Seven Reasons Why It’s
Better Not To Hate Them
Diana Winston FALL 2004
tricycle
Even if they are really
horrible, greedy, corrupt, and completely deserve it. .
.
I know how easy it is to sit around during this
election year and smolder in rage. I have years of personal
experience reading newspapers or listening to news while the urge
to violence hijacks my mind. Getting wind of the latest degradation
to decades-old environmental legislation or another slash to health
care and education is sure to get me steaming. I have entertained
countless fantasies of moving to another country (and that’s the
tame end of things). But in spite of my anger, rage, and disbelief,
I have a commitment to try not to hate, or at least to try to
temper my hate with a little bit of compassion and understanding.
Why? Well, I think it’s the sane way to be—and my dharma practice
demands it.
To this end, I’ve concocted a set of reasons
that I use to remind myself not to hate our government. These
reasons are by no means meant to disempower me or prevent me from
acting. What they do instead is provide an antidote to my
bitterness. They serve as practice instruction to see how wide I
can open my heart. They provide a Buddhist twist to counteract my
habitual tendencies so that I can ultimately respond to perceived
injustice from a healthier place.
1. HATRED HURTS.
The Buddha taught that hatred is a form of
suffering. He said that holding hatred in the mind and heart is
like tightly clutching a hot coal in your hand—guess who suffers?
You can experience the burning quality of hatred by examining your
own mind. What does your mind feel like when it is filled with
love? Most likely you feel connection, spaciousness, openness. What
does it feel like when your mind is full of hate? Probably you feel
disconnection, pain, and separation, all accompanied by some good
old self-righteousness. Dharma practice is about the development
and cultivation of skillful mind states—no matter what the
situation. This is not to say difficult mind states don’t arise
unbidden, but which ones do you want to hang on to? What kind of
mind do you want?
2. NO ONE IS ETERNALLY OR INHERENTLY
ANYTHING.
Buddhist teachings remind us there is no
essential “self’ that lasts or is inherent. This person we are
hating is not always this way, has not always been this way, and
may act very differently at other times. And within each of us lie
the seeds of change. When I can remember this, my clinging to blame
can soften. I am reminded of the Buddhist tale of Angulimala, the
murderer who wore a garland of 999 fingers around his neck to
commemorate the brutal death of each of his victims. When the
Buddha saw that the murderer’s mother was to be his thousandth
victim, he intervened and, with a single teaching, converted this
evil criminal into a fully enlightened being, albeit one who still
had to accept the karmic consequences of his earlier actions. It’s
an interesting teaching tale of the potential for change within
each of us.
3. WE’RE THAT WAY, TOO.
No one corners the market on greed, hatred, or
delusion. These mental states are inside all of us. When I’m in the
middle of a heated argument, I sometimes point out to myself that
I’m filled with anger, just like the person I’m mad at. We may not
have the degree of anger we see reflected in the violence in the
world. We may not have the power to do damage on the level of a
world leader. But for anyone who has ever sat down to observe the
mind, it’s clear how plentiful the three poisons are in there. We
all might have the capacity to do anything, given the right
circumstances. When dire circumstances in Rwanda in the 1990s
turned neighbors and dear friends into murderous enemies and
rapists, one expert from Human Rights Watch stated: “This behavior
lies just under the surface of any of us.” Remember the famous
Milgram experiments at Yale in the 1960s, where subjects
administered harmful electric shocks to actors posing as
cosubjects, simply because authority figures instructed them to do so? It could be
us. In fact, it is us.
4. WE DON’T KNOW FOR SURE WHO IS
RIGHT.
This is a hard one to stomach, but it’s true.
How can we possibly know? We can hold long-cherished ideals, bur
the truth is, since we are not omniscient, some of what we believe
may be wrong. Review your own political history and ask yourself
whether your beliefs have changed over the years. Many of my
currently pacifist Buddhist friends were once part of militant
revolutionary organizations using violent means for social change.
According to basic Buddhism, one of the greatest forms of suffering
is attachment to views. No matter what the view, if we are
attached, we will suffer. The dharma invites us to rest in
not-knowing, to tolerate the discomfort of a mind with no firm
ground. It asks us for a more flexible mind that might be open to
other views. From this place, can we soften our critique of the
thing we hate? Sometimes when I’m really mad I say to myself,
“Diana, maybe in some way they’reright. You just don’t know for
sure.” And it’s true, I don’t. This does not mean I can’t develop
discriminating wisdom that allows me to keep seeing clearly, and
acting on my insights. I just try not to hold on to my views so
tightly, especially the views that make me see others as
enemies.
5. YOU CAN’T FIGHT KARMA.
Buddhism teaches that acts that cause suffering
to oneself or others are rooted in an ignorance of karma. According
to teachings of karma, unwholesome actions lead to suffering in
this life or the next. Even if you don’t believe in rebirth, it’s a
safe bet that ignoring karmic laws will take its toll and lead to
suffering in this life, not to mention the next. From a Buddhist
perspective, the act of hating can only bring the hater unhappy
results in the long run. So hating is just not a good idea,
karmically speaking.
Also remember that if your enemies are acting in
unskillful ways, they will probably suffer quite a bit down the
road. The tremendous compassion His Holiness the Dalai Lama feels
toward the Chinese is striking. His compassion comes from
understanding karma, knowing that the suffering the Chinese
military has caused the Tibetan people in these fifty years of
cultural genocide has already had and will continue to have pretty
scary results for the Chinese. Rather than filling with rage and
revenge, his heart goes out to them.
6. THROUGH UNDERSTANDING WILL COME
COMPASSION.
One reason we hate is that we don’t see the full
force of the other’s situation. When I can’t feel
compassion—whether I’m fighting with my partner or listening to a
news item on the radio—I can ask myself, “What is it I don’t
understand I” The more thoroughly we can understand the source of
pain—causing actions, the more we personalize the supposed evildoer
rather than being caught in projection and assumption, which
generally breed more misunderstanding and hatred.
When you see someone acting in a way that’s
upsetting you, stop for a moment and imagine being that person.
Imagine the streams of causes and conditions that led to this very
moment and that particular behavior. Bring to mind the person’s
early history and training, the levels of fear and ignorance inside
them. Remind yourself of the structural violence under which this
person grew up—racism, classism, unexamined privilege. Bring to
mind an entire culture that has likely validated the
action.
Start small—say, with your anger at a
coworker—and expand the inquiry to political figures and ultimately
social systems. Keep in mind that the point is not to minimize
their actions nor to excuse them, bur to foster an
investigation—based compassion that softens hatred.
7. HATRED WILL NEVER CEASE WITH
HATRED.
As the Buddha taught in the Dhammapada, hatred
will never cease with hatred, but only through nonhatred will
hatred cease. We will reap what we sow. The Buddha uncompromisingly
advocated the development of skillful mind states such as love,
compassion, and generosity as true antidotes to their unskillful
opposites. My own experience in years of meditation has shown me
that whatever qualities I practice, those qualities increase. If I
want to be more generous, I need to practice generosity. If I spend
a lot of time on obsessive worrying, more worries are sure to come.
The Buddha likened this phenomenon to filling a bucket a few drops
at a time—one day we look down and the bucket is full. What do we
want in our bucket?
Thich Nhat Hanh’s term “being peace” speaks to
this principle. It invites us to link ends and means in our
activism (and in whatever we do in our lives). What would a protest
look like that didn’t replicate the structures it was fighting
against? A. J. Muste, the longtime radical activist, said, “There
is no way to peace, peace is the way.” If we want to have a vision
of a better world—free from hate, violence, and destruction—where
else do we start except with ourselves?
Sound daunting? Perhaps, bur take this list as a
mental experiment to practice and reflect on. Study the results in
your life and activism and you’ll see that these explorations won’t
result in inaction. We may fear that if we’re too good-hearted, we
will be ignored or taken advantage of, and the political crisis
will continue unchallenged. But there is a big difference between
loving our enemies and letting them get away with their wrongdoing.
We can hold these principles and practices in mind and still act on
behalf of justice, peace, equity, environmental sanity. What would
the world be like if we acted from a place of compassion,
open-heartedness, and a willingness to maybe kind of sort of love
the enemy? It’s an amazing thought…..