This is a huge area: your reaction to other people’s praise and criticism, the respect or lack of respect they give you.

"So try to face the ways of the world with equanimity and not let yourself get sucked into the narratives or systems of values that people use to tie you in, to keep you going along with their view of the world. After all, they want to make sure that everyone around them shares the same values so that they can feel comfortable, so they don’t have to face the huge abyss inside their hearts, the huge emptiness, the huge void, when those values are exposed for what they are. Their way of avoiding that is to rest assured that everybody else believes the way they do, thinks the way they do, and acts the way they do. But you’re not performing them any service by playing along. They may not like it if you don’t play along, but they have to learn to accept that. Maybe they can learn from it. If they don’t learn from it, well, you can’t force them to learn. But you can’t allow their attitudes to run your life.

This is a huge area: your reaction to other people’s praise and criticism, the respect or lack of respect they give you. It’s so important that, as the Buddha said, one of the signs of a person who’s reached nibbana is that he or she doesn’t reverberate in response to criticism. He compares the awakened mind to a gong that’s been cracked. You hit the gong and there’s no sound. Or there may be little plunk, but it doesn’t reverberate, doesn’t continue ringing. The ability to train your mind so that it doesn’t keep ringing with the words of other people: That’s a really essential part of the practice."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Anthropologist from Mars"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Equanimity rests on the confidence that as long as you put in positive energy with positive intentions, positive results will have to come out at some point.

"So equanimity means realizing that when things can’t be forced, you’ve got to step back. Whatever you can’t control, you let it take its own time, to develop or go away at its own pace. You focus your efforts instead on the skillfulness of your present intentions, which may require patience and equanimity, doing your best to put as much positive energy into the situation, and not getting upset because the results are not immediate. The important point is that you be secure in your confidence that as long as you put in positive energy, there will have to be positive results — if not right now, then someplace down the line. That’s what you control, the fact that you’re putting in positive energy, putting in skillful intentions right now. As for when these things will bear fruit, that’s up to them, that’s up to the jagged rhythm in the whole mix of your karma. So it’s important that you understand what equanimity means. It doesn’t mean that you’re totally non-reactive to everything,...
Read more

The even-mindedness of a fully awakened person is an attitude not of cold indifference, but rather of mental imperturbability.

"[An awakened person] feels sympathy for others and seeks their well-being, experiencing a sense of satisfaction when they respond to [his/her] teachings, but otherwise [he/she] stays equanimous, untroubled, mindful, and alert. This passage shows that the even-mindedness of a fully awakened person is an attitude not of cold indifference, but rather of mental imperturbability. Such a person has found true happiness and would like others to share that happiness as well, but that happiness is not dependent on how others respond. This is the ideal state of mind for a person who truly works for the benefit of the world." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wings to Awakening"
Read more

What would actually happen if I made the effort to change the sad way things are? What would be the unintended consequences?

"You have to learn how to develop some equanimity around areas of the world where you look at them and say, “That’s really sad that that’s the way things are.” But you have to look at how much effort you would have to put in to change those things and ask yourself, “What would actually happen if I did make that effort? What would be the unintended consequences?” Some things in the world you can change without any bad side effects, but there are a lot of things in the world that you have to let go. You have to allow them to be. Because otherwise there’s no way you’re going to be able to train your mind. And your mind is the only thing where you really can take charge and you really can be responsible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Perfecting the Mind in an Imperfect World"
Read more