NEW BOT Телеграм, страница

How to Deal With Toxic People

Don’t get mad, get mindful.
By Ven. Mahindasiri Thero

Toxic people can be found everywhere in society. Sometimes we find toxic people among our friends, our neighbors, or even our family. So, in one way or another, we have no choice but to deal with these people. While doing so, we also must have the intention to not hurt others, and to not get hurt ourselves. I will tell you a wonderful story that shows us how Buddha dealt with a toxic person:

One day, a man came to the Buddha, and he started yelling, insulting, and cursing Buddha. Do you know how Buddha faced that situation?

He was smiling.

He didn’t have any reaction throughout the conversation. He put a positive smile on his face, looking at the person who was yelling at him very kindly. Now, after some time, the man stopped yelling. Everything that he had packed down inside him was out. He was finished.

Then Buddha asked him a wonderful question. It did not quite suit the situation; it was out of the blue. The Buddha asked, “Do you get visitors to your home?”

The man was astonished. Taken aback, he replied, “Yes, I get many visitors to my home.”

The Buddha kindly asked him, “Do you treat them with food and drink?”

The man replied, “Yes, I do treat them.”

Then the Buddha said, “What if they do not accept what you have given them? What if they do not accept your food and drink?”

Then the man laughed at the Buddha and said, “If they do not accept my treats, then the treats belong to me. I will eat and drink them.”

With a great and wonderful smile on his face, the Buddha said, “The same goes with this situation. You treated me with rude and harsh words. You treated me with anger. But I do not accept what you have tried to give to me. I will never accept those rude and harsh words that you treated me with. So, since I do not accept anything that you have given, then everything that you tried to give me belongs to you. You must eat it yourself.”

The man was amazed, but his anger cooled down. The Buddha preached the dhamma to him, and after that, the man became a follower.

Now, see how positively and how successfully our great Buddha dealt with that toxic person? If we were in that situation, what would our reaction be? Normally, when people are yelling at us, we try to talk back to them. We try to prove them wrong. We try to control them with our rude and harsh words. But Buddha said, “If you react with anger to the person who is treating you with anger, that means you are accepting their food and eating it with them.”

Whenever you are in such situations, whenever you face toxic people, whenever people around you are angry, what do you have to do instead?

The first thing that you must do is put a positive smile on your face. Never show them your sad or angry face. If you do, that means you are providing what they want, since they are coming to you expecting to hurt you. If you show them that you are hurt, then they are successful. You provide them with what they wanted.

Put on a smile. Be a positive person. Be a bigger person, because when you get angry, you become mentally weak. Remember that mentally weak people express their anger easily. The reason they are expressing their anger to another person so openly is that they don’t have a strong mentality.

To be the bigger guy, you have to be positive, you have to smile, and you have to be motivated with virtues and morals. Don’t try to talk back to them. Instead, listen to what they say. Set apart the person speaking and focus on what they are saying. Sometimes they may be yelling at you because of a mistake that they think you have made, but sometimes you haven’t made it.

If you have made some mistake and that is the reason that they are yelling at you, then you have to correct your mistake. But never show the face of anger or sadness. Just correct the mistake.