Victims and Enemies
In an old Marx Brothers movie there is a scene where Groucho Marx is following someone so closely that he is almost touching their back in a lock step. This is a good analogy of how our enemy and we are in a kind of lock step of harming each other. We might feel that we are the victims now but eventually the aggressor will become the victim, and the victim will become the aggressor. While we are locked to others by hurting each other, what is our responsibility to this dynamic? Our responsibility is to stop and even remove ourselves from the situation, if it cannot be resolved. It is not so easy to make the enemy stop from their side, (the strategy thus far), but if we can take responsibility to stop, the enemy stops hurting them self as well. These ideas are very much alive in Tibetan Buddhism presented to us so that people stop grasping after their reaction, "I am a victim. This person hurt me," We need to get off the merry (not) go round to become more skillful, not only ...