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Please help with these questions! :)
What is the most skillful way to handle someone who is angry?
What is the most skillful way to handle someone who is deluded?
What is the most skillful way to handle someone who is greedy?
And what is the most skillful way to handle the Poisons within me as well?
Metta to all!
Part of a definition of "skilful" might be "adapted to specific features of the actual situation", so perhaps this isn't a question which can be answered in general.
Speaking of "handling poison", in case you didn't know, there's a verse about that in the Dhammapada:
- If on the hand there is no wound, one may carry even poison in it. Poison does not affect one who is free from wounds. For him who does no evil, there is no ill.
I think there's a detailed example of how to do that in Akkosa Sutta: Insult (SN 7.2).
In honesty though you might find your ability to "carry poison" like that is existent, but temporary or finite. I for example used to find that if someone would trap me in a room and shout at me angrily then after about half an hour I'd begin to get upset (perhaps caused by ears being hurt by the sound pressure) and seek to escape. And at the time I wasn't skilful at alleviating their 'poisons'.
If sone one is ______, then there is so much you can do. Best is one some look inwards and if the situation is creating sensations (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) know the sensation and note it's implemented. If you get perceptions, thoughts and view that that is subjected to Vipallasa raise thoughts respective thoughts of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, non/not-self, lack of beauty.
Also, if one can tactfully bring the person to Dhamma then one can try that also. 1st you are to make him receptive to learn the Dhamma.
Well you don't have to be around other people and you can destroy your own taints by following ie https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.002.than.html
Relevant Unbiased Influence = Natural Order/Dharma/Tao
Influence (education) is one of the best methods to pass on teachings, however... As the saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".
Unbiased influences are the ones that make the most sense - why? Science is unbiased, Mathematics are unbiased and True Unadulterated Law is unbiased. Logic is what encourages appropriate action in those affected by the poisons.
Relevance should speak for itself as much as education and logic. Relevance is the appropriate application of unbiased influence with the right timing.
Here is an insight from Gautama Buddha that explains further: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn07/sn07.002.than.html
OK, bear with me a moment... When we say "This person is angry; that person is deluded; that other person is greedy" we are expressing a craving: that these people should not be that way, and we don't want to deal with them because they are that way.
Each of these people is suffering under an illusion that that world should be different from what it is:
And we are suffering under an illusion that the world should protect us from the illusions of all these people. See the mental tangle?
The only way to untangle that is to realize that illusions themselves are the problem, and that we cannot counter one illusion by opposing it with a different one. If we have one attitude towards every person — that every person is a buddha-in-the-making, warts and all — then we can start developing the compassion that might ultimately change the way the world is.
