Resilience: How to cope when everything around you keeps changing

5

Cope Well with Conflict

Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.

Max Lucado

There is a really good story that is told about the Buddha, Gautama (563–483BC), the Indian prince and spiritual leader whose teachings founded Buddhism. This short story illustrates that every one of us has the choice whether or not to take personal offence from another person’s behaviour.

It is said that, on an occasion when the Buddha was teaching a group of people, he found himself on the receiving end of a fierce outburst of abuse from a bystander who was, for some reason, very angry.

The Buddha listened patiently while the stranger vented his rage, and then the Buddha said to the group and to the stranger:

‘If someone gives a gift to another person, who then chooses ...