On a three-day Buddhist retreat in December, a friend of a close friend spoke only one sentence to me.  She stopped me on my way out the door for lunch and said with irritation, a touch of arrogance, and no prelude, “If you step over dharma text, that is negative karma.”

I must have stepped over her notepad as I was leaving the room, which was packed wall-to-wall with cushions, zabutans, and notepads.  In Tibetan Buddhism, certain norms regarding materials and practice serve to encourage an attitude of reverence.  Apparently, I violated one without realizing it.

Instantly, I had flashbacks of growing up in the south where Christian fundamentalism fosters a preoccupation with the spiritual failings of others.  When I was six, I went to Sunday school with a friend across the street, and I made the mistake of telling a peer that I didn’t believe in Satan.  Within minutes, the Sunday school teacher was at my side.  She leaned over and simply said, “There is a Satan.”  She left it at that, as if her authority alone made the case.  (And so began my life as a scientist.)

The woman at the retreat made her remark to me in the same tone of voice.  I was speechless.  I had no response and just turned and walked away.

Her remark hit a nerve.  Growing up, I watched how fundamentalism led even the closest of friends to part over details of the Bible, accusations of sin and promises of damnation.  In high school, two of my best friends were from a prominent Christian family.  They once drove me to a church service, and I asked about a forlorn girl wandering alone in the further reaches of the parking lot.

“Oh, she’s a sinner,” they said.  “We can’t talk to her.”

“Didn’t Jesus eat with sinners?” I asked.  They quoted another Bible verse, something about not being tainted by those who are “of the world.”  I didn’t buy it.  My heart went out to the girl.  What could she possibly have done to deserve such exile?

Months later, I remarked that, given evolution, Genesis seemed like more of a metaphor than a scientific report.  They held a formal house meeting to discuss my blasphemy.  They decided that I should have no further contact with their daughters and called my mother to let her know.  In one night, I lost my dearest friends who had been there for me at a time when I was facing difficulties at home.

Pronounced social loss during a time of overwhelming stress was something I had just experienced again prior to the retreat.  Surrounded by sangha, I had hoped for warmth and inclusion, but her remark conveyed the opposite.

After lunch, I returned to my cushion fuming.  Instead of finding silence, my internal tirade raced full steam ahead:  What kind of tradition do you think this is?  You’re missing the point!  Which is worse on the grand karma scale: inadvertently stepping over a notepad or telling someone that they are going to pay?  Karma is not a social justice system!  Are you that simple minded?  And who cares if I step over dharma text?  Isn’t genuine reverence more important than protocol?  Anyone who is that hung up on outward form should meditate in the bathroom stall and find the sacredness in a toilet bowl!  Hmph!

I could have quoted Dzogchen writings to precisely support my point, but it occured to me to ask myself which is worse on the grand karma scale: telling someone that they are going to pay or aiming anger at someone for telling you, albeit cloaked in spiritual parlance, that you injured them in some way.

In Buddhism, especially Ati Dzogchen, the tradition within which the retreat was rooted, thinking outside the box is a fundamental teaching, a primary principle.  Each moment in time, each experience in all its fullness, can be viewed from multiple levels.

I felt judged, condemned, vilified, and cut off.  I saw myself through her eyes, and I should know better.  Never look at yourself through the eyes of someone who does not see you clearly.  If you do, you will not see them clearly either.

She entered the room and carried her notebook back to her cushion.  Several images of Buddhist deities slipped out of her notebook and fell to the floor.  She was flabberghasted!  Apparently such images must not touch the floor.  She scooped them up and touched them to her forehead, a way of reaffirming their sacredness.  Our mutual friend said, a bit sarcastically, “Oh you’re in trouble now!”

That’s when it hit me.  Her comment about negative karma was really not about me at all.  Throughout the retreat, she was so anxious about getting every detail correct that she repeatedly interrupted Rinpoche and expressed great exasperation if he contradicted himself, which made it difficult for him to teach and evoked visible irritation.

Further, it just so happens that Rinpoche teaches with a particularly loose style that severely aggravates many who are drawn to Tibetan Buddhism for its promise of enlightenment through precise, elaborate, and time-consuming practices.  He is infamous for outlining a practice and introducing new details with each elaboration.  To add to the comedy of it, his thick accent and auctioneering prosody makes him nearly impossible to understand.  In any case, if you want to flog yourself with spiritual rigor, Buddhism will happily accommodate you, but every master will tell you up front that it is only necessary until you discover that it is not necessary.  (Incidentally, if you want to flog yourself literally, I recommend Zen Buddhism.  Any zendo instructor worth her salt will gladly hit you with a stick upon request.)

Our mutual friend once suggested to her that Rinpoche’s vague, disorganized style was a way of encouraging practitioners to release their attachment to form, let go of the need for personal control, and seek the unnameable.  In response to her complaints about his lack of clarity on the teachings, he said, “Maybe that is the teaching.”

“No it’s not,” she snapped.

As I watched her scramble for a sacred image on the floor, my anger waned and became sympathy.  Then, the parallel dawned on me, and my sympathy waned and became gratitude.

“Maybe that is the teaching,” I thought.  “Maybe she is my teaching.”

Things are never what they seem.  Kahlil Gibran wrote, “The partition between the sage and the fool is more slender than the spider web.”  We can see the sacred in the profane and the profane in the sacred until dualistic thinking is replaced by an understanding that surpasses ordinary views of right and wrong, success and failure, wisdom and foolishness, enlightenment and delusion.  According to Dzogchen, “Confusion dawns as wisdom.”

This means that while I was having fantasies about putting her notepad in the toilet and waking her up to what really matters, I was learning that my attachment to this sense of “what really matters” was the very thing that needed to be flushed!  It was, after all, what led me to sit on my cushion fuming and ranting under my breath.

Her comment drew my attention to her exaggerated anxieties.  Her anxieties led me to see things from her perspective.  This led me to sympathize with her and take things less personally.  This, in turn, released me from both old and freshly stirred pain tied to rejection and exclusion.

She healed me.

I put my hands together and, in accordance with Buddhist protocol, bowed my head in reverence.