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patience with them. Therefore, if there s nobody angry at you, there s no opportunity to put into
practice the teachings you ve received from the Buddha and your gurus. That s why the angry person
is most kind, precious and indispensable in your life, and much more important than medicine for
cancer or AIDS. We think those medicines are so valuable, but when you think about it this way, you
can see how much more precious the angry person is. The benefits of practicing patience are infinite.
We always want in our life someone who loves us. We feel that this is important for our happiness.
But you can see now that it s much more important to have in our life someone who doesn t love us,
who s angry at us, so that we can practice training our minds. As I mentioned before, if you don t
have such a person, if you don t train your mind, then even if you do find a friend, there s the danger
that through lack of patience, you ll turn your friend into an enemy.
Therefore, to maintain harmonious relationships with others, to keep your friends, you have to
practice patience. To lead a happy and successful life, you almost have to train yourself like a soldier
preparing for battle. Soldiers train before marching off to war. You need to do the same. Training your
mind by practicing meditation on patience is the way to prepare yourself for the battles of daily life.
Leaving aside the happiness of future lives or that of other sentient beings, even for the happiness of
this life, you have to practice patience.
The power of positive thinking
So now, going back to what I was saying before, look at the indescribable benefits of seeing in a
positive light those who don t love you, those who are angry at you. Look at the profits you can reap
 every happiness all the way up to enlightenment and the ability to bring every happiness to all
sentient beings. The more clearly you understand this, the easier it will be to look positively at
someone who is angry with you. In this way, your own anger does not arise and you generate a happy,
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peaceful, patient mind instead.
No matter how angry at you the other person gets, no matter how much the other person whines
and complains, your patient mind never sees that person as an enemy, as someone to avoid, as
someone to get away from, as irritating. Rather, you see that person as kind, precious. You feel,
 She s purifying my negative karma. All this criticism of me helps purify my negative karma of having
criticized and harmed others. How kind she is to help me in this way.
By transforming your mind into patience like this, you get this immediate peace and happiness 
that day, that minute, that second  and the long-term benefits as well. All this is due to the kindness
of that angry person. If you do not practice patience, if you interpret what the angry person is doing
with her body, speech and mind as negative, as harmful to yourself  your mind applies a negative
label to the situation and you believe in that  your own anger will arise. That anger will make you
see the angry person as negative, undesirable, someone you want to neither see nor help, someone
you want to lash out at and hurt. When your mind is angry you see the other person in a completely
different light, opposite to the way in which your patience perceives that person. Your anger makes
her look repulsive.
The happiness and difficulties we experience every day come from our mind. Whatever we re
experiencing at any given moment is dependent upon the way we think, our concepts, our attitude.
Our attitude determines how we feel.
For example, once in Tibet there were a couple of monks who returned to their monastery after a
long and tiring journey. To welcome them back, their teacher offered them cold tea. One of the
disciples thought,  How kind our teacher is. He knew we were hot and thirsty so he intentionally gave
us tea that was cold. The other thought,  How mean and lazy. He couldn t even give us hot tea, and
got upset and angry. So, he destroyed himself. There was no benefit from the way he thought to either
himself or his teacher. But, by having a positive view, the first student made himself and his teacher [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]