Last night I was watching news about the testimony by James Comey and the response from the WH and supporters of Mr. Trump. As I was watching it, I noticed that I kept getting increasingly angry and resentful. At the end I switched off the news channel cause my anger gave me a headache. I wondered why I got so angry. As a practicing Buddhist, I could not make peace with it. I kept fighting the lies and the injustice that was happening and the emotions that it aroused in me until it gave me a headache. It was exhausting.
Then my husband started reading a chapter from the book we have been reading over a month by Ayya Khema. It was very timely. Cause the chapter said that we should not take things personally no matter how right or wrong things maybe. My husband ended up asking me, "why do you have to take it personally?". That was a good question and I had to think about it. Why does lies and distortions of the truth and injustice always get me? Why do I take these emotions so personally every time? As I thought about it, I realized a few things.
I have faced such lies, distortions of truth and injustices by others. I realized that's why these stories strike a never in me.
When I was little I had an aunt who was very unkind to me. I was about 5-6 years old. She used to refuse to give me the food I like to eat after I get back from school for lunch. I loved lentils. My mother would cook it everyday just the way I liked to eat it. But this aunt of mine who lived with us and took care of us while our parents were working during the day, would not give it to me. She will give me just enough and then laugh when I would want more. Or call me names. She also got me to do all the cleaning afterward. She used to look after me, my sister and a cousin of ours during that time. She would drop pick us from school everyday and we would walk home. She never got them to do the cleaning up. I had to do the cleaning up of all our school items like snack boxes and bottles etc. My mother never knew about it. I never told, apparently. But those days I would cry every evening if mother got even slightly late from work. She would come around 5.15-5.45pm. If she didn't come during that time I would be in tears until she did so. I remember feeling sick about losing my mother. I remember having these frightening thoughts about my mother dying and that would scare me so much that I would cry. I was also punished for this. But it didn't stop for a while. Finally my dad realized what was happening because he was at home one day and that day my aunt had hit my across my leg and her finger marks were visible. My father saw this and that got him to send his own sister away. Maybe my crying stopped then, I don't remember.
(I cried while I was writing that paragraph)
I was 16 years old when I finally told this to my parents and my aunt. She apologized and my parents were aghast. I think I forgave everything cause I have had any dealings with this aunt and I haven't felt anger or resentment.
Then I also had an uncle who supported me through college. It was an ordeal as well. When were were younger and doing well in school, he kept promising that he would help us f we get good grades to go to a foreign university. I particularly grabbed hold on to that idea. I liked it and wanted it. I finally got good grades to enter a good university outside of my country. Suddenly my uncle who had been promising all these things for years started getting quiet. It would have been a difficult time. I remember being very determined to get what I wanted and I was willing to do whatever. Finally with the help of someone we managed to get the necessary documents from my uncle to apply for visa. It never felt good. Every year I had to call him and ask for the money to be wired. I wasn't sure if he'd send it. But he did.
Then was the series of incidents with my husband and his family. My husbands mother, was very critical and condescending of me from the beginning. I was never pretty, too fat, not famous or rich enough for her. My family was never posh enough for her. But my husband never noticed any of it for almost 10 years. If he did, he never did anything about it enough to stop it. Over the years his father and sisters too joined in. They cut my family off for no reason. They were astonished why I didn't want to continue to talk to his mother, even after being told why. They treated me like a bad egg even when I had welcomed them and his sisters and treated them well for many years. Our marriage was full of turmoil for a long time. I was exhausted and at times suicidal. It was such an uphill battle. I thought truth was something obvious and decency and fairness was something fundamental that in the absence of it from those who were supposed to protect me left feeling completely out of control and sad and angry. His parents also bad mouthed me to my husband, telling things that were not true and ignoring all the good that I had done. The sisters were supportive of that and was pushing my husband trying to create a wedge between us. I held my husband responsible, for not being there for me, protecting me and standing up to what was right and wrong, for a long time. It was during all this that I took meditation as a practice. Out of sheer desperation and not wanting to hurt myself, I took on to the practice.
Over the years its helped me a great deal. It's to mostly to see my emotions and work through them in a calm and constructive manner. But it has also helped me to identify where my responsibility ends and others start. That has helped me to stay away from feelings of guilt and take on others emotional drama.
But despite all that, I still get angry and frustrated when I see lies, injustice prevail. It annoys me how people get away by saying and doing wrong things and are not held accountable for their behaviours. It angers me when people are victimized by those behaviors and no one pays attention to the victims. Power and money seem to protect those abusers and leave the victims out to dry. It makes me very angry. Even when I know there is no point to anger no matter how righteous it may seem. Even when I know in my head that those who do bad have to live with the consequences of their behaviors and I am only responsible for mine. Even when I know "Karma will get the bastards anyway" according to Ajhan Brahm, I still have to live with the strong emotions that get created in me as a reaction to these events from time to time. While not every event shakes my world, the right one at the right time with the right intensity can bring about lot of pain in my heart. I felt that last night and here I am writing about it. Hopefully this will contribute to my own healing process.
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