Tit for Tat?

 A LAW there is of ancient fame

By nature's self in every land implanted...

Bear "tit for tat" in mind,

Nor give an elephant a cuff, 

to be repaid in kind.

John Aitken fro "Tit for Tat; a Tale

I let my feelings...the emotional disturbance pushing up on the underbelly of a samskara blockage...spill all over the page in the last few days. I was dealing with a trigger to  this samskara layer and though it was an honest expression of a samskara released, it also carried with it a bit of egoic vengeance. As the painful stored stuff started to come up, I felt the need to "do" something about it, to paint a picture, to build a story  of this human I call "me" as the heroine, big enough to see beyond the behaviour of the other, and the other as the villain...a tiny broken being hiding behind a mighty costume. It was an awkward attempt at a "tit for tat". Why? 

Because I was feeling tiny and powerless to someone who was blowing themself up as mighty and powerful. I had to turn the tables. So, in a position of self righteousness I puffed myself up and began looking down at the other for their apparent self righteousness. When you peel it down to the suchness of the moment, it was all just pain talking and this human need we have to "make sense" of that pain. Truth is, pain was simply meeting pain...her pain meeting my pain, my suppressed pain meeting my experience of externally generated pain, the human expression of pain meeting another human expression of pain. The only thing we have control over here when it comes to "pain"...is the release of this pain from within...so the outside stuff doesn't lead to these long winded tit for tat reactions. :) 

Focus inside, not outside.

Tit for tat is not the way...for if so...what difference lies between tit and tat.

Amit Boghani

All is well