Patanjali on Mean People.

•    We all run into mean people during our lifetime.  Sometimes it is a co-worker or a fellow parent; those are the easy ones. What do you do when you have someone in your family that consistently treats you badly?  I was recently told by a very wise woman to keep showing them how to do the right thing, but my inner voice is a bit of a petulant teen and always pipes up, "why do I have to keep doing the right thing when they keep doing sucky things to me?"  The answer is because I am looking for peace and peace is not found through retaliation.  I know this deep in my heart and am working in this lifetime to cultivate a peaceful mind and loving heart.  Love is not found through hateful speech, but how tempting it is to respond in a like fashion.  So, what to do about this dilemma?  As always, ask and you shall receive.....I picked up Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and began to turn the pages, I figured what I was looking for would leap off the page at me.  As I turned the pages I noticed one of the sutras had hand written notes beside it; some years ago I had done a workshop on the sutras and must have notated this particular sutra then, and it was perfect for this situation. The sutra is 1.33 and is loosely translated as:

                                          The mind becomes peaceful and free
                                           when the qualities of the heart are cultivated:
                                           friendship toward the joyful,
                                           compassion toward the suffering,
                                           happiness toward the pure, and
                                           disregard toward the impure.
     This sutra has been immensely helpful for me and my perspective on "mean people".  If one has a peaceful mind one does not lash out at others, yet when the mind is in turmoil we suffer and we want others to suffer with us.  Do I want to lash out and hurt someone who is suffering?  No, that goes against the true nature of who we really are.  I believe we are each pieces of God having a human experience, sometimes we are just more human than others.  I am trying to follow this sutra and embrace the joyful, to find compassion for those who suffer, to find happiness in that which is pure, and to disregard that which is impure - those mean people in our lives.  At the end of the day do you really want to spend your time and energy fretting over the mean things people do to you?  I don't.