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You reflect that beings are free to choose their actions, and you’re in no position to guarantee that everyone will choose to be skillful. Not even the Buddha could do that. So you keep your focus on training your own mind.

"So when you extend thoughts of goodwill [mettā] to others, you’re not thinking, “May you be happy doing whatever you’re doing.” You’re thinking, “May you understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” This is an attitude you can extend to all beings, without hypocrisy, regardless of how they’ve behaved in the past. Now, in some cases — where people have been particularly cruel — this may be difficult. You might feel that justice requires that they suffer first before they change their ways. But you have to remind yourself that people rarely see the connection between their misbehavior and their suffering, so wishing for them to suffer — even when it seems to serve the cause of justice — would rarely foster the causes for true happiness in the world. It’s better to wish that people come to their senses and have a change of heart on their own, and that you’d be willing to aid them in that process in whatever way you can. After all, wouldn’t you...
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A Mind Like Earth (2016, extract)

"Remember that when you’re reacting strongly to something outside, or even just reacting to little things that come in throughout the course of the day, it’s not that they’re moving in on you. You’re going out and feeding on them. The earth doesn’t feed. The earth just notices and stays solid. When the breath energy in the body is solid, it helps give you that quality of mind that’s like earth. Again, this doesn’t mean you sit there and just take whatever comes. But you’re in a much better position to see what really needs to be dealt with and what doesn’t, which issues are important and which are not. In particular, you get to see your own mind in action. Because there will be parts of the mind that are still not like earth, and they’ll want to react. But if you can side with the earth side of the mind, you can see those reactions for what they are. See how they’re a waste of energy; see how they muddy up your thinking, muddy up your powers of observation. So when the Buddha talk...
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You have to put aside your concern for the people you can’t help and focus instead on the areas where you can make a difference — realizing that some day there may come a time when you can help, but for the time being you have to be patient.

"The fourth brahma-vihāra is equanimity. Equanimity is expressed in a different manner from the other three. The first three are expressed with the phrase, “May all beings be happy” and “May they do this” and “May they do that.” In other words, it’s a wish. Equanimity is expressed by a statement of fact. “All living beings are the owners of their actions, heir to their actions, and so forth.” This is not a wish; it’s a statement of fact. There’s no “may” there at all. Equanimity is the appropriate emotion to feel when you see that there are beings who are doing things that will cause suffering and that no matter what you do, they will not stop. Or they are suffering from something in their past actions, and no matter how hard you try to help them you cannot stop that suffering. This is when the Buddha has you reflect on the fact of kamma: All beings are owners of their actions, and there are some cases where their actions prevent you from helping them or your own lack of skill p...
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We’ve been taught to believe that our goodness consists of our being concerned about things outside, and here we are telling ourselves that, for the time being, those things don’t matter.

"To maintain its health, the mind needs its own place to rest: not just resting in sleep, resting with alertness, awareness. That kind of place requires several skills. One is the skill of just being able to be quiet. Another is the skill of being able to cut away your interest in things outside. Some people find this to be the scary part of the meditation. We’ve been taught to believe that our goodness consists of our being concerned about things outside, and here we are telling ourselves that, for the time being, those things don’t matter. As they say in the forest tradition, the sky could be falling but we’re going to stay right here and not let it get to us, because we need a part of the mind that things don’t get to. That’s our sanity. That’s our safety. So learn how to find a spot inside where you’re at ease with the breath and learn how to protect it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No One in Charge" (Meditations9)
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Relating to Results (extract)

"Sometimes we’re told that in our practice of meditation, and in our approach to practice of the Buddha’s teachings as a whole, we shouldn’t be attached to results. Now, this statement can be taken in a wrong way and a right way. The wrong way would be that we don’t care about the results, that we just do what we want to do and let the chips fall where they may, convinced in the rightness of our intentions. That’s a recipe for disaster, because one of the first things we have to learn is that we can’t totally trust our intentions. After all, we’re here to learn what our intentions are, and the best way for testing them is to see how they bear out in action, what results they give. If something seems like a good intention, you follow it, and then you watch to see what the results are. Many times the results turn out different from what you expected, in which case there was something wrong with the intention. It wasn’t skillful enough. So this statement of not being attached to the ...
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Non-Reactive Judgment (extract)

"Pass judgment in a way that doesn’t debilitate you. That’s the main problem with most people’s inner critic. It passes judgment and leaves no room for improvement, passes judgment and leaves no room for believing that you can actually do something right. Your inner critic has to be trained to understand that it is possible to put an end to suffering and you can do it. You have to be responsible, but you are capable and you really will benefit. That’s the other part of the bad inner critic, the part that says, “No matter how hard you try, it’s going to be a waste, so don’t even bother.” That inner critic has to be banished and replaced, not with an uncritical mind, but with a more skillfully critical mind — starting with teaching yourself to be non-reactive. You can see unskillful things in you and you don’t get worked up about them. You recognize them as unskillful and then you try to be very matter-of-fact in overcoming them. So that’s how non-reactivity functions. It’s a suppo...
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It’s not because people are good that you spread goodwill to them. It’s because you don’t want to harm them. And this desire should apply to yourself as well.

"If you have trouble feeling goodwill [mettā] for yourself, ask yourself why. You might respond, “Well, I’m not a good person,” or whatever, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not because people are good that you spread goodwill to them. It’s because you don’t want to harm them. And this desire should apply to yourself as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsentimental Goodwill"
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