Never contradict these rules...Definition of goodness!

I'm beginning to tackle much more risky demons now where I know that negative energies can arouse passions and wrong-thoughts. This is like Descartes before his meditations: the rules are as taught by Buddha:

(1) Do NO evil ever.
(2) Actions arising from sense gratification always lead to greatly unpleasant consequences regardless how pleasant the invitation in the short term.
(3) Actions arising from the wish for the welfare of others are lead eventually to the greatest pleasures.
(4) Anger, Greed and Selfishness always lead to bad consequences, NEVER good.

Remember these, believe nothing else, and act with these in mind and things can't go far wrong :-)

An example:
A mistaken belief I often have is that if this person is a w****r then I have the right to be angry and treat them badly. A good example is my boss who behaves like a child, is never wrong despite being incompetent and makes life impossible for everyone at work. So I feel justified in being angry at him and making his life difficult.

But wait. If I am a good person and I can't put up with him being a w****r then what chance has he got of putting up with me if I'm a w****r!!

Likewise someone gets angry at you and you don't like it so you fight back. Well if you can't put up with them being angry, then what chance is there of them tolerating you being angry.

Any such argument based upon the "well they are like X so I will be like X" is doomed to failure.

Indeed the opposite argument is the only one that works.

"They are like X. I think X is a bad way to be, so I will not be like X".

So if someone punches you, the correct response should be to realise how much you didn't like that and make sure you never do that to anyone yourself!

That is already 50% of the worlds problems solved.

The other half of the problem is being aware of what we do to others. Often other people suffer in silence and we never realise what we are doing. This is more subtle. By promoting communication and listening to others we will get an idea of this. So always listen to peoples criticisms and attitudes to you : no smoke without fire. But at the same time treat what you hear wisely because it is someones attitude to you and is based upon their own needs.

If someone hates you because you always park in their space, and you know that it isn't really "their" parking space but a public parking space which they have gotten used to using ... then obviously their hatred is based upon their own need for a parking space.

If you were in their situation you would need to find another space. So I suppose you could help them find another space, or discuss it, or come to an agreement that you share the space. The root problem here is their own selfishness and it is a good situation to illustrate to us how bad our own selfishness would be!

A bit of thought and dispassionate "even" balanced thinking will solve most problems. I consider Tibet a lot. Even despite the most even approach from the Dalai Lama the wishes of his people are no nearer being met. So what is the even solution... well I suppose it is to become Chinese! Its just a name afterall. More practically the Communist system however will transfrom the religious practices of the Tibetans and that is the problem: not the national/ratial argument but the ideological argument. There are idelogical arguments the world over : and the Chinese have suffered from the ideology of their own government every bit as much as the Tibetans. That is why they fled to Taiwan. So the obvious way forward is to accept Beijing rule and Chinese authority like a cup accepts water, and then seek to transform China because you are China, just as the Chinese themselves are. Would a person by any other name still want to same things?