Even if someone tries to cut off your head when you have not done the slightest thing wrong, out of compassion take all her misdeeds upon yourself. This is the practice of Bodhisattvas. 

When someone does something to us that we do not like, we usually feel like we have not done anything wrong. This then justifies our retaliation, and the others whom we have harmed will also think in the same way. Regardless of whether we have done something wrong or not, the fact is that the bad karma we created by harming someone in the past is now ripening, so there is no sense in being angry at the person harming us now. This does not mean that we deserve to suffer, just that whoever we were in a previous life was overwhelmed with negativity and did something harmful. It could have happened three gazillion aeons ago, but karma, once created, stays in the mindstream if we do not purify it. We should use this knowledge to motivate ourselves in the evening if we do not feel like doing our purification practice. 

We can do the meditation on taking-and-giving, tonglen, where we take all our aggressor’s misdeeds upon ourselves with compassion. Instead of getting immersed in our own trauma and betrayal and throwing a pity party, we take their negative karma into ourselves, which turns into a thunderbolt that destroys the lump of self-centredness in our hearts. From the clear open space, we generate compassion and give them our bodies, possessions, and all our virtue from the past, present and future. The best thing we can wish for anybody who hurt us is to meet and practise the Dharma in future lives because they will be much less likely to harm us again. Our gut reaction of retaliation and anger is particularly inappropriate because the more we harm somebody who harmed us, the more they are going to harm us back. This is the dynamics behind so many long-standing wars and personal disputes, so it is better to take all their misdeeds upon ourselves with compassion and wish them well. 

“365 Gems of Wisdom” First Volume (January — March) e-book is out now!