Question

Being with difficult people often causes aversion and separation for me. I can see that I am mostly reacting to their needing when my own needing has no chance to be fulfilled. Understanding and Compassion/Lovingkindness is growing but I don't expect that next contacts with these people will be totally fulfilling because of my limited capacity to give more. What can I do more? I can see that it's a challenge to let go of the attachment of being a separate being. Can you give me some advice please? After a while the thought comes up, well it might be reflecting on moral shame and moral dread that could help with the arising of beneficial qualities.

Answer

Maybe that can help, but also understanding that we're not responsible for other people's actions, speech and thoughts may also help. So that we have more equanimity towards difficult people by understanding who belongs to what.

Equanimity meditation helps to balance our Compassion/Lovingkindness so that we don't take responsibility for everybody else's actions, speech and thoughts, and think it's within our power to be able to change others. Similar to the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation. We bring the people up in our mind, we think about their difficulties and problems, and then instead of the Compassion/Lovingkindness phrase, we can reflect that "They are the owner of their own Kamma."

This will help to give a certain amount of equanimity with our compassion and lovingkindness and help us to see what we can control and what we can't control.

Also understanding that Dukkha exists can also be very helpful, because sometimes there's a tendency in some people to believe that if they're compassionate and lovingkind everyone is going to love them. And this is just not so. Often the more compassionate and lovingkind and nice you are, the more people don't love you. This is a rather difficult understanding to come to! Jealousy is quite strong in the world, along with a feeling of being threatened. Some insecure people feel that kind and nice people judge them. Then they also feel embarrassed because you don't get angry yet they do. So you really can't always win one way or another.

You have to learn how to not be so susceptible to blame. Try to just be content to be who you are and make good Kamma. Understand that you cannot satisfy everyone. Once in the scriptures the Buddha said, "I do not argue with the world, the world argues with me." So actually having a little bit more wisdom and equanimity will help you to see that there's going to be conflict in human interactions and that we are not responsible for other people's reactions. We try to take care of our own reactions the best we can and if people are receptive to us, that's nice. If people feel threatened by us, then that belongs to them. And we try not to be so susceptible to this.

Dukkha does exist, and in human interactions this is often the case. By learning how to develop more equanimity, more wisdom, more compassion/lovingkindness and understanding, we don't expect that we're going to make the world satisfactory. Even the Buddha couldn't make the world satisfactory. There's going to be conflict in relationships between people and we just try the best we can to deal with it skillfully. Watching our own reactions, and understanding what belongs to who is very important.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.