Nov212008
Gratefulness
Filed under buddhist by Kim at 5:55 pm on Nov 21 2008
This whole situation with my professor has had my knickers in a right twist. I just couldn’t figure out what to do, and it’s obvious that he can’t figure out what to do and nobody else in my class could figure out what to do either. Naturally one night this week I pick up my Pema that I keep next to the bed, a book I haven’t touched in weeks or possibly months, and this is the first passage I note on the page I had marked.
These are the people who, when your habitual style is working just fine and everyone’s agreeing with you, say, “No way am I going to go along with what you just asked me to do. I think it’s stupid.” You think, “What do I do now?” And usually what you do is to get everybody else on your team. You sit around and talk about what a creep this person is who confronted you. … Nobody ever encourages you to allow yourself to feel wounded first and then try to figure out what is the right speech and right action that might follow.
This kind of thing happens to everyone, just about daily, right? Even if I’m at home by myself, I might be having a conversation with this person who’s tormenting me because I think it’s a helpful exercise to find a way out, or because I have myself in a pattern of thought in reaction to this that I can’t break out of. And this is how the past few weeks have been in class. All the students bouncing their hurt and frustration off each other and stuff, getting on teams and hashing out over and over what a problem we have.
About a year ago now I went to a talk at the buddhist center in Annapolis. I came away from the session with one striking lesson, which was to treat the person who most vexes you as your teacher. Of course this sounds pretty funny on the surface, and even in the talk we all had a laugh about how absurd it is to imagine yourself welcoming the very person that taunts you, but I’ve found you can kind of bring yourself around to where you get into this situation and you stop and think, “Why is this hurting me so much?” and then you can think about how your reaction might be making it hurt you or anyone else worse, and then you can calm down and connect with a feeling of compassion. Then you might find you know the right thing to say or do.
So I found myself grinning a little bit going in and out of class this week thinking about the absurdity of welcoming this guy who seems to be causing so much strife. The title of the chapter is “Be Grateful to Everyone” so I’m working on being grateful to my professor and my classmates. It must be working because Wednesday went off almost without a hitch.
