After days of travel, Buddha arrived at a small town to give a speech. Everyone was happy to see him, except one young man.
While Buddha spoke, the man shouted at him. Buddha did not pay attention and continued speaking. This infuriated the man further. He went directly to Buddha and ridiculed him, “You have no right to teach others. You’re stupid and fake!”
Sensing the crowd getting angry at this man’s arrogance, Buddha stopped everyone from turning against him and said, “It is not necessary to counter aggression by aggression.” Then Buddha looked at the man and asked, “If you buy a gift for someone and that person does not accept it, to whom does the gift belong?” The young man was surprised by the question, thought for a moment, and answered, “It would belong to me because I bought the gift.”
To this, Buddha replied, “Correct. It’s the same with your anger. If you get angry at me and I don’t feel insulted nor accept your hostility, the anger falls back on you, as it was initially yours to give. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you’ve done is hurt yourself.”
In life, we often immediately react to situations, contrary to how Buddha handled this angry man. He did not react, he responded. And that is a choice all of us can make. Let us explore this from two lenses:
The Stoic Way, and
The Great Human Laziness
1. Control: The Stoic Way
Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Around 2000 years ago, the Stoic philosophers came to this conclusion: Most of our worries arise from overthinking about things out of our control, like weather, others’ opinions, etc. But a happy life blossoms from trying to make things better by focusing on what we can control. Let nothing else bother you.
If you look at Buddha’s response to the hater, he did not let another person’s anger affect his peace. He acted slow, aware that the other person’s feelings and opinions were out of his control. This simple realization took away the need to react in anger. With such a mindset, one can just empathize with the hater and respond with care, trying to really solve the problem, not aggravate it.
As this lens to see the world grows in you, you turn inward, more introspective of your own choices, and less affected by the externals. It is not that you close your eyes to external events. Rather, you become even more attentive, but with the knowledge of what is in your control, and what is not. When a thunderstorm destroys your crops, you do not cry blaming the Gods. You understand the randomness of life and try to figure out what can be done next time.
This gets clearer in the words of Epictetus, “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”
2. Reaction: The Great Human Laziness
In childhood, we come across numerous phrases which unconsciously shape our world views, like:
“Do not play with the kids from X. They are bad.”
“People of X religion are misers.”
“To be born as an X is a curse.”
“People never change.”
These seeds sown in the fertile mind of a child deepen their roots as we get older, taking simplified forms like “X people are bad,” “X is a religion of misers,” or “X is a curse.” The advice that was probably meant to keep us safe in childhood transforms into our own prison of biases.
Biases are old, stale. In this transient world, your biases do more harm than good. Imagine, a crime has happened, and you see a recently released prisoner at the scene. You have two options:
Respond: Challenge your biases and process the crime scene from a neutral mind
React: Jump to your automated response: People never change. This former prisoner is the criminal
What do you think a lazy person would choose? An automated reaction is a likely winner. But the problem is that we are all lazy beings, reacting more often than responding. So, what can we do about it?
The solution lies in a paradox: To overcome your laziness, slow down.
When you act in haste, you let your opinions guide you. The truth is hidden behind the patterns you grew up with. But if you slow down, you give your mind time to think, and when you think, you are likely to respond rationally. The truth becomes clearer.
Remember, we would not be preaching this to you if it was as easy as it sounds. The current instant-gratification society has left us addicted to speed, from getting items delivered within a day, to watching any movie on the go.
Slowing down is not our natural response anymore. Therefore, it has to be a conscious choice.