5. Acquire the habit of being dissatisfied with others only in the same way as you are dissatisfied with yourself. When you are dissatisfied with yourself, you are dissatisfied with your actions, not with your soul. The same way with your fellow man, judge his actions, but love him.
6. In order not to do any evil to your fellow man, in order to love him, train yourself never to say anything bad either to him or of him, and in order to train yourself to do this, train yourself not to think anything evil of htm, not to let a feeling of uncharitableness even enter your thoughts.
7. Can you be angry with a man for having cankering sores? It is not his fault that the sight of his sores annoys you. Even so act towards the faults of other people.
But you might say that a man has his reason which should help him to recognize his faults and to correct them. This is true. But you also are endowed with reason and you can form the judgment that you must not be angry with a man because of his faults, but rather endeavor by rational and kindly treatment, without anger, impatience or haughtiness, to awaken his conscience.
ways busy with something and always pleased with an opportunity to disconcert and to insult anyone who addresses them. Such men are apt to be very disagreeable. But you must remember that they are very unfortunate, strangers to the joy of a good disposition, and they should not be censured, but pitied.
9. Nothing can soften wrath, even justified wrath, as quickly as to remark to the angry person about the object of his anger: "He is so unfortunate." Even as the rain puts out the flames, so compassion acts upon wrath.
10. If a man who means to do harm to his enemy only attempted to imagine vividly that he had already done as he desired, and saw his enemy suffering in his body or in his spirit from wounds, illness, humiliation or poverty; if a man only attempted to imagine this and realized that all this evil was the work of his hands, the meanest man would cease from wrath after such vivid realization of his enemy's sufferings. Schopenhauer,
11. God guard you from pretending to love and to have compassion if you feel no love or compassion. This is worse than hatred. But may God preserve you from failing to catch and to keep alive the spark of compassion and divine love to your enemy when God sends it to you. There is nothing more precious than that.
VI.
Combating the Sin of Uncharitableness
1. When I am condemned, it is disagreeable and painful to me. How to be relieved of this feeling? First of all by humility: If you know your weakness you will not be angry when others point it out. It is unkind of them, but
they are right. Then by the exercise of reason; inasmuch as in the end you remain just as you were, only if you had too high an opinion of yourself, you may have to change it. But principally by forgiveness. There is only one way to keep from hating those who injure us,—it is by doing good to them; though you may not be able to change them, you can curb yourself. Amiel.
2. If you are a little angry, count up to ten before you do or say anything. If you are very angry count up to one hundred. If you think of this when you are angry, you will not need to count at all.
3. The best beverage in the world is when you have an angry word on your very tongue, not to say it, but to gulp it down. Mohammed.
4. The more a man lives for his soul, the less annoyance he has in all his dealings, and the less occasion for wrath.
5. Think well and comprehend that every man acts as It seems best to him. If you will always think of this, you will never be angry with anyone, you will never reproach or scold anyone, for if it be better for another man to do that which displeases you, he is right and cannot do otherwise. But if he is in error and does that which is worse for himself, he may be pitied, but you should not be angry with h™. Epicieius.
6. A deep river will not be muddied if you fling a stone into it. Even so with man. If a man is stirred up over insults he is not a river, but a puddle.
7. Let us remember that we shall all return to the soil, and let us be meek and gentle. Saadi,
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 183
VII.
Uncharitableness Harms Most of All Him Who
Harbors It
1. No matter how much harm anger causes to others, it is most harmful to him who harbors it. And anger is always more harmful than that which has provoked it.
2. There are people who love to be angry, and rage and injure others without cause. We can understand why a miser injures other people. He desires to possess himself of that which belongs to others, in order to enrich himself. He injures people for his own material benefit. But a mean man injures others without any profit for himself. What madness! Socrates,
3. To do no harm even to enemies—herein is great virtue.
He must certainly perish who encompasses the ruin of another. Do no evil. Poverty is no justification for evil. If you commit evil, you will be still more impoverished.
Men may escape the effects of the malice of their enemies, but can never escape the consequences of their own sins. This shadow will haunt their footsteps until it ruins them.
He who would not live in grief and sorrows, let him do no harm to others.
If a man loves himself, let him do no evil no matter how slight it be. Hindu wisdom.
4. To be virtuous is to be free in spirit. Men always angry with others, always fearing something and yielding to passions cannot be free in spirit. He who is not free in spirit, having eyes cannot see, having ears cannot hear, eating cannot taste. Confucius.
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184 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
5. You think that the object of your wrath is your enemy, yet your own wrath which has entered your heart is your principal enemy. Therefore make peace with your enemy as quickly as possible, and put out of your heart that painful sentiment.
6. Drop by drop a pail is filled; even so man is filled with malice though he accumulate it little by little, if he permits himself to be angry with others. Evil returns to him who launches it even as dust thrown against the wind.
Neither in Heaven nor in the sea, neither in the bowels of the mountains nor anywhere in the world is there a spot where a man can rid himself of the malice that is in his heart. Remember this. JamapadQ.
7. In the Hindu law it is said: as surely as it is cold in the winter time and warm in the summer season, even as surely it is evil with the evil man, and good with the good man. Let no one engage in a quarrel, though he be offended and suffer, let no one give offense in word, deed or thought. All these things rob a man of his happiness.
8. If I know that anger robs me of true happiness, 1 can no longer consciously engage in enmities with others as I was wont to do, or glory in my anger, boast of it, puff it up, and find excuses for it, count myself important and others insignificant, lost or mad; I cannot—^at the first intimation of rising anger—do otherwise but feel that I alone am to blame or refrain from seeking peace with those who are estranged from me.
But this is not sufficient. If I know now that anger is evil for my soul, I also know that which misleads me into this evil. And that is my forgetting that the same spirit dwells in others as it does in me. I see now that this sepa-rateness from people, this recognition of self as being above others is one of the principal causes of human enmity. Re-
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membering my past life I see that I never permitted my anger to rise against those who I considered to be above myself, and that I never offended such people. But the slightest act of a man whom I believed to be beneath me, if it displeased me, aroused my anger and evoked an insult on my part, and the higher I felt myself above him, the more lightly I insulted him; sometimes the mere thought of a man's inferior position led me to insult him.