“Each time we suppress hatred, or a feeling of anger, it is so much good energy stored up in our favour; that piece of energy will be converted into the higher powers.”
— Swami Vivekananda
How many times were you consumed by a nasty thing that someone said or did to you? On the outside, you may have acted nonchalant. But inside, you seethed for days. What did you get?
You wasted all your energy that could’ve been invested in a fruitful exercise. while the other party went about their merry ways without giving the event another thought. Buddhagosha compared clinging to such anger with holding a burning ember to hit someone else; we first end up burning ourselves.
Instead, Swamiji suggests the model of “friendship, mercy, gladness, and indifference” to calm your mind-stuff (Chitta), be friendly towards decent people and subjects, show kindness towards the ones in misery, be happy when others are happy and things are going well, and be indifferent to evil.
By doing so, you will balance the bad karma in the world by creating good karma. You will also become better at regulating your thoughts and emotions, which means you will calm your mind and gain control over your circumstances and the circumstances of others. Because when you change, the world around you changes.
Friendship, mercy, gladness, and indifference: there’s no loss in this principle, only infinite gain.