My very dear mother,
I heard that you had a very hard time when you were staying with __. I just want to remind you of two quotations from the great bodhisattva Shantideva. The first quotation is basically about accepting one’s own karma.

Think, “In the past I gave such a harm to sentient beings, therefore I deserve to receive this harm that sentient beings are giving me.” So, however we are treated by them, not only in the past, but also in the future, however we are treated—what we call harmed by them, so we should realize in this way and practice.

Another quotation that is extremely beneficial when we believe other people are harming us, is to transform that into developing compassion; use that as a means to develop compassion in our heart. That is what is of the most need for others, and turns the harm into benefit. Think, “I created the karma, therefore I will receive this harm from sentient beings. Didn’t I make sentient beings totally get lost?” This means in the beginning we harmed others, so we created karma which persuades those sentient beings to give harm to us this time. By that harm, it causes the person to be lost from the human realm and get reborn in the lower realm. So that’s why after harming us, the person dies, and that harm causes them to born in a hell realm, like a ground up on a mountain, the person fell down from a precipice into the hole of hell. That’s why here, the person is totally under the control of karma and delusion. The original cause of being born in the hole of hell is karma. So that person is only the object for arising our compassion. There is no choice at all— automatically, immediately we want to benefit that sentient being, to save him from the hell realm, instead of arising anger and harming him back again! So this should be kept and used; this is the most important practice.

Also protect oneself from arising anger, also heresy, because it endangers our life and it destroys merit—not only the merit created that day, that week, month or year; even past life merit. Any merit which is not dedicated to achieving enlightenment, and even the merit dedicated to enlightenment gets destroyed; it becomes smaller, just like a mountain where many trucks came and took stone away, but still the mountain is there. So without merit, there is no happiness to enjoy; without merit there is no realization, even more important, that means no enlightenment. That means we cannot liberate numberless sentient beings; we can’t enlighten numberless sentient beings. So you can see how unbelievably important it is to protect merit to develop compassion.

These two teachings from Shantideva’s advice are more precious than a billion, zillion dollars, mountains of gold and diamonds, even the wish-fulfilling jewels that fill the whole sky.

With much love and prayer for you dear mother. We don’t have much time to live, death can happen any day, any moment, so it is good to try to keep the mind more on Dharma, especially compassion to sentient beings and devotion to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Then lots of virtuous activities will happen every day, every moment. Then other people who scold or harm us or are angry at us, then everybody has to say goodbye and go to a pure realm for a better rebirth, then they all have to ask us, “Can we meet again next time?” They might express this with tears.

With big love and prayer...