Card of the Day: Father of Cups

My teacher gave a poignant and pointed talk yesterday about loving your enemies. He quoted at length from a speech MLK gave in 1957. Sitting there in the meditation hall, I was riveted and moved. Then I went downstairs for lunch and ran into someone I don’t like very much. Someone with whom I’ve set clear boundaries, and who continues to break them.

What is compassion? Daido Roshi used to say that it’s like growing your hair. I understand that to mean it’s what happens naturally when we’re not trapped in our own dramas. Someone falls, you help them up. What about when someone keeps pushing you? Ignoring your boundaries? Then what?

Loving my enemies and being compassionate sounds so good in the abstract—and I think it also actually resonates with our true nature. But when things get messy, when racial, gender and other kinds of power dynamics enter the picture, what is it then? Yes, I can set a boundary without hatred in my heart. I can have space for this person without needing to engage with them in a way that feels harmful to me.

I guess I just don’t want to pretend that just because it sounds good and is easy to understand on paper that it’s easy. Really loving someone who’s hurt me, who doesn’t listen to or respect me, is hard. Bringing to mind how much I have hurt others, without even meaning to, is good medicine. I have hurt people, deeply. Most have granted me the grace of repair and continued relationship, for which I’m grateful. But even with good intentions and a serious spiritual practice, I can be a big old human fuck-up. Remembering that makes it harder to feel hateful toward others.