It is bad enough when a man has enemies, but a German saying of recent coinage may be familiar: if you have a Hungarian friend, you don't need an enemy… A hostile relationship, however, takes two parties. It is not enough for someone to be hostile towards us, or for us to take a hostile stand against someone. The other party has to accept this strained relationship, and if they do not, we cannot really speak of hostility. The ancient philosophies, too, set two conditions: like everyone, and everyone will like you in return. It seems, however, that the world has grown so twisted that today even someone who truly does like everyone finds he has an enemy.
You may defend yourself. Defence is not an offensive but a passive, defensive method, a spiritual ju-jitsu. By turning back the force of the attack, one can disarm the opponent. Everyone has the right to self-defence. One definition of spirituality is keeping one's distance from foolishness, and this too is a defensive technique. ‘Everyone is to be reckoned with as an enemy, even if not as a friend. Few know how to help, practically everyone how to harm’ – says Gracián.
Draw swords! The best defence is attack! Violence or attack grants the right to defend oneself, and the ordinary man meets violence with violence. Even then, however, deal your opponent at most a disarming defeat, not a crushing one, and on no account take the bread out of his mouth, for then he will go mad and start behaving unpredictably. So it may even be better to have your enemy in your own camp, for then at least you can keep an eye on him.
By contrast, a spiritually advanced person is expected to treat everyone alike: friend, enemy and honest well-wisher, the pious and the sinner, and the impartial too. How can this come about? Does he perhaps behave towards his friends as he does towards his enemies? Or quite the reverse, and he befriends his enemies too? Neither would be right. Equal vision means the basic respect that is due to everyone. Even the imperfect, erring person must be accepted, for at present that is what he is and he cannot behave otherwise, but there is no obligation to agree with him, let alone to work with him!
In practice, a great many hostile situations arise. It is a good start if we do not become enemies even to those who attack us: let us be no one's enemy. As long as we see friends and enemies, we live in the world of dualities. From dualities, from the pairs of opposites, we must make our way to equal vision, where such polarity ceases. Knowing the laws of fate, or as seers of souls, we see not enemies or friends, but the necessary characters on our life's path.
Such wise acceptance is one way of disarming enemies. The other party may go on doing his irritating work, but a calm sage does not lose his composure. This too is defence: defensive, evasive behaviour.
The truly wise man also possesses great powers. Anyone can make an enemy of a friend, which is no great art. The sage, however, can also make a friend of an enemy.
But this is not the highest way of defence. Beyond the basic defensive stance, the best example of merciful defence is Christ's way of seeing when, facing those who crucified him, he acted not with violence, yet not in a defensive and evasive way either, for by then he had no means of doing so. So he sought rather to serve the spiritual good of his tormentors, saying, forgive them, they know not what they do…
‘The sage gains more from his enemies than the fool from his friends’ – Gracián sends word. What is more, a noble opponent is not an enemy at all, and he reveals more of himself than a false friend does.