We need to get to know our emotions. Right now, they are strangers to us. When we come across them, sometimes we react as if we were being confronted by a bandit. Instead, we should make their acquaintance, and then gradually make friends with them or create a wholesome relationship with them. In the end, the fact that anger or some other emotion no longer arises is not a result of forcefully shutting it out, but a matter of very naturally or even joyfully coming to the point where you make friends with it and are naturally in control.
17th Karmapa
Nurturing Compassion: Teachings from the First Visit to Europe
source: http://karmapafoundation.eu/kfe-publications/nurturing-compassion/
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