Dealing with outer-conflict
Dealing with conflict with others

“Once Buddha visited a small Indian village, where the people spontaneously gathered to hear him talking. Among the listeners was a young guy who lost all track of time while listening to Buddha and forgot about the work that was waiting for him on his father’s farm.

The father sent out another son to find the first one, but also this son got caught by the power of Buddha’s words and didn’t return.
The father sent another son…. Who also did not return.

Enraged the father then wnet on his way to find his sons himself. When reaching Buddha, the father worked himself a way through the crowd till he was standing straight in front of Buddha. He started screaming and scolding. He accused Buddha that he was teaching children to walk away from their responsibilities, instead of teaching them the value of hard work and respect for the elders.

Buddha smiled and said:”When I come to your house with a gift and you accept the gift, then who does the gift belong to?”

“To me of course” replied the father, slightly of balance.

“And if you would refuse the gift, then who would it belong to?”. The man got irritated about this strange question but replied:”To you of course, but what does this have to do with it?”

The above story can be of amazing value when dealing with conflicts.

Before reading (and absorbing) this story I seemed to be in an automatic mode. Whenever someone yelled at me I had to, in any kind of way, defend myself. Be it either passive or aggressive. I would feel my heartbeat going up and there would be an underlying fear pushing me to act and react.

What was particular different about me before and after engraining this story was, that I now could make a conscious choice on how I wished to react. I could now choose to stay calm and not bother about the other person’s anger and opinions. I understood that these are his emotions and opinions, I don’t have to go along in it.

The first argument I encountered after reading this story was when I one day came home. Because of transporting something smelly I opened  all doors of the car as I parked it on our driveway. My husband, came outside and started yelling at me, asking me, why on earth I was doing this? The whole situation seemed very unfair. I had not committed any crime and he could have just peacefully asked me, why I did this. All together this was a perfect situation to start feeling attacked, mistreated and feel a lot of pity for myself.

But not this time…. I watched his anger and realized that:“The anger is his, not mine”. He was offering me his anger and the choice was mine: Would I like to scream back? Would I like to bow down and say, I’m sorry? Would I like to peacefully inform him on why I opened the doors?

Of course, I liked the last option best.

I didn’t interfere with his yelling at me, I just watched it and waited till he would be done with it. But then he yelled at me:”Why are you standing there, laughing?!”

Wow, I had not realized. And it was not my intention to smile while he was yelling. But I had remained my inner peace so nicely that it showed on my face.

Since he now finally gave me the space to answer, I replied:”Well, I’m not angry, would you like to know why I opened the doors?”

Thereafter the argument was over soon. But the biggest gain was that at no point had I lost my inner peace. My heartbeat had not gone up and my self-esteem had not gone down.

A great thing to realize in any conflict is that the opinion of the other is nothing more than that:”HIS/HER opinion”. The fact that you might have a different opinion is no reason for you to feel bad.

The other might be right or might be wrong in his opinion, but that never justifies that the message is being brought to you in an angry way. In other words, you never deserve to be yelled at, no matter what you did. Therefore, you never have to accept the “gift of anger” that the other is offering.

Now you might feel that great injustice is being done to you because of the other person’s anger, but just realize that you do not have to accept this “gift of anger”. Watch the other person’s efforts in making you feel bad and realize that this has nothing to do with you. This is the other person dealing with his temper and emotions. The other person has chosen an angry way of communicating. Okay….. his choice….

Ask yourself how you would like to deal with this topic. You can then try to communicate to the person in your chosen way or simply inform him that you are only willing to discuss this topic when he/she is ready to do it peacefully. In case the other keeps yelling you can either choose to walk away or keep informing the other person on how he is behaving.

This may not be so easy. It might take a lot of practice. But there is so much to gain.

As long as you let other people’s temper disturb your inner peace, you will never be in control over how you feel. Anybody can drop by and decide to make you feel bad. You do not want to let that happen.

Elisa (Twitter-alias: Elisa_507)

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