Seeing Difficult People as Essential for the Path

Begin by honestly considering how you might react in the face of someone doing something that you find especially infuriating. For instance, someone cutting you off in traffic, a close friend sharing your secrets with others, or someone stealing something from you.

If you find that your reaction would not be one of compassion, understanding, or patience, but would rather be one of anger, frustration, blaming, or resentment, ask yourself why that is. Considering that you have been practicing these meditations to cultivate compassion, and reflecting on the teachings of understanding, ask yourself why is it that you would still react in this way?

Consider that before somebody does something like this to you, you may feel that you are a pretty compassionate person. Perhaps typically throughout your normal day you are understanding of those around you, you do give people the benefit of the doubt, and you do consider the suffering and the causes of suffering of those in your life.

Then reflect how this shows you that although you may be moving in the direction of open heartedness and compassion, there are areas you are still stuck that are not clear to you until someone points them out.

Then consider how it is ultimately only when people do infuriating things that we can really see where we are stuck; that without difficult people, we could go a long time thinking we have truly developed compassion where we have not.

In addition, consider how just as a carpenter needs wood, nails, and tools to develop his or her skill, if we truly want to develop a compassionate heart, we need difficult people to practice understanding and patience with. Although it is nice to have people you like around, they ultimately do not give you the opportunity to develop these skills in a very deep way.

Lastly, if your true aspiration is to develop a selfless heart, imagine that the next time you encounter a difficult person, although your first reaction may still be one of anger or irritation, imagine that you follow that with a sense of gratitude, for an opportunity to develop these skills.