How to Deal With Difficult People

Rinpoche gave some very helpful advice to a center director - the full advice is available to read or download under Rinpoche's Advice to Centers in the Members' Area - https://www.fpmt.org/members/default.asp#cad

"I am sure for a long time, especially recently, there must have been a lot of thoughts going on in you about certain challenging people at the center.

How I see the situation about these people is that they are quite different from others, how I see it is that they have their own particular karma, things happen to them, like they get extremely cold because their house is under trees and no sun can come or that many insects are in their house, so that they spent many months just picking up insects. Maybe it was because they didn’t keep the house clean. Anyway regardless, they have their own particular karma.

It has been explained in the teachings by Buddha that everybody does not have the same karma, some people experience one thing as extreme suffering and other people experience the same thing as enjoyment.

So we have to recognize these things, we can’t expect everyone to have the same karma.

If you think that everyone has their own karma and how they experience things is according to their own karma (whether as a blessing or great problem), if you see it this way then you can understand things better (like with difficult people) and it can also become a cause to generate compassion.

Like how the buddhas and bodhisattvas have more compassion towards those who are more evil, having heresy, more self cherishing thought, who create more heavy karma: the bodhisattvas cherish these sentient beings more, because they have more suffering.

Including when you do good things but in return other people don’t see your kindness but just see harm and criticize you back, so this is including those people. Thinking in this way helps you generate compassion, patience and tolerance.

….Many centers have somebody like this in the center, they have the karma to have people like this around, I think most centers have someone like this, maybe even one or two people.

So it's just karma, having somebody there like this is extremely helpful and kind, as I mentioned in the thought transformation teachings, these people really make you practice thought transformation, especially tolerance and compassion.

These difficult people exist because it's empty, totally empty because it is dependent arising, depending on causes and conditions, on the base and the thought labeling and believing on that.

So here I am just mentioning another way to look at it. Different viewpoints and different ways to use the situation for enlightenment, which helps for enlightenment. Using the situation in this way helps for your practice, it helps for your future enlightenment.

However you are an exceptionally kind person and able to offer service to the students in the center, just to have that thought, to rise this thought to help them and serve them is unimaginable.

As Milarepa said to the people taking care of and serving meditators:

'The meditator meditating on the rock and the benefactor offering the food have an auspicious arrangement to achieve enlightenment together.'"

This article is taken from the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT).