Recently I was speaking to a fellow meditator about a relationship in my life that I have been finding difficult. He shared the following with me:
“Imagine you are down in a subway station on a bench watching passersby. You see a man dressed in a suit carrying a briefcase. Every time someone brushes past him, even a little, he looks at them with a scowl. Someone bumps him slightly and he growls at them. This goes on as he makes his way through the crowded station.”
“Then, my fellow meditator goes on, this man takes off all of his clothes. You see third degree burns all over his body.”
This really helped me with my situation. It is hard to have compassion for others sometimes, when we see them acting in ways that we may not agree with, or that somehow offends something in us. But the bottom line is that we all want love. That is what we are seeking here. And these behaviors that we see in others (and ourselves), are ways of trying to accomplish this on the deepest most fundamental level. They are coping mechanisms.
His story helped me have compassion for this person, and for myself. It helped me soften around the situation, immensely. If we all remembered this a little more I think the compassion would overfloweth.
The other person is you, someone, somewhere once said.
November 7, 2008 at 10:44 am
Great mental image. So much better than just a “don’t take it personally” mantra. Thanks for sharing.
November 7, 2008 at 10:47 am
I suspect that if we all got naked together, we’d see that we’re all covered with third-degree burns. (And most of these burns are self-inflicted.)
It’s an awful image, but then we’ve done awful things to ourselves through clinging to our rages, delusions and desires.
November 7, 2008 at 10:52 am
Yes we have, Barry, yes we have.
November 7, 2008 at 10:58 am
Laura, I agree. I feel like it really brings more awareness to the factthat we are each suffering and doing our best, and more compassion arises out of that.
November 7, 2008 at 7:10 pm
@Barry – And many of us have had awful things done to us. One time I heard a guided meditation from a Soto teacher. He asked us to consider our various personae, one at a time. One of those personae was “the vulnerable child” inside each one of us. He told us to become that child. Then he asked us what the child wants. One person said, “Love.” Another person said, “To be safe.” This is a variation on Molly’s story, perhaps.
November 7, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I think so. Thanks for sharing this story. Sounds like a good guided meditation.