter what you say this nun turns it around so that it looks like your attacking her. If you ask her to wait for five minuets she’ll come back with a pithy, "what, don’t you want to speak to me, aren’t I good enough?" If you then say she can help you finish up so you can be with her quicker, you get "what am I your servant now?"
Anyhow, I was so angry by the time I finally shook her off I couldn’t help but wonder how this can happen. This woman has been a nun for more than a decade, how can she be so selfish and self centered ect ect ect….
No answer that really satisfied me appeared, just the usual antidote, ‘well imagine what she was like before she became a nun,’ or the old ‘ maybe she’s a Buddha in disguise’ all that kind of usual stuff which sounds great during a teaching but is often quiet useless in the heat of the moment.
Anyway so I was there grumbling, bitching and carrying on in my mind, (she’d already left by this time). And that was that, I hate her, she’s horrible and I’m such a nice, wonderful person, how dare she treat me like that. End of story.
Ok, so here's that dam karma coming into play. Next day, early in the morning, all hell broke out. Much to the horror and disgust of the Nun in charge of the temple I had used a bucket that belongs to the temple to clean the paint brushes we were using to paint the alter. Not only that but this particular bucket was personally purchased by this temple nun. NOT ONLY THAT but when I scrambled to replace the now paint covered bucket with one from my room this elderly temple nun slipped on the path as she was marching after me and dislocated a finger.
The disaster of the century now revolved around this holy, bloody bucket and Armageddon seemed to loom. Promises of brand new buckets and a heartfelt promise never to touch anything in the temple again EVER, did not placate this temple nun.
And that’s when it happened. I remembered something I use to know, that I had forgotten. That very morning during morning puja when I should probably having been doing something more constructive, I was wondering exactly when it was during July that I became such a cranky person. I use to be very generous and nice, patient and kind but then recently I had been more impatient and rude, selfish and short tempered. While pondering this, suddenly a small group of people arrived to join us for the mediation, they were more than 15 minutes late. Despite my contemplation I greeted them with a dirty look and a stern instruction not to put their prayer books directly on the floor. (I should mention with-in half an hour they had all put their books on the floor despite my warning.)
Anyway the point of this rather pathetic story is that as I took again my seat I saw that I was just as rude and impatient as ever and I suddenly realized that I wasn't such a lovely innocent person and that I still had a lot of work to do.
Anyway so as the bucket episode unfolded later that morning I alrady knew that I wasn’t perfect so how could I except anyone else to be either?
And although it was something I used to think about a lot, being surrounded with all these hard core Buddhist practionors and monks and nuns I forgot all about it and had started to think that they, of all people, should be perfect and when they weren't I was shocked.
So what am I trying to say?
I don't know, I just thought it would give you something to think about. I guess now when people get angry over silly things rather than getting very upset and defensive, how dare they be so rude to me, I didn't really even do anything, they should know better. Instead of that I have to try and be a bit more like a Buddha. They say that a Buddha or even a Bodhisattva can live in the world and not be moved by it.
Because I had been so unforgiving with this older nun, I never thought about where she was coming from or why she was difficult. If I could have seen that, because of her misperception of the world she constantly suffers feeling that she is mistreated and abused then I would have felt compassion for her and not hate. If you generate hate towards someone then in the future you will be more likely to hate and the feeling will escalate as your temper gets worse and worse. Indulging hateful feelings is the worst karma because it will come back to you, and no one wants to be hated unduly.
If you can sit and be yelled at and not generate hate towards this person then not only do you not increase your store of negative emotions but you'll also pay off some of the bad karma you've accumulated life after life when you didn't have the strength to try and see where the other person was coming from. I guess as long as I still get angry when I shouldn't, lose my temper at the drop of a hat or take out my feelings on the closest by-stander than I can't expect others not to do the same.
Perhaps this sounds a bit masochistic, it is definitely not in the nature of a westerner to 'take it lying down', but if you fight back, in the heat of the moment what do you really gain? If someone is badly mistreating you then you should not allow them to do so, but you should not harbor (if possible ) hate in your heart. Whatever you do you should do it with a heart of love. Although this is much easier said than done.
So because I haven't put a dhammapada quote in for a while I thought this passage would-be very fitting..........
"Many people do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony,
Those who know this do not fight against each other,......"
This is very simple to understand but very difficult to implement. If someone is fighting against you and you fight back then all your doing is escalating the situation. It is so hard to lose the battle, but sometimes on a face to face level it is the only way to preserve your heart of love and not create more bad karma for yourself or the other person.
