Was this your first interactions with you neighbors?

The response your received from the “Buddhist nuns” did not on the surface conform to Buddhist practice or values as I understand them… But Buddhist are human, and as most humans don’t always live up to their values.

Your post reminds me of the stories you hear of someone yelling a someone for not paying attention only to learn that that person just lost their father. We don’t usually know everything that may be influencing a encounter, we like to think we know, but we don’t.

Is it possible you caught your neighbor at a bad time?

The rule of charity states that if there are more then one way of interpreting an interaction and you can’t or don’t want to investigate the intention then chose the most compassionate interpretation.  The next step would be to ask your neighbor about the encounter or wish them well and look elsewhere for help.

Hey Trying to understand,

sorry that you had such bad luck of suffering a break in and then also strange people lingering in the neighborhood. You took a proactive step in asking the neighbors for help, but you met someone really unfriendly.

Your neighbor reacted very strangely: “The woman screamed, I will not call the police for you, you call the police yourself.” I can see why you would look for a reason for her rejecting your request, and it seemed you found it: “Other neighbors told me they were a house of buddhist nuns.” . But what if they had said “Its a house full of vegetarian”? “Its a house full of republicans/ democrats”? “It’s a house full of high school teachers”? I think you see where this is going. Unfortunately there are bad apples in every crowd, buddhists, christians, islam, atheist makes no difference.

One thing I wonder about that is the conclusions that you drew from this one time encounter: “I feel like the message sent was basically to tell me I was scum”. Indeed, that woman treated you badly, but I wonder: do you also believe that you are scum?