All beings truly want to be happy and content; so why do we continually and repeatedly create situations for ourselves and others that only lead to greater suffering?  •  so many large-scale problems in the world, such as warfare, famine, hatred, injustice, poverty, can be traced back to just four simple patterns: grasping, greed, hatred and ignorance  • they are tricky, because they start out so simply and innocently  •  for instance, with grasping, maybe we're window shopping and we see a beautiful pen; we admire this beautiful pen, and then we buy it  •   the pen is now our property, and we get really pissed off if someone takes it or damages it  •  along with that grasping comes its companion, greed:  you think, that's really nice, but look at that other beautiful pen  •  I could have two pens, three pens... I could have a pen factory  •  then we can feel justified about destroying anything that gets in our way, which is where aggression and hatred come in  •  and then there's ignorance, which is our tendency to pretend we don't know what we are doing  •  ignorance also has the quality of stubbornly holding certain ideas, and closing our minds to other possibilities  •  we can see the workings of these four patterns in ourselves and in all around us  •  but we also see the four counteracting forces that are also deep within us  •  we don't have to be caught in the force of greed, but we can cultivate generosity  •  we can let loose of grasping  •  we don't have to cling to hatred; we can cultivate love  •  and in response to ignorance, we can apply insight and learning and curiosity  •  by seeing the force of these poisonous habits and emotions, we also are opening to the force of their counterparts.