Though someone may deride and speak bad words about you in a public gathering, look on her as a spiritual teacher, and bow to her with respect. This is the practice of Bodhisattvas. 

There you are, in a staff meeting, or family gathering, or with your Dharma group and spiritual mentor, and some loud-mouthed jerk comes in and trashes you in front of everybody. Or you are in front of a whole auditorium full of people receiving an award and somebody stands up and says something like, “You don’t really deserve that award.” In such situations, there are not a lot of alternatives: we can either fly into a rage, cry and stomp out of the room, slam the door, or we can work with our mind. 

It is impossible for our self-centred mind to see the jerk who is criticising us as our spiritual teacher, but it is quite possible from the viewpoint of the Dharma mind. Why? If we have such a dramatic reaction to somebody smearing our reputation, clearly, we have some attachment to reputation, a little bit of an ego problem. We are not mad at the person for the benefit of all sentient beings, but rather because she is interfering with our happiness. This person becomes our spiritual teacher because she forces us to look at our self-centred mind, the “me” whose self-confidence went out the window because of a few harsh words. 

When we do emptiness meditation, the first step in the four-point analysis is to identify the object of negation, which is the inherently existent “I” that we believe exists, but which has never in fact existed. The scriptures recommend recalling a time when we were unjustly accused, or someone smeared our reputation because the “I” comes up very strongly in these instances. With the object of negation clearly in front of us, we are able to do the analysis. 

One of my friends had just painted the inside of the temple where his spiritual teacher lived. When his teacher came in, the teacher tore his work February | 53 to bits. My friend clearly became dismayed, and his teacher looked at him and said, “That’s the object of negation.” His teacher was teaching him about emptiness meditation by showing him the object of negation — his “I” — very clearly. Those who publicly deride us are doing the same thing, so we should bow to them with respect because our Dharma practice is more important than our reputation. We can use the opportunity to meditate on emptiness instead of getting upset and bummed out like we have done in similar situations since beginningless time. 

“365 Gems of Wisdom” First Volume (January — March) e-book is out now!