I want to tell you a story about the Buddha.
Somebody came and spat at the Buddha.
The Buddha reacted to him by saying thank you.
The chief disciple of the Buddha was very upset with the guy who spat at him and he
was ready to grab him and hit him.
The Buddha interfered, he said to his disciple Ananda “everything in life has a meaning,
it happens for a purpose, he spat at me and it was fine for me and I did not react except
in a positive way.
So he gave me a test; a test of my own ego reaction.
I passed and but what happened to you, you failed”.
This is a great story.
If you want to succeed in life, there is only one thing, there will be people all the time
hurting your ego, from morning to evening somebody will hurt your ego or you will be
hurting somebody’s ego.
The bottom line is you should not be overwhelmed by an ego response.
You should step out if somebody praises or somebody abuses you or ridicules you, you
are not going to be carried away one way or the other; you are simply like the Buddha-totally
freed from the ego.
You will see you will succeed in life if you develop this attitude because as soon as somebody
hurts your ego, you become very defensive, your mind sets off but if somebody boosts
up your ego he may be doing just to make you happy and get things done and then you will
go along with this person because whenever your ego is boosted, you feel happy and when
ever it is hurt you feel unhappy but you should not be a victim in both cases.
If somebody is hurting your ego, let him hurt but you are not going to be defined by it
and you are not going to show any reaction even at the level, at the facial level, you
know the face is the index of the mind.
So you don’t look disturbed or down and this story from the Buddha is very very instructional.