Reading Pema

I'm reading Pema Chodron's book on Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara. There's a part when Shantideva goes on and on about how you should not blame people for how they act towards you because in a way it's just the circumstances, and their abilities and perhaps you would do the same thing with the same circumstances and abilities. But a new study out, reported in the New York Times Science section, reports that we actually feel more pain if a person means to harm us. I'm not going to treat people like they're a force of nature, mechanistic. Of course I do agree that difficult people are an opportunity.