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Within that spaciousness, there’s even enough room to see our antagonist in a different light.
rehearse our grievances and talk to ourselves about how we’ve been wronged. It lodges in our bodies as well as our minds, giving us physical tension and pain in our stomachs, necks, backs. And it can lead us to actions that hurt ourselves and other people, from speaking hurtful words all the way to physical violence, and even murder. “Anger arises.” What a different way to think about it! Suddenly there’s a little bit of space in there, a little room to maneuver. We don’t have to react quite as suddenly or defensively. There’s room to notice where we feel the anger, what it’s like in our bodies; there’s room to see the energy it contains, the way it sharpens our attention. There’s room to notice all the reactive voices that rise up inside of us, and to make a little distance between what actually happened to us, and our story line about it. There’s room to choose a response, attentively. Within that spaciousness, there’s even enough room to see our antagonist in a different light. When there’s someone who really provokes us, someone who chronically makes us mad, we categorize them. They become “enemy” or “jerk” or “moron” – whatever our favorite labeling word might be. They become radically “other”. But seen through the lens of our spiritual journey, these people, the ones who make us angriest, are actually a gift, because it’s only through them that we see the places where we’re stuck. It’s through them that we come up against our limits and get a chance to polish our own rough edges. Pema Chodron tells a story about Atisha, the Indian teacher who first brought the Buddha’s teachings to Tibet. As he got ready to go to Tibet Atisha began to
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feel a little worried because he had heard about how friendly, warm and kind the Tibetan people were. He was afraid that if the people there were really so nice, he’d find himself in trouble spiritually because no one would push his buttons. No one would provoke him into anger, and his own unfinished development would be invisible to him. So he decided to bring along with him an incredibly surly Bengali tea boy. In that way, Atisha could be sure he would stay awake spiritually. It’s an interesting exercise to choose the person who most provokes you, and try thinking of him or her as your own personal Bengali tea boy. In other words, that one you’ve got locked away in the enemy box, that one I would really rather never see again, those people who get us all riled up whenever we think about them – those people are the best lessons we could possibly receive in our spiritual journeys. They show us dimensions of ourselves we would rather not see. They hold up our own reactivity and put it under a magnifying glass. And therefore, they give us the opportunity to put our spiritual aspirations to work in our lives. We don’t need to cultivate patience, kindness, forgiveness, compassion or understanding for all the people who think we’re terrific, who like our way of doing things, who always want to be on our team. We need to cultivate those virtues for the Bengali tea boys in the world. Pema Chödrön says, “In our own lives, the Bengali tea boys are the people who, when you let them through the front door of your metaphorical house, go right down to the basement where you store lots of things you’d rather not deal with, pick out one of them, bring it up to you, and say, ‘Is this yours?’”