Compassion and My Enemies

By John Hancock

During my time as a corporate leader, there occurred a violent threat by an employee.  That person acted out of desperation — a feeling of powerlessness that was confirmed by the system. He lost. I won. Case closed.

Years later, after I had left the organization, occasional sightings of this person restarted my personal hamster wheel of self-righteousness. But eventually I felt absolutely no lingering pleasure in being right. The continued psychic joust was entirely in my imagination. It was no longer justified by any evidence, though the original facts had been proven, like a piece of chewing gum still in action long after its flavor was gone.

If the enemy-ness of this person was not real, what then about other people in my past? I could name a pretty long list, and it started to feel like paranoia. I had (have?) an impatient and ambitious nature and have often viewed more cautious or experienced or powerful people as obstacles, critics, or detractors who could be overcome by my force of will or logic. Review of the checklist of people and incidents revealed a pattern: I hated to fail, but it felt better as the imagined success of my enemy instead of me. I’m able much more easily, now, to accept any other person’s actions as simply their own chosen path, with very little to do with me.  “Don’t take it personally,” as wise people continue to say.

Big grudge-hold dominos fell pretty quickly after that. I’m seeking what Daniel Ellsberg explains so simply in his book “Secrets.” 

“In Gandhi’s teaching, no human should be regarded or treated as being an enemy, in the sense of someone you have a right to destroy, or to hate, or to regard as alien, from whom you cannot learn, for whom you can feel no understanding or concern.  These are simply not appropriate attitudes toward another human being. No people should be seen as being evil persons, as if they were without good in them, a different, less human order of being, as if one could learn nothing from them or as if they were unchangeable, even if what they were doing in the moment was harmful and terrible, indeed evil, and needed to be opposed.  Thus the whole notion of enemy was both unneeded and dangerously misleading”.

The ancient Hawaiian healing practice of Ho’opono pono provided for me a powerful meditative tool. It teaches that we’re all one, like John Lennon sang, and that I’m a part owner of any other person’s suffering. When I accept my part of that, seeking forgiveness for myself, we’re both aided and made a little bit stronger. Such loving acceptance feels to me like walking hand in hand towards a better future for us both. But it’s only a meditation, not a conversation. It’s an examination of feelings, not a review of circumstances.

For persons I’ve felt harmed by, it’s like pushing an empty canoe off from the riverbank and waving goodbye as the current carries it silently around the bend and out of sight. Gone, but thankful for the lesson it delivered.

If any personal opportunity to help begins with my internal observations about what went wrong, and what that person did to deserve his misery, I’m using some moral or cultural yardstick to measure my own superiority. There’s nothing helpful in that, for either of us.

Compassion and judgment cannot coexist. One displaces the other.