Day 71

Meditation and Conflict

Meditation can help us to improve our relationships with others. There are, of course, the benefits of serenity and increased compassion that meditation naturally brings to our lives, and thus to those around us. But when things aren't going smoothly, there is also another very important way that meditation helps us to deal with conflict.

The enemy of any conflict is never anything other than one's own afflictive emotions: anger, greed, ignorance. We can not blame another for these arising within us. There are beautiful things in this world, and someone else may possess all these things and qualities, but the fact that we feel that we want them too is not that person's fault, nor is it the fault of the things themselves. Someone else may perform terrible acts, and do unacceptable things, but the fact that we become angry is all down to us.

With meditation, we learn to see the arising and falling away of things. We are present to the flow of the mind in this way. When we apply what we learn on the cushion to our daily lives (and this doesn't necessarily require a particular effort; there is often a carry-over effect we don't need to work at), we become able to observe ourselves very carefully. We may see signs of anger or greed arising, and over time we see them sooner and sooner. All it takes is recognition, being able to say, "Look out, here comes the enemy!" Then we can douse the spark before it even becomes a flame, long before it causes any damage.