Mind poison
Generally speaking there are two ways of dealing with mind poison.
At first, for the beginners, we try to evade mind poisons, to not get attracted by them, to go around them and not get too much involved with them. Trying to run away from them, that is the first stage. That in fact you should really challenge it, work directly with it.
The second stage is to actually fight against it, make a kind of war on it.
Then the third stage is when your wisdom becomes much clearer and stronger. Then you use skilful means.
Now you are much stronger and you can actually challenge, make war, attack the negative emotions. You find a way to even use it as a friend, not as an enemy. You use it in such a way that it can be very skilfully used.
There are different levels, different stages. One has to work on it step by step.
Peace of mind
The following is something very important that we cannot do without.
We need to give our mind some rest, we need to bring it peace and joy. When we give time to meditate, or to do certain practices, it is to train our minds to bring peace and rest and relaxation, otherwise our mind cannot rest and we cannot find peace. It is too distracted and too turbulent. It is like our mind is sick, has fever, a cold or something like that. It does not act in a peaceful way.
Therefore, this kind of training, this formal practice to bring our mind rest and peace, is very important.