Spiritual Ego and the dhammapada

When I started writing this blog, I had no idea I would be documenting so many humbling experiences. Even after falling in so many traps, making progress and nullifying it by taking retro-steps, I still naively expect the spiritual journey to be a straight-line progression. My spiritual ego(isn’t that the mother of all oxymorons?) is bruised.

And yet in retrospect it is all so obvious what happened and what the skillful action would have been. On Friday morning, one of my colleagues with whom I am working on an assignment made a hurtful comment and I was too engrossed in the work to be able to respond to her skillfully and I chose to stuff the feelings. In fact I was about to express some anger when miraculously an email flashed on my cell phone with a quotation from the dhammapada and that is exactly what I needed! Here is the quotation:
"Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
"Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Abandon such thoughts and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
That is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

And I said “Wow – just in time!”. But I still had to suppress my anger and resentment because I did not have the luxury of going somewhere and meditating and processing the feelings. It was a very busy day with multiple assignments and rushing from one place to another.

Towards the evening, I get an irritating email from a team-leader and that proved to be the last straw. This particular team lead is not technically knowledgeable and still micro-managing me needlessly and this had been going on for a while and there was some build-up over time. The email that I received from her on Friday before she left for her vacation was interpreted by me as an affront to my professional capabilities. Common sense was telling me that I should go home and meditate on it before I did anything rash but I wanted to respond to it before she went away on vacation. What had particularly incensed me was when she replied to my email, she had copied in another team lead. So I shot her an email that I did not need things spelled out and I was interpreting it as a lack of professional respect and I copied in my manager. It was not a rash email although it was strongly worded. She replied apologizing and clarified that she did not intend any disrespect. I replied saying I never felt she intended it, I was just expressing how I was perceiving it and the fact that it was upsetting me.

And then I get a phone call from her. And she wants to know why I hadn’t picked up the phone and called her instead of shooting off emails. Good point. I counter that she could have done the same. She says “Good point – I did not have time – I was just clearing my mailbox before I left on vacation”. And then she wants to know why I escalated the issue by copying in my manager. And I tell her that I did not like her action of including the other team lead in her reply and I wanted my manager to know my displeasure with the whole issue. And she clarifies that when she included the other team lead in her reply it wasn’t so that he could follow up on my tasks as I had assumed(and gotten incensed about) but she was letting him know about the task she was putting on my plate so that he would not overload me with his own tasks!

The reason for recounting this whole story is that I could see how things spiral out of control by a series of misunderstandings. By extrapolating to the macroscopic scale, you can see how conflicts start and escalate into wars. It underscores for me that peace on the macroscopic scale is just not possible without peace at the microscopic level. Reminds me of a Kabir poem that talks about seeing the evil in oneself before seeing it others.

After a few meditation sessions over the weekend, it finally dawns on me that the team-lead was right. I should have picked up the phone and talked with her. That would have been the skillful way. I had tried to hint my displeasure over this issue for a while by withdrawing and being aloof(how often do we do that in relationships!) but she had not linked it to this issue. I had even mentioned that there were some fundamental differences between us on this issue and she had not bothered(in actuality, she probably did not have the time) to talk with me about it. And I was reasonably sure that if I talked with her, I would get some disingenuous management-speak. Still, the skillful way of handling the situation would have been to talk with her and give peaceful resolution a chance. I have a feeling I indulged my righteousness on this issue and there will be karmic consequences of the scars left from this issue. I was also perhaps overcompensating a little to address the perception that Indians are not assertive. This is curious – I don’t go about carrying an Indian identity but still react if people keep pigeon-holing me as an Indian.

Another thing I re-discovered for the umpteenth time is that tolerating boundary violations by conforming to some spiritual ideal of egolessness is not skillful. It was better for me to have been assertive all along instead of suppressing my resentment over a period of weeks and then having it come out with more force than necessary.
And above all, the importance of letting go! If I tried to be assertive over every single perceived infraction by others, I would make life unbearable for myself and others!

Such a small incident and still so many learnings!