FillMash

Somehow I draw my enemies to me:

They harm me, but my karma brings them here.

So they go to hell because of me.

I'm the one who sends them to their doom.

- Bodhicharyavatara 6.47

No question, finding compassion for our enemies is hugely difficult. It takes at least a lifetime of practice to approach this goal. Shantideva's words help me because they highlight the deep irony of harm: We are our enemies' enemy.

We think of enemies as those who harm us in the here and now. This perspective is too narrow. Buddha does not primarily value things that make our separate selves happy. He also does not envision this single life as the only one we have. Whether we believe other lives will follow, we can see that people who try to harm us are already harming themselves by hurting their ability to love and cheapening their own lives. We should realise that willy-nilly, we brought this situation on.

We are the cause of their harm. We are all in this together. The only escape is compassion. Thinking this way clarifies why we need to act with kindness toward our enemies.

~ TDE-Weekly (thanks for this teaching)