If someone defames and disgraces you, that is simply the result of having criticized and dishonored others in the past, especially bodhisattvas. Instead of feeling angry with such people, you should feel grateful to them for giving you the opportunity to purify your past misdeeds.
In all circumstances, it is important to act in accordance with the teachings – but especially at such moments. What is the point of having received teachings if you do not apply them? Unfavorable circumstances are the best opportunity you will have to put the teachings into practice.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva
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Further quotes from the book The Heart of Compassion:
- Phenomena adorn emptiness, but never corrupt it
- Giving and taking
- Conduct
- The only thing that is really worth doing
- The reason you are wandering in samsara
- Neither discouragement nor pride
- Powerful sources of help
- The importance of relative bodhicitta
- Accepting short-term sufferings
- Phenomena adorn emptiness
- Practice day and night
- Two types of friends
- Seeing clearly how deceiving the ways of the world are
- Cutting through subtler misconceptions
- Just projections of the mind
- Protecting ourselves from future suffering
- Impermanence dawning in your mind
- A practice based on your mind
- The three aspects of diligence
- The children of the buddhas