this, in response to someone replying to my thought that perhaps we are, all of us, active Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, striving to liberate those around us, and on the nature of what wrathful compassion is in relation to severing attachments and aversions.
so far as i can discern (which may not be far at all), wrathful manifestations deal with refusing to allow someone to continue avoiding the truth of their aversions, attachments, and deflections of all that would bring such insight to them.
aggressive self-justification, the poisons of anger, fear, and greed, the obstructions that are brick walls not only to those who refuse to deal with or face them, but also to all they encounter.
oddly, there are just as many impediments it seems within the structure of this tradition as there are without… which makes a certain sense, if one thinks on it. you’re not auto-cleansed when you take refuge (heh… to that i can certainly attest) and the struggle to corner pride and ego, and really move beyond them is sometimes all but impossible.
having someone with profound insight to why and how these things impede, someone insightful enough to know what actions are required to break through that wall when one isn’t even willing to admit it is there (or is an issue/impediment) takes quite a bit of skill indeed, i’d think.
for my part, this recent encounter was extraordinarily painful. but mostly because i kept refusing to admit to certain things. once i accepted them of myself, and of the others involved, all of that suffering just… sloughed away. dead skin. no longer attached to me because i was no longer clinging to it.
so, in this, i began thinking about the possibility that, despite my own human anger and hurt and boggling at how horribly “they misunderstood me”, instead i took their reactions and used them to dissect and understand why i was reacting negatively to it happening at all.
from there, to contemplate how and why it was/is that these others might choose to react as they have toward me… which underscored even more flaws, faults, and issues HERE… in me… that needed to be dealt with… and, in looking at it this way, not only did it mitigate and ultimately eliminate the feelings of anger, hurt, and distress/confusion for how and why this happened, it has actually shed profound insight on the parts of me that are in serious need of attention and change if i wish to build better things with and for others as i live.
i guess the point is several fold… first and foremost, i likely would not have chosen to see these things had these others not been extremely negative as they have been… since that was the first stone from which all of this has rippled.
secondly, at the fork in the road (so to speak) where i had to choose if i were going to continue to see these others as ‘ugly, petty, negative, and malicious humans’ or as ‘highly skillful, ultimately well intended, perfectly beneficial teachers’… i could see the fuzzy outline of how that choice would affect so very much more than my life-long perspective of those others… that it actually, literally held the power to change how i see ALL others. with time. (goodness knows i can barely manage it more than a few moments as it is… but this is a few moments more than i once could… so… kindness to myself and a smile for progress!)
thirdly, that to embrace the benefit that wrathful manifestation brings (triumph over wrong thinking, action, motivation, intent, speech, etc.) which loving-kindness hasn’t the heart to give and understand that sometimes, harsh wisdom is needed because tender wisdom will not be heeded… just seems a very deep and remarkably compassionate thing indeed.
i can’t imagine anyone wanting/enjoying the process of undergoing transmutation via wrathful compassion. but that’s kind of the point… the only time it must occur are those times when benefit can only arise by first killing utterly all that would insist upon avoidance.