Bhante, how would you advise someone to deal with low self-esteem from a meditation point of view?
Really, I'm like this, I heard there was a story that I read once, there was this funny Burmese monk in ancient, in old times anyway, like 100, 200 years ago, who was very quick with responses to people and
there was this one monk who kept teaching the same thing over and over again.
And then this teacher monk came up to him and found out that he was just teaching the same thing over and over again.
And his way of teaching was to tell people stories.
And so his story for this man was, once there was a man who had a cure for everything.
It was this magical elephant hide, the skin of the elephant.
And he would carry it around with him and whenever anyone had any sickness, he was a doctor, whatever sickness anyone had, he'd give them a small piece of the elephant hide and it would cure them.
And so he went around carrying around this elephant hide with him.
And eventually it got cumbersome to carry it around with him, and he wouldn't always carry it around, and then he'd meet someone, and they needed something, so he thought, what can I do so that I always have this with me?
And so finally, he devised a way, he made sandals out of the leather from the elephants, and so he would walk around wearing these sandals, and if anyone happened to need it, he'd just cut a small piece off the sandal and feed it to the person.
And this went on for some time until someone finally realized that this is what they were doing.
And I don't remember the exact story, but it was basically that they got fed up and they kicked him out and chased him away as some kind of crazy man.
Because this stuff is on his feet, which, especially in a place like Burma, is considered an awful thing to do, is to feed someone something that your feet have been walking on all day.
So I'm kind of like that sort of teacher in that I really only have one thing to offer and that's meditation.
But let's talk a little bit about, I'm not going to cop out here.
So the basic answer is do some meditation.
But why does that help and what to focus on in the case of low self-esteem?
First thing is to try to get away from the idea of calling it low self-esteem.
because it's still experiential, which means it doesn't last.
It's impermanent, it's unsatisfying, it's uncontrollable.
It comes and it goes.
There's no way to fix it because it doesn't exist.
There are only experiences.
Once you understand those experiences, then they will go away or they will lose their power over you and slowly go away.
Now low self-esteem is related to the ego.
It's about taking things personally instead of just seeing them as they are.
So you have to also be able to see what are the things that you take personally.
So maybe it's a sense of not having as many friends as others or not being as successful as others, as popular, as successful, as smart, as beautiful, as whatever.
as spiritually advanced, as good at meditation.
All of these things lead to low self-esteem.
So we have these judgments arise in the mind and they're not good, they're not helpful.
And it's important for us to remind ourselves of that and to see it.
So to acknowledge, knowing, knowing.
When you know, for example, you compare yourself to someone else.
You have to realize that you have this awareness in your mind.
So you look at someone, you realize they're better than me at this.
Be aware of that.
Say to yourself, knowing, knowing.
Just to keep it at just the knowledge.
So that when you're aware of this, you don't ever get upset about it.
because it's really a two-step thing, or three-step thing.
You have the experience of some state, you interpret that to mean that you're lesser than someone else, and then the third step is you dislike it.
And that disliking starts to snowball and gets out of hand and makes you quite upset, can make you quite upset, feeling that you are lesser, you are inferior, you have low self-esteem.
The worst you could do is start to think that you are someone who has low self-esteem because then it's become, again, it's become personal.
It's I. It's aggravating the condition, which is already ego-based.
You become attached to
To the idea that I am for I have low self-esteem When in fact it's experiential it comes and it goes What you you know technically you should say is I have the tendency to Feel inferior towards others, which is a sort of it's called conceit the word conceit in Pali is mana which is
which is how you esteem yourself.
It can be overestimation, it can be low estimation, and it can be even equal estimation.
So even attaching to yourself as equal to others, this is still conceit.
and it can be whether you are better than someone or are worse than someone but it's your estimation of yourself once you esteem yourself as better as worse as equal that's already unwholesome it's a cause for suffering it's a cause for delusion in the mind because it relates to self so
Another thing is to focus, to realign your priorities and to learn to let go, to analyze the sorts of things that you are concerned about, like success in the world, beauty, physical beauty, wealth, popularity, all of these things are meaningless.
the eight worldly conditions and there's fame and and no fame and and lack of fame or high esteem low esteem of other people praise and blame I'm getting these wrong yes that yes
Fame and praise.
Fame is like station in life, yassa, which means fame, having many friends and also being a high station, a high social status.
Social status is maybe the best one.
So high social status versus low social status, praise and blame, gain and loss, and happiness and suffering.
So these four good things and four bad things, they are in a constant flux.
So they can come and go at any time.
Some people have a lot of the good ones, some people have a lot of the bad.
the bad ones, but they can come and go, they're not static.
So any of these things, none of these things should be given any weight.
At the very outset of your practice, even before you're able to cut off your attachment to these things, you should determine in your mind that these are not really worth clinging to.
If you're going to cling to something,
In the beginning, cling to your meditation practice because eventually that will lead you away from clinging.
If you cling to these other things, you can help yourself by reminding yourself how they're not worth it because they're subject to fluctuation.
It's very difficult to get the good ones, very easy to lose them in many cases.
As a special case, be careful about worrying about worldly things because they're not things that you can ever get independently.
They can disappear at any time.