This is just one minute on,
Don't take it personally.
There's a teaching story in Taoism that I'll update.
Imagine that you're in a canoe with a friend,
Having a wonderful Sunday picnic.
Everything's going fine.
Suddenly,
There's a loud thump against the side of the canoe,
And you're dumped in the river.
You come up sputtering,
What do you see?
A couple of kids have snuck up on you and flipped over the canoe and they're laughing at you.
How do you feel?
Now,
Take two.
Everything's the same.
Canoe in the river,
Loud thump,
Dumped into the river,
Come up sputtering.
This time,
What do you see?
A large submerged log has come down and dumped you in the river.
The difference is that it wasn't on purpose.
No one was deliberately attacking you,
And there's no need to take it personally.
Yeah,
Deal with being dumped into the water,
Avoid logs,
Maybe choose different rivers in the future,
But you don't have to take it so personally.
So in this life,
Realize that many of the things that come to bunk you are like logs launched long ago and far away.
When things happen to you,
It's really important to bring compassion to yourself,
To recognize that this really did have impact.
Paradoxically,
That will help you take it less personally.
Also,
Be very careful about the intentions you attribute to other people.
Very often the good news and the bad news is that we're just bit players in their drama.
They're actually not doing it so intentionally.
And last,
Over time,
Increasingly,
Be a little skeptical of the notion that somewhere deep inside you is some sort of an entity,
An I.
If you look really closely with mindfulness,
You'll recognize that the sense of I comes and goes.
It's not so fixed.
It's not so independent.
And on the basis of that,
You can appreciate being increasingly a person.
A person process in the river of life unfolding,
Not taking it so personally.
