Phakchok Rinpoche teaches that if we are holding any anger, we are not free. When you’re even mildly annoyed at someone, the mind is disturbed and there is some pain. When you are holding on to a twenty-year grudge, you are enmeshed in a story that is only issuing out distress moment after painful moment. From the standpoint of someone practicing to become free from suffering to help others, how can any grudge be worth holding on to? It makes no sense, actually, to teethe on a point of pain when the causes that produced that pain point have long ago come and gone. It is only the ego that feels the need to gnaw.