The Kindness of The Enemy

A Good, Hard Slap in The Face

Mar 16, 2023

We’re all born naked and helpless. Without a parent's kindness, we couldn’t survive, never mind prosper.

But as we get old enough to dress ourselves and later buy our own clothes, too much kindness can become suffocating and disastrous.

The extreme end of this is the “devouring mother”: the co-dependent parent who “consumes” their children emotionally and psychologically due to fusing their identity with their roles as partner and parent.

But even in moderate amounts, kindness has limits to how beneficial it can be and what it can teach.

To see this, just go to any yoga or meditation studio where there’s the person who thinks being nice to everyone all the time is the most compassionate and helpful thing you can do, when most often it only reduces immediate distress.

Clearly trying to be kind is not always the kindest thing you can do.

Sometimes, you just need a good, hard slap in the face.

The Dalai Lama, the poster body for kindness, wholeheartedly agrees with this (okay, not the slap).

In getting anywhere in life, whether becoming healthy or making a sandwich, you need some patience and tolerance.

But particularly for larger, more difficult goals such as running a marathon, completing a degree, writing a newsletter, or awakening your innate wisdom and compassion (bodhichitta) for the benefit of all sentient beings, patience and tolerance are pretty much essential.

To achieve this last pursuit, bodhichitta, it’s fundamentally impossible without patience and tolerance. Without them, the slightest misfortune or dissatisfaction can lead you into a harmful cycle of hatred and anger, the slightest urge or temptation can lead you into a pit of guilt-ridden indulgence, and the slightest bit of stress or boredom can lead you into Facebook, or, heaven forbid, Tiktok.

So this begs the question: how can you cultivate patience and tolerance? Especially if you live in a world where you can get a sandwich in a click and everyone is playing a persona that is outwardly so nice and kind all the time.

Enter the enemies, which, in our modern world, can be anything from traffic, barking dogs, and noisy neighbors to distracting notifications, your inbox, taxes, annoying landlords, and basically anything/one that pisses you off.

Our enemies offer us the rare and all-important opportunity to put into practice and cultivate patience and tolerance.

For this reason, among others, in Tibetan Buddhism the enemy is revered as a very special being. They’re not only worthy of our highest respect, but of our utmost gratitude and warmest hugs.

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At this point, some are saying, “Well duh, I don’t have enemies, everyone and thing is one”. To which I say step outside of your comforting spiritual maxims and echo-chamber community and into the real world for a second and you’ll soon find a million.

And others are saying, “No way can I be grateful towards that A-hole who was tailgating me on the way to work this morning. Or, for that matter, my boss and a dozen others.”

Not to be confused with “Idiot Compassion”—being nice to appear virtuous and avoid conflict—training in real compassion says that our enemies are our greatest teachers as they’re the only ones who can find and push our most hidden, ugly, and embarrassing buttons.

Not even the best guru, therapist, or friend in the universe could ever help us do this.

Pressing such buttons helps us cultivate patience and tolerance. Which, along with love, forgiveness, humility, etc., form the foundation of compassion. The biggest barrier to compassion is not hatred, but a lack of inner restraint that prevents us from transforming our habits and dispositions to allow our innate, compassionate heart to shine through.

In a deep sense, our enemies are the greatest possible teachers of compassion.

Cultivating patience and tolerance isn’t the same as “putting up with” people or things that are harmful to us. It’s about not doing more harm by knee-jerk reacting with more anger and hatred, and instead, stepping back and acting from a wiser, deeper, and more compassionate place.

With this understanding of the importance of patience and tolerance, it becomes a bit easier to see the kindness of the enemy. They, and only they, can help us cultivate these precious qualities on our path to becoming wiser and more compassionate beings in the world.

In this way, our enemies are incredibly precious in our lives. They offer something no one or thing else can, while at the same time dooming themselves to the personal, negative consequences of acting out the forces of hatred, anger, and desire.

In a realer than real way, they sacrifice themselves for our possible freedom. While we can take the opportunity and gain the merit—the positive consequences—of practicing patience and tolerance that they afford us, they continue to suffer.

This is why the Dalai Lama goes as far as saying we should be grateful and in debt to our enemies, dedicating all the merit we gain from them to their potential of becoming free from suffering.

The hilltop monastery and the forest retreat center have much to offer in terms of self-exploration and growth.

But for the most hardcore training in compassion, especially if you live in a busy urban area, many of us have the most unsuspecting, kind, and transformative spiritual teachers right here under our noses.

With love,

Joe

The Kindness of The Enemy

A Good, Hard Slap in The Face

Mindfulness Coaching Sessions Spots Available!

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