You cannot control praises and criticism ... - Ajahn Suchart
“You have to switch your attitude, you cannot control praises and criticism, they come and go, so be ready to face any of them whenever they come.”
Question: I search to be praised and fear for blame. How to lose this desire which make life suffering?
Than Ajahn: First of all you should accept that this is your weakness, expecting for praise and denying the criticism. Secondly, after you accept this weakness, then you should switch your attitude, you should be ready to listen to criticism, and should not seek for praises.
Right now, you have wrong attitude, expecting praises and denying criticism, which is the cause of your unhappiness. If you want to be happy then you should switch your attitude, you should seek for criticism and deny praises.
You can practise a lot of meditation until your mind becomes neutral. When your mind becomes peaceful and calm, it doesn’t have any expectation for praises or denial for criticism, it just remains neutral. This is the real way of correcting the problem. First, you need to make the mind calm, and second, you have to switch your attitude, you cannot control praises and criticism, they come and go, so be ready to face any of them whenever they come.
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Question: Is it only when one is a Sotāpanna or Anāgāmī, he is able to be free from praise and blame because the sense of self is weaken or cut down?
Than Ajahn: You need a strong mindfulness to be able to control your reactions, it doesn’t matter whether you are a Sotāpanna or not, what you need is a strong mindfulness. If you can control your reaction by having strong mindfulness then everything is solved. The problem is that you cannot control your reactions because you don’t have strong mindfulness. So try to develop a strong mindfulness, to keep the mind away from reacting to praises or criticism,
When someone praises you, just acknowledge someone is praising you and when someone criticizes you, just acknowledge there is criticism. You just acknowledge it. If you have strong mindfulness then you can do that, if you don’t have strong mindfulness then your defilements will take over. If you are lacking mindfulness, when there is praises it will make you feel good and when there is criticism, it makes you feel bad because you cannot control your defilements. Mindfulness is the tool to contain your defilements, your kilesa, your lobha, your dosa.
Don’t react when people said something to you. If you have mindfulness you just listen, let them said anything they want. If they want to scold you, let them scold you, if they want to praise you, let them praise you. If you have strong mindfulness, you can keep the mind from reacting, but if you don’t have strong mindfulness you will react right away.
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