Seeing your life in a broader perspective.

"Suppose you’re dealing with people who say nasty things. One of the 

things the Buddha has you tell yourself if you’re hearing someone really 

lashing out at you, is, “An unpleasant sound has made contact at the 

ear.” We don’t usually think in those terms. We usually think, “Why is that 

person being so nasty to me?” And in doing that, we put ourselves right 

in the line of fire. Whereas if you can step back and think, “An unpleasant 

sound is making contact at the ear,” you’ve raised the level of your mind. 

You can look at the nasty words going right beneath you or right past you. 

You realize that what that person is saying is his or her own kamma, not 

yours. It doesn’t have to touch you.

The fact that people are saying those things doesn’t violate your rights 

because, after all, they’ve got a mouth and they can say whatever they 

want to with it. But you learn how to take yourself out of the line of fire. 

You can actually feel sorry for those people if they’re simply speaking out 

of greed, aversion, or delusion. If what they have to say is actually true, 

if you’ve actually done something wrong, then by lifting your mind to a 

higher plane, you’re in a better position to admit your mistake and to 

learn from it.

So this ability to depersonalize things is what heightens the mind, raises 

the level of the mind, so you’re up on the tower looking down at people

on the ground below, or up on a mountain looking down at the people in

the valley, seeing your life in a broader perspective." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu.