may I accept defeat..

and offer you victory.

Tip from the Dali Llama

"If someone insults, abuses and criticizes us, saying that we are incompetent and don't know how to do anything and so forth, we are likely to get very angry and contradict what the person has said. We should not react in this way; instead, with humility and tolerance, we should accept what has been said.

Where it says that we should accept defeat and offer the victory to others, we have to differentiate two kinds of situation. If, on the one hand, we are obsessed with our own welfare and very selfishly motivated, we should accept defeat and offer victory to the other, even if our life is at stake. But if, on the other hand, the situation is such that the welfare of others is at stake, we have to work very hard and fight for the rights of others, and not accept the loss at all.
One of the forty-six secondary vows of a bodhisattva refers to a situation in which someone is doing something very harmful and you have to use forceful methods or whatever else is necessary to stop that person's actions immediately: if you don't you have transgressed that commitment. It might appear that this precept and the fifth stanza, which says that one must accept defeat and give the victory to the other, are contradictory but they are not. The bodhisattva precept deals with a situation in which one's prime concern is the welfare of others: if someone is doing something extremely harmful and dangerous it is wrong not to take strong measures to stop it if necessary. Nowadays, in very competitive societies, strong defensive or similar actions are often required. The motivation for these should not be selfish concern but extensive feelings of kindness and compassion towards others. If we act out of such feelings to save others from creating negative karma this is entirely correct.

Q: It may sometimes be necessary to take strong action when we see something wrong, but whose judgment do we trust for such decisions? Can we rely on our own perception of the world?
A: That's complicated. When you consider taking the loss upon yourself you have to see whether giving the victory to the others is going to benefit them ultimately or only temporarily. You also have to consider the effect that taking the loss upon yourself will have on your power or ability to help others in the future. It is also possible that by doing something that is harmful to others now you create a great deal of merit that will enable you to do things vastly beneficial for others in the long run; this is another factor you have to take into account.
As it says in the Bodhicaryavatara, you have to examine, both superficially and deeply, whether the benefits of doing a prohibited action outweigh the shortcomings. At times when it is difficult to tell you should check your motivation. In the Sikshasamuccaya, Shantideva says that the benefits of an action done with bodhicitta motivation outweigh the negativities of doing it with such motivation. Because it is sometimes very difficult yet very important to see the dividing line between what to do and what not to do, you should study the texts that explain about such things. In lower texts it will say that certain actions are prohibited, while in higher ones it will say that those same actions are allowed. The more you know about all of this the easier it will be to decide what to do in any situation."