Dealing with difficult people | Buffalo meditation

Many spiritual traditions have stories that caution us against dwelling on negative reactions of others or their personality flaws. Such responses of the mind usually don’t help solve the problem. In fact, they strain the relationship and drain our emotional reserves. While it is important to surround ourselves with positive influences, it is also important not to let others’ weaknesses disturb us so much that they drain our emotional energies and take us away from our purpose.

This is well explained in a story about a farmer who visits a Mahatma and asks him how he can find God. The Mahatma instructs him to meditate on the name of God. The farmer expresses his inability to maintain focus during meditation. The Mahatma offers him another solution. He asks him to name one thing that he is very fond of. The farmer replies that he is very fond of his buffalo – a healthy, black buffalo that yielded abundant milk.

The Mahatma suggests that the farmer sit in a separate room in his house and contemplate on his buffalo. The man goes away to do as suggested by the Mahatma.

After a few days, the farmer’s wife comes running to the Mahatma. She looks worried. She asks the Mahatma what he has told her husband. Her husband had shut himself up in a room and refused to come out. The Mahatma accompanies her back to their house. He goes up to the room where this man has locked himself up and asks him to come out of his room. The man replies “I cannot come out.”
Upon being asked the reason, he replies “I have a huge body. My horns are long. The doors of this room are too small for me to get out of.”

The Mahatma understood what had happened. He explains “You have gone so deep in your meditation on your buffalo that you have started thinking of yourself as a buffalo. Now start thinking of yourself as a human being again”

A few days later the farmer returns to the Mahatma. The Mahatma congratulates him on the first step of his journey – “What you think, you become. Just as you went from being a human to a buffalo – you can transform yourself from being a human to an angel, and from an angel into God”.
When confronted with difficult individuals or unpleasant behaviors, the farmer’s story can be a reminder – Am I fixating on the buffalo or the better self that I can grow into? In the face of pettiness, can I practice generosity? In the face of pessimism, can I play the role of inspiring hope? If I am surrounded with fear, can I shift my thoughts to courage?

¹ Reference: Bandaginama by Bhai Raghbir Singh Bir.