When you trace it back and back and back, the question of who hurt who first becomes meaningless, which takes the sting out of it

"There’s a story about Somdet Toh. A young monk came to see him one evening and said, “This monk came up and hit me. I hadn’t done anything to him at all. He just came up and hit me.” And Somdet Toh said, “No, you hit him first.” They argued over this for a while, and then the young monk, frustrated, went to find another senior monk to complain about Somdet Toh, who he said wasn’t listening to reason. So the senior monk came and asked Somdet Toh, “What’s this all about?” And Somdet Toh said, “Well if this monk hadn’t had any kamma with that other monk in the past, the other monk wouldn’t have come up and hit him.”

But then of course that raises the question, why did the first monk hit the second monk, or who hit who first? When you trace it back and back and back, that question becomes meaningless. And the funny thing is, is that making it meaningless takes a lot of sting out of it. The part of the mind that says, “I’ve got to right this wrong,” that holds on to old wounds, gets weakened. The part that gets shamed by having been engaged in a bad back and forth can take some comfort in the fact that everybody’s been engaged in bad back-and-forths. This is why we’re here in the human realm. It’s a realm of good kamma and bad kamma all mixed together."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Buddha's Safe Space"

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