And as for the battles you fight in the world, choose them well. Choose your battles well. But always fight using goodwill. Remember that it is a strength.

"Remember that goodwill [mettā] is the desire not to harm anybody. If you can get other people to act in skillful ways, so much the better. But if you can’t, you have to guarantee that your own skillful actions aren’t going to be affected by other people’s crazy, strange, bad behavior. After all, your actions are yours. No one else can give you bad karma. You’re the only one who can give yourself bad karma. And you do that through a lack of goodwill, a lack of discernment. So goodwill’s something you have to keep in mind all the time. And as for the battles you fight in the world, choose them well. Choose your battles well. But always fight using goodwill. Remember that it is a strength."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill as a Strength"


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