What is your recommendation for dealing with an angry person lashing out at you?
Do you ignore them and go straight to paying attention to the rising and falling?
Yeah, no, never do that.
Rising and fall, there's nothing special about the rising and falling of the abdomen.
There's one thing special, it's quite easy and coarse and obvious, so it's child's play.
And so it is, I remember when I first started and I did this exact same thing, this exact thing when people were yelling at me and I didn't know what to do, I just closed my eyes and went back to the rising and falling.
it doesn't really work because you've got this intense headache and and and tension and stress because this person is making you all upset and so you're not actually cultivating objectivity you're not actually meditating
You should never ignore anything.
The point is, don't ignore the present moment.
The present moment at that moment is this person lashing out at you.
So you can close your eyes, you can keep your eyes open, but what you should be focusing is on where your mind is.
If your mind is not interested, if you're so highly developed that you're not interested, oh this person's lashing out at me, okay well back to my meditation, then absolutely that's fine.
If it doesn't bother you and your mind doesn't even go out there, you know the person's there, you say to yourself, hearing, hearing, and then just ignore them and go back to your rising and falling and it's just like birds chirping and fine.
But if it upsets you, or if you're at all interested in it, and it's highly unlikely that you're able to really put this out of your mind unless you are highly developed.
So your mind, even if it's not upset, it's going to be going back to focusing on what this person is saying, all the nasty things they are saying about you.
In which case that's what you should be focusing on, saying to yourself, hearing, hearing.
And once your mind does let go of it, if at times your mind is no longer interested in it or the person stops yelling, you can just go back to your rising and falling.
You should also be noting the emotions.
If it does give rise to emotional turmoil, like you're upset or angry or if you find it funny or if you feel...
If you feel somehow egotistical, often we feel proud of ourselves that we're able to not argue back and you should watch that as well.
Not think you're better than the person because they're lashing out.
Oh, this person is such a low spirituality.
such a low being.
I don't know what the word is.
They can't even control their temper, that kind of thing.
You should watch that as well.
You should watch all of these things and be mindful of them.
Replace the judgments with objectivity and mindfulness.