What to do when experience is different to teaching examples?

I think you have to keep in mind the person teaching and their experiences are their only way of comprehending a concept.

I had a similar thing where I was taught anger has no use and can never be used to benefit anyone, where already I had used anger to benefit myself and others, righteous anger for martial and exercise purposes as an example. The persona was quite clearly dogmatically spouting out quite simply positive platitudes that do not actually relate to conventional reality or the Buddhas teachings themself. It is that persons opinion based on their own experience in samsara and/or dogma spouting religious concepts that are read from a book rather than actually sought out within oneself.

My suggestion would be to only take the words of the Buddha as actual dharma, and see other words from others as watering down, diluting or making more easily accessible to others, in a form of simple teachings.

The Buddhas teachings have a very distinct formula, or flavour as you will. Specifically they are enumerated. The Buddha spoke in numbers and lists as he often spoke to the sangha not only as advice for them at the time but advice for them to mentally retain and spread on to others for centuries.

• 4 noble truths
• 8 fold path
• 12 dependant links
• 4 immeasurables
• 4 imponderables
• 37 factors of enlightenment

List goes on, the Buddhas teachings are genuinely formatted in a enumerated way. If you then hear someone talking about X subject, question first in which way is it linked to one of the Buddhas enumerated formula. If it is not taught in such a way, you could often ascertain that it is not actually the Buddhas teachings. While that does not mean it cannot have use, you can pretty much completely ascertain it does not lead to liberation.

Note that your two ideas don’t necessarily contradict. It is possible both for hurt people to hurt people, for hurt people to be meek, and for stronger people to hurt people, all in the same world; it obviously depends on the person.

Buddhists do not necessarily have to prove every proposition they hear to be true or false. In fact, it often does the opposite; see for example how in the Aggivacchagotta Sutta, it is claimed that a Buddha is neither ‘reborn’, ‘not reborn’, ‘reborn and not reborn’, nor ‘neither reborn nor not reborn’.

In practice, try to meditate on these apparent contradictions. They may resolve themselves into a synthesis; you may find that your lived experience is warped by your perception; or even you might find that you completely disagree, which is fine! ‘Agreeing with every last sentence a monk has ever said’ is not a requirement to reach enlightenment.

Finally, from the Dhammavandana:

Well communicated is the Teaching of the Richly Endowed One, Immediately Apparent, Perennial, Of the Nature of a Personal Invitation, Progressive, to be understood individually, by the wise.

We may particularly flag up ‘immediately apparent’ as an issue with your problem here, but was the teaching behind the example immediately apparent? It may be, even if you disagree with the way it was explained.

It is fitting for you to be perplexed, it is fitting for you to be in doubt. Doubt has arisen in you about a perplexing matter. Do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of texts, by logic, by inferential reasoning, by reasoned cogitation, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence of a speaker, or because you think, ‘The [practice] is our teacher.’

-Words of Lord Gautama Buddha from the Aṅguttara Nikāya, “The Book of the Threes” (3.65. Kesaputtiya)