Is it justice or vengeance?


Student: You may have answered the question, sort of, just now. But I have a slightly different riff on it, I guess. I’m going through a fairly turbulent period of transition or change—which I guess everyone is going through all the time—but this one is kind of sticky for me. In terms of practice, lately a lot has been coming up for me. I guess I’m interested in better understanding and being able to discern the differences between justice—or standing up for oneself—and vengeance. Because for me those two things run real close, but I think that they’re really different things, and the latter is probably not so helpful or fun for the people around me.

Ken: Or good for you.

Student: Yeah, absolutely. So does that make sense, my question?

Ken: Oh yes. I think it’s very important. First take, I’m going to separate three things: justice, standing up for yourself, and vengeance or revenge. Because I don’t put the first two in the same category. I’m just going to make some distinctions and I hope that will be a bit helpful to you.

A couple of things about justice: justice is the social manifestation of compassion. It’s how compassion manifests in a society. It’s about restoring balance, that’s why justice has the scales. That’s one aspect. The second aspect of justice is it’s an ideal, and we never achieve an ideal, they’re only approximations. You follow? What I’ve found is that when I’m clinging to an ideal, it’s because something very young in me wants it to be a certain way. And it’s heartbroken that it isn’t, and we all feel this. But a problem comes up because we’re clinging to an ideal. So let’s just put the notion of justice aside for a minute.

Standing up for oneself, I think, is dependent on or requires you to be willing to stand in your own experience and your own knowing. Do you follow? Now, when you do that, you may very well put yourself at risk because it’s going to be different from what other people are thinking, or how other people see the situation. And you need to be willing to take that risk—that’s how important it is to you. Okay?

Vengeance, or revenge, is wanting to visit your pain on somebody else—the person that you feel wronged you. It’s the wish that they suffer, and they know suffering the way that you’re suffering. You follow? Okay. Now, I think this quite deep: I don’t think you can engage revenge without being marked by it. You become what you’re opposing. And so whenever that comes up, I think for all of us, it certainly comes up for me, when you think “I just want to get even!” and things like that. Okay, that’s an expression of my anger about the situation. But I just put that motivation or that desire aside. I’ll deal with the anger, but, to the extent possible, I never act on that. And if I catch myself acting on it, then I try to step back from it. Because I don’t think anything good comes from that, in any circumstances.

Stand in your own experience


Ken: The middle one that we’re talking about—standing in my own experience, standing in my own knowing—that I think is really important. That is where I think meditation practice becomes very helpful because, just as we were doing this morning, you keep coming back into our own experience. The tendency, when somebody has injured or harmed us, is that we only come so far back into our own experience. But we have to come back into the totality of it all, so we see every aspect of our lives and all of the ramifications of whatever our action. Usually we just want to focus on this part. And there are circumstances I’ve had with people in my own life that when I open to the whole thing, I see that focusing on this one part is actually not very important. It doesn’t make much difference in my life. And so I can let it go, I don’t even have to do anything about it. Do you follow? Yeah. And if that’s the case, that’s a nice peaceful resolution. Other situations? No, absolutely, that’s not going to work. There are real problems. And then you enter into an interaction, and basically you’re dealing with a conflict situation there. Does that follow?

Student: Not necessarily in terms of, you know, two dogs barking at each other, but certainly in congruency, in terms of maybe the way things are seen in a particular situation.

Ken: Yeah, but you’re in conflict with another person.

Student: Sure.

A really rapid course in conflict


Ken: Okay. Now I’m just going to give you a really rapid course in conflict right now. It’s going to go fast—five minutes, all right?

Four stages of conflict. In the first stage, which we can call pacification or just settling, you talk things out. If, after three attempts to talk things out, it doesn’t work, then you move to the second stage. The second stage is where you enrich the pie. You bring in a mediator; maybe you throw in some extra money, if it’s a business deal; maybe more time. But you bring in other elements, you make the whole thing richer. By making it bigger and richer, you often create ways that it can resolve in a different way. And that’s called enrichment, you make it richer. If that doesn’t work, then you move to magnetization, where you’re saying, these are the consequences if we go any further. You’re beginning to employ power at that point. And if you’re not able, by polarizing the situation, to compel a resolution, you have no choice but to go through to destruction. And destruction is very important here. It’s not destroying the other person. It’s destroying the basis of the conflict. Parents do this all the time with their children. Two children—you mentioned two barking dogs, well, you do this with two barking dogs. You have two dogs, they’re barking at each other, you throw a bucket of water on both of them. What happens?

Student: They freak out, run away and it breaks up that situation.

Ken: Yeah, you’ve destroyed the conflict. You haven’t destroyed either dog. They’re both healthy. They’re just a bit wet. [Laughs] And the same, when two children are fighting over a toy, the parent takes away the toy. You know what the children do, almost always? They look at each other and go, “What do you want to do now?” But the basis of the conflict has been destroyed. That is always a unilateral action. And one of the most effective ways of destruction is you walk away. Okay? It’s not important to me. I’m not willing to kill or die for this. So, it’s very important to go through those four stages, that sequence. Most people go straight to magnetization first, and then it’s really difficult to go back to the first two, but 90% of conflicts can be resolved within the first two. Does this help?

Student: It does. I mean, you’re just, you’re giving me the four karmas.

Ken: Yes, that’s right, yeah.

What is the most important thing to know?


Student: And the only thing I can say to that is fifteen years of practice and I’m still sort of with the same issue, right? Which is those two things getting crossed, or if you want to separate them, the three ways that you’re ….

Ken: The justice, the standing up for yourself … Okay. What I suggest then is … do you have a copy of my book, Wake Up to Your Life?

Student: I gave it away but I was planning on buying one today.

Ken: [Laughs] I don’t know whether we have one or not. There’s a meditation in there on joy in chapter seven, which is all about learning how to stand in your own knowing. This is something that you can emphasize in your meditation practice: the clearer you’re able to be in your own experience, the clearer you’re able to be in your own knowing, the less likely you are to go to revenge, and the less likely you are to get caught up on seeking justice. That’s why I’m differentiating this. And you will know, because you’re in your own experience, what is really important to you. And in any conflict situation, that is the most important thing to know. What’s important to me here? Because otherwise you find yourself engaging in conflict for things that aren’t important to you. And that’s never a good idea.

Student: Thank you.