Having Kindness and Compassion Toward Difficult Persons

Marcello Spinella, Ph.D.

Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Strictly speaking theres no such thing as a difficult person. There are people with whom you
have difficulty. One person cant be difficult in isolation. The interaction between two (or more) people is
where the diffiiculty lies.
But true kindness and compassion, in any tradition, is unconditional and without exception. That
means towards all beings, no matter what, even the ones who try to harm you. That sounds like a tall
order. Our automatic reaction is usually not kindness toward such people. Its usually anger out of a sense
of self-protection. But with a little practice its much more manageable than it seems. Of course,wishing
compassion and kindness toward someone does not mean allowing them to continue harming you. In fact,
that would be lacking in compassion toward yourself.
This is about whether you continue to harbor anger towards someone who harmed you or whether
you are able to experience a different reaction, one that is much healthier for you and leads to greater peace
of mind.
In order to do this, whether in daily life or in a formal meditation session, it is necessary to reframe
the offender, to change perspective on how you view them. When teaching and practicing meditation, I
find it very helpful to instruct students to reframe the offender in these terms:
1. Everyone is trying to be happy and free from suffering. Behavioral psychologists would phrase it
as something like, all organisms seek reinforcement and to avoid punishment. Some people know
more adaptive means of doing this, while others unfortunately have more maladaptive strategies.
Some people use tragically maladaptive strategies that only bring greater harm in the long-term
towards themselves and others (addictions, violence, abuse, etc.) Roy Baumeister and colleagues,
for example, showed that aggression is actually an attempt to feel better (Bushman, Baumeister, &
Philips, 2001). Daniel Gilbert and colleagues showed that revenge is also an attempt to feel better,
but actually results in the opposite (Carlsmith et al. 2008).
2. Where do people get these maladaptive strategies? We know there are a myriad of biological,
psychological and social/cultural (biopschosocial) influences on everything we do. Nothing in
this universe emerges from nothingness, but rather they arise from complex chains of causes and
conditions (dependent origination in Buddhist terminology). If a car has a faulty alternator, we
dont get mad at the car. Its just a matter of physics. But when people screw up, we somehow act
as if we are immune to complex chains of causality. This is unrealistic and causes us to personalize
harm. When we realize that all events and actions are interdependent, part of the grand scheme of
cause and effect, were less likely to get fixated on whatever happened.
3. In any given moment, every person is doing the best they know how to do. If they knew a better
way to do things, they would be doing it. Nobody wakes up and says, Im going to make myself
really miserable today. Whatever their causes and conditions were, those strongly condition their
reactions. By know I dont just mean cognitively knowing what might be the better choice, but
also being able to behaviorally implement it. There are many people, for example, with addictions
who sincerely want to be clean and sober but act in a way that is completely contrary (again based

on complex biopsychosocial factors).

4. All harm comes from suffering and truly happy people dont harm. People who have a deep
meaningful sense of connection, meaning, peace, contentment, joy, and love dont act with cruelty:
If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life
sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1886)
If all my enemies were free of pain, dissatisfaction, affliction, neurosis, paranoia, tension,
and anxiety, they would no longer have reason to be my enemies. Once free of the force of
negativity, an enemy is just like anybody elsea wonderful human being.
--Henepola Gunaratana (2001)
This isnt all-or-nothing, of course. But in order to be cruel, you have to feel disconnected from
others. In harming others, we sacrifice our own humanity. How unfortunate it is that people can
spend days, months, years, decades or even entire lifetimes stuck in maladaptive patterns that will
never bring them the kind of deep, meaningful, and enduring well-being that they seek.
"The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less."
--Eldridge Cleaver
5. We cant control other peoples behavior but we can choose our own response to their behavior.
Anger may be a normal reaction, but whether or not we prolong and feed it depends on our choices,
namely how we frame things. Since sustaining anger doesnt really help, or is not an optimal
response, and it does harm us, then making some effort to do perspective taking or even wish
kindness is a worthwhile effort. It may be challenging and take practice, but there are strategies for
overcoming obstacles and the results are well worth it.
Now someone could do the meanest thing to me and I would feel deep compassion for this
out-of-harmony person, this sick person, who is capable of doing mean things. I certainly
would not hurt myself by a wrong reaction of bitterness or anger."
--Peace Pilgrim
6. Strategies for doing this:
a. Firmly establish practice towards easier people: oneself, benefactors, friends, even neutral
people
b. When working with difficult people, start with easier ones first, people who have done
minor things. Do that repeatedly until it becomes easy to do, and gradually work towards
more challenging people. Eventually Ive done it towards people who held up my father at
gunpoint, murderers, rapists, etc. I cannot describe the feeling of freedom of being able to
choose to feel kindness instead of holding a grudge.

c. If you wish for the right things, theres no harm. You can wish that a person be free
from hostility and aggression. You can wish that a person find happiness through being
kind towards others. You can wish that a person find better ways to resolve conflicts and
live cooperatively. Etc. Whether or not these are likely to happen (and who really knows)
is irrelevant. Knowing that certain things are beyond our control, we can nonetheless
focus on this attitude. The intention is the critical piece. What the person does is a result
of their choices and conditions. Whether you reinforce/prolong anger or move toward
understanding/kindness is a result of your choices and conditions, and we all experience the
consequences of our choices, even if those consequences are mainly internal.
d. Wishing the above towards people who harm is less likely to trigger some kind of selfprotection response. If those things came true, it would harm no one. Everyone would be
better off. Again, were only dealing with wishes and intentions here, but thats a disarming
approach, less likely to trigger self-defensive anger that is the main snag in wishing lovingkindness towards people.
e. Having a hard time with this? You didnt master it on the first try? Okay:
1. Shift to compassion toward yourself. You did the best you were capable of doing
at that moment given your causes and conditions. You experienced anger, and true
compassion is across the board and uncondtional. So, compassion toward your
own anger is equally important. Thich Nhat Hahn has said to regard our difficult
emotions with the same care and loving as if were holding an agitated infant or
puppy or kitten. We could comfort and soothe them.
2. Benefit finding: recognize the advantage and opportunities in dealing with this
situation. It has shown you the limits of your own loving-kindness. Its useful
feedback, showing you where the challenge is and what work needs to be done. Its
an opportunity to learn and develop skills. Shantideva said to regard difficult people
as our greatest teachers. Its easy to have compassion and patience towards kind and
loving people. So we need more challenging people to develop our skill. People with
whom you have conflict are providing you a golden opportunity. Even though its
probably not their intention, we can benefit from this and even feel gratitude for the
opportunity. (The Dalai Lama says this a lot but hes paraphrasing Shantideva).
3. Hope/Optimism - There is a way to develop this skill and it can be done. Others
have done it and are doing it. If others can do it, so can you. It doesnt require and
special abilities. It becomes a matter of finding which strategies that work best for
you. Practiced in the right way, the skill will develop over time and you will reap the
benefits. Its inevitable.
This practice works best when incorporated into a complete loving-kindness practice, wishing it
also toward yourself, benefactors, friends, neutral persons, and towards all beings. The difficult person is
naturally the most difficult for most people (although many people find wishing it towards themselves even
more difficult), but the results are well worth it. I cannot describe the liberating feeling of freely wishing
kindness toward someone who has harmed or tried to harm you, rather than being stuck in anger and not

knowing how to get out of it.

I have seen many people, including myself, become transformed by this practice in ways that I did
not suspect or even think possible years ago. I honestly I cant think of anyone that I feel angry towards
long-term anymore. When I do feel angry at someone, it doesnt last very long, it passes much more easily
than it ever did in my life, and I move more quickly to a practical approach (communication strategies,
problem solving etc.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. You are free to
download this work, print it out, and/or share it freely with others, as long as credit is given. You are not free to modify the work
or use it commercially without written permission.