All sentient beings, everyone around you, enemies, friends, neutral people are very important because your Enlightenment depends on them. It is by and with them that we can begin to cultivate spiritual qualities like patience. In fact, the best person for helping us to develop patience is an enemy. You might wonder how that is that possible. Well, how can you practise patience if you have no enemies who try your patience? An enemy is just as precious as someone who benefits you, because without them, how can you practise patience?

One of the qualities of a Buddha is that he has patience. If you want to become a Buddha, you must love every single sentient being that exists in the six realms. Your actual Enlightenment is dependent on every single sentient being, and your attitude and motive towards them. They are very kind to exist to let you develop this! If instead, you show others a bad face, gossip about them, shout, hurt and abuse them, you do not realise how precious they are. Shantideva, the esteemed Buddhist scholar explains in the Bodhicaryavatara that these sentient beings are just as precious as the Buddhas; they are equal.

The Buddhas are important because you need their teachings, their blessings, their inspiration and their guidance. But in order to fulfill what they have taught, you need sentient beings*. Yes, all sentient beings - those you love, those you hate and those you feel neutral towards. The very fact that you have the words "hated", "loved" and "neutral" in your vocabulary shows you that you are not practising patience.

You have to learn to love everyone and everything. We should start with our Guru, our wives, our husbands. Have we been mistreating our wives? Have we been talking wrongly to our maids? Have we been mistreating and speaking wrongly to our husbands, our friends or our relatives? If we have, we are not making progress. And if we are not making progress, we will be the ones who suffer.

Tsem Tulku Rinpoche

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