Rosemary & Steve Knowledgebase

I like the last part "Or is some conflict inevitable in relationships with others?" Unless you are both enlightened, I think yes. The attendant monk of the Buddha, his name was Ananda, had attained first level enlightenment when the Buddha died, yet he had "conflict," he cried, he had grief, he had his own personal conflict, he wasn't fully enlightened yet. Sometimes Rosemary and I laugh about the thought that one day we are going to write a book about relationships. Tentatively, the title, or at least one of the chapters will be called "10-20-30-40". Some of you know what that means, some of you don't. When Rosemary talks about the Satipattana Sutta, she explains that in Buddhist theory, as a human being we have Five Aggregates. So you imagine that when we are having a relationship, one person comes with five aggregates, the other person comes with five aggregates, and you have ten aggregates. Nope, almost no relationships have ten aggregates! Person one comes with their five, person two comes with their five, there's another five of what person one wants person two to be, there's another five of what person two wishes person one to be, there's another five of what person one wishes they were, there's another five of what person two wishes they were... You can add a few more if you want, we have had some innovative thought on this. Very rarely do we only have ten aggregates in a relationship. The minute you have more than ten aggregates you are going to have conflict. There's always something the other person's doing that we are not totally happy with.

My aunt told us a very funny story. In those days when they got married, it was about 50 years ago, people didn't live together like they do today. So their first wedding night was very important, a very special time. She told us that she thought she married a complete idiot. When she went into the bathroom for the first time when he was there, he was going to brush his teeth. She just couldn't believe what happened; he took the toothbrush, he took the toothpaste, he squirted the toothpaste on his teeth, and then he brushed his teeth. She couldn't believe it.

So when we bring aggregates together, five and five, usually it's not ten, it's more. So conflict is inevitable. Now as to, say, one person having their view and another person having their view, and they both seem to have some sort of validity and neither one of them can convince the other person that they are right and the other one's wrong, for those times, can we agree to disagree? Can we not get too hung up that our way is not being accepted by the other person, can we simply agree to disagree? You know, there are just lots of different ways to do things, and yet sometimes it's just like looking at a coin. We look at a coin we see what is normally called the heads, and we see what is called the tails. They don't look the same, they have the same outer shape, but the design's totally different. Now if someone gets too attached to the heads and someone gets too attached to the tails, saying their side is the best side, what can you do? They are talking about exactly the same thing!

Often we have to realize that sometimes what the other person is saying has validity but I just don't want to do it, mine has a validity but they don't want to do it. Can we just leave it at that, we don't have to get angry at each other for not accepting our view. It's difficult, because this ties into the Eight worldly dhammas, especially in a very close relationship, we want their praise. We want to be famous in their eyes, we want them to like us. We want the gain of them as my boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, whatever. It's often very close there, we want, we want, and when they have got a viewpoint that isn't ours, we often feel that we are getting blamed, we feel we are obscure, they want to be the famous one, and all sorts of similar thoughts. Can we try to see when we get attached to the 8 worldly dhammas and then pay attention to letting go of that attachment? Then we don't have to defend ourselves all the time, "I'm the right one, they are the stupid one" and so on.