..续本文上一页 of happiness, is being open and receptive and one with your experience, then settling the score is the path of making war, whereby aggression gives birth to aggression and violence gives birth to violence. Nothing is settled. Nothing is made even. But the mind of settling the score does not take that into consideration. When you are caught by that mind, because of the highly charged and ever-expanding emotionality you”re going through, you do not see what settling the score is really doing. You probably don”t even see yourself trying to settle the score.

　　If we started to think about and talk about and make an in-depth exploration of the various wars around the world, we would probably get very churned up. Thinking about wars can indeed get us really worked up. If we did that, we would have plenty of emotional reactivity to work with, because despite all the teachings we may have heard and all the practice we may have done, our knee-jerk reaction is to get highly activated. Before long, we start focusing on those people who caused the whole thing. We get ourselves going and then at some irrational level, we start wanting to settle the score, to get the bad guy and make him pay. But what if we could think of all of those wars and do something that would really cause peace to be the result

　　 Where communication from the heart would be the result

　　 Where the outcome would be more together rather than more split apart

　　In a way, that would really be settling the score. That would really be getting even. But settling the score doesn”t usually mean that. It means I want my side to win and the other side to lose. They deserve to lose because of what they”ve done. The side that I want to lose can be an inpidual in my life or a government. It can be a type or group of people. It can be anything or anyone I point the finger at. I get quite enraged thinking about how they”re responsible for everything, so of course I want to settle the score. It”s only natural.

　　We all do this. But in so doing we become mired in what the Buddhist teachings refer to as samsara. We use a method to relate to our pain. We use a method to relate to the underlying groundlessness and feelings of insecurity. We feel that things are out of control, that they are definitely not going the way we want them to go. But our method to heal the anguish of things not going the way we want them to is what Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche calls pouring kerosene on the fire to put it out.

　　We bite the hook and escalate the emotional reactivity. We speak out and we act out. The terrorists blow up the bus and then the army comes in to settle the score. It might be better to pause and reflect on how the terrorists got to the place where they were so full of hatred that they wanted to blow up a bus of innocent people. Is the score really settled

　　 Or is the very thing that caused the bus to be blown up in the first place now escalating

　　 Look at this cycle in your own life and in your own experience. See if it is happening: Are you trying to settle the score

　　His Holiness the D_Lama has said that he promotes the non-violent, non-aggressive approach to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, despite the fact that things thing are getting much worse. He takes this approach because he sees that violence is bound to create long-term resentment in others. This is basic intelligence shining through. Basic intelligence recognizes that the resentment caused by a violent response, by a score-settling action, will be the source of future conflict.

　　We can use our intelligence to exploit other people”s capacity to get hooked. Look at advertisements. The advertisers have figured us out a bit. They know how to get us hooked so that we buy something. If you wanted to be really smart and conniving, you could expl…

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