Showing posts with label Shantideva. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shantideva. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Reading Pema

I'm reading Pema Chodron's book on Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara. There's a part when Shantideva goes on and on about how you should not blame people for how they act towards you because in a way it's just the circumstances, and their abilities and perhaps you would do the same thing with the same circumstances and abilities. But a new study out, reported in the New York Times Science section, reports that we actually feel more pain if a person means to harm us. I'm not going to treat people like they're a force of nature, mechanistic. Of course I do agree that difficult people are an opportunity.