Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. There are five challenges to staying on the spiritual path of mindfulness, and one of them is this feeling of ill will toward others. Wishing for something unpleasant to happen to someone else actually stems from something really unpleasant happening within us.
So, today I am reminding myself that hurt people hurt people, because I've recently encountered someone so rude, greedy, selfish, and hateful, I can only imagine how miserable of a life he must lead, with so much anger and entitlement brewing inside of him, that in his desperate attempt to feel good, superior, important, or powerful, he must view others as inferior and unworthy. "Feeling tall by cutting off
"the heads of other men," is how Yogananda explained this dis-ease. As a fellow human, I am also infected by this dis-ease, and I admit to sometimes feeling the impulse to be vindictive and hurtful right back. But, instead of trying to find ways to make his life miserable, I remind myself that he is already suffering enough or he wouldn't be treating people the way he does.
In fact, when I started looking at my own desire to hurt him, I realized that, "Hurt people, hurt people" isn't just a saying; my desire to hurt him stemmed from my own hurt. As if causing pain to someone else would relieve me of my own. Now, we know that thoughts become words, and words become actions. If I was a Zen master, maybe I could control my thoughts, but I'm not. So I do the next
I use mindfulness to control my words and actions, which is a really good place to start. Mindfulness is that pause between impulse and response. I hope we can all increase that pause, and treat ourselves with kindness, patience, and generosity. So, let's not act on ill-will thoughts or even give them room inside of us. Feel them, release them, and then guide yourself to where Rumi wants to set up camp:
"Beyond 'Right' and 'Wrong' there is a field, I will meet you there." Other than ill will toward others, the four other challenges on the spiritual path are desire, laziness, a scattered mind, and doubt. Perhaps I'll do a separate episode for each one as I encounter them on our journey to that field. Thank you for walking beside me. Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏