Suppose our friend or partner says something unkind to us, and we feel hurt. If we reply right away, we risk making the situation worse. Another option is to breathe in and out to calm ourselves, and when we are calm enough, say, “Darling, what you just said hurt me. I would like to look deeply into it, and I would like you to look deeply into it, also. Then we can make an appointment for some time later in the week to look at it together.” One person looking at the roots of our suffering is good, two people looking at it is better, and two people looking together is best.
We may be at war with ourselves inside, hurting our bodies with drugs or alcohol. Now we have the opportunity to sign a treaty with our bodies, our feelings, and our emotions. Once we make a peace treaty with them, we can have some peace, and we can begin to be reconciled with our beloved. If there is a war inside us, it is very easy to start a war with our beloved, not to mention with our enemies. The way we talk to our loved ones and the way we act toward them determines if we are treating them as loved ones or as enemies. If our beloved is our enemy, how can we hope to have peace in this country and in the world?
We all have the seed of wisdom in us. We know that punishing leads us nowhere, and yet we are always trying to punish someone. When our beloved says or does something that makes us suffer, we want to punish them, because we believe that by punishing them we will get some relief. There are times when we are lucid and we know that this is childish and ignorant, because when we make our beloved ones suffer, they will also try to get some relief by punishing us in turn, and there will be an escalation of punishment.
The Peace Treaty and the Peace Note are two tools to help us heal anger and hurt in our relationships. When we sign the Peace Treaty, we are making peace not just with the other person, but within ourselves.
Practice
The text of the Peace Treaty is below. It helps to really sign it, as opposed to just reading about it. In the treaty, it suggests Friday night as the night for discussion. You can pick any night, but the treaty suggests Friday evening is good for two reasons. If it’s Friday afternoon when you begin, you can pick the following Friday. First, you are still hurt, and it may be too risky if you begin discussing it now. You might say things that will make the situation worse. From now until Friday evening, you can practice looking deeply into the nature of your suffering, and the other person can too. While driving, you will also have a chance to look deeply into it. Before Friday night, one or both of you may see the root of the problem and be able to tell the other and apologize. Then on Friday night, you can have a cup of tea together and enjoy each other. This is the practice of meditation. Meditation is to calm ourselves and to look deeply into the nature of our suffering.
If by Friday evening the suffering has not been transformed, you will be able to practice the art of Avalokiteshvara: one person expressing himself, while the other person listens deeply. When you speak, you tell the deepest kind of truth using loving speech, the kind of speech the other person can understand and accept. While listening, you know that your listening must be of a good quality to relieve the other person of his suffering. The second reason for waiting until Friday is that when you neutralize that feeling on Friday evening, you have Saturday and Sunday to enjoy being together.