Throughout our daily life we encounter a range of different kinds of people, many of whom will pass judgement on us and the choices we’ve made. The Buddha made clear that nobody can escape from the experiences of praise and blame. Most of us would have little problem with the former, while the latter, we could generally do without. However, how we react when we feel judged says a lot about how secure we are in our mission and our plan to achieve it.
If we find that we are sensitive to certain judgement or criticism, this can point us to one of two realities. Either the criticism is well founded and the person who leveled it has pointed the way for us to improve or the criticism is without merit in which case we need to eliminate any unnecessary insecurity. What is evident is that the painful feeling we experience when we have a negative social interaction is a result of our own egos not the people whom we choose to label as enemies.
As always, mindfulness will point us in the right direction to solving the problem. When the concern has to do with fundamental questions such as our aim in life, those concerns are most effectively addressed by taking the time out from our busy schedules to undertake a meditation retreat. There is nothing more important in life than knowing what we’re doing. That truth may sound trivial but can we say that we are really living by it? Once we decide that it’s time to develop, affirm or reaffirm our purpose, we cannot escape from real happiness.