In a flood of messages one hundred and forty characters or less, one stands out for a brief moment: Tell me again how I’m not supposed to hate the people who hate me so much they are causing me harm?
To respond in the same medium would be inadequate. Depth and nuance would be lost, the use of abbreviations and a lack of tone leaving too much room for misinterpretation. Instead, the question wedges itself in my mind, there to be contemplated over a cup of tea, whilst in conversation with a friend, or during a period of self-reflection. After a while, it gains a sort of urgency, but I still have no idea how to respond to such a question.
I know that there is no formula or trick or guide for not hating those who hate us or those we love. No one can tell anyone not to hate, and no one should. We get to feel how we feel, and we need to be honest about that.
For my part, hatred is a burden and a painful one to carry. It weighs on my heart and mind, drains my energy and inhibits my capacity for growth. It also makes it hard for me to show up for anyone, even those who are close to me. But hatred also feels like a pretty normal and rational response to anyone willfully bent on dehumanising me for my embodiment. It is a fraught relationship because I understand it’s not so easy to choose how we feel, but I also see how hatred has yet to have served me well in my life, and I would like not to default to it.
So how do we not respond to hate with hate when it seems to come so naturally and makes sense? Often, the message we get is that there are only two responses to oppression: aggression or passivity. We can either roll over and accept the harm being caused, or we must lash out, striking back with greater force. But how we respond isn’t as essential as understanding the motivation or intention that drives that response. Which brings me to the topic of love.
The redemptive power of love has a long lineage, from Gautama Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. A patriarchal lineage, you will notice. Despite the biological myth that women are just naturally better at compassion, love and care, our go-to examples prove that ‘expertise’ continues to be recognised in men. But I digress.
If we are to understand the universal wisdom of love and it’s transformative power, we first must understand what it is we are talking about. Often, when love is mentioned, it is rendered small. It is confined to family or intimate relationships, sometimes friends, and is conditional. We offer love if we think it has been earned or deserved. But the love these great wisdom lineages speak of, the love that prevents us from returning hate with hate, is about more than individual connection. It’s love for the fullness of humanity and our shared world, born from a sense of interconnectedness that has nothing to do with sameness.
In Buddhism, this kind of love is called ‘bodhicitta’, a Sanskrit word that translates to English to mean ‘Awakened Heart’. But Buddhism is just one of many packages in which universal wisdom can be found. We could also use the word ‘agape’, a Greek word for what is considered the ‘highest form’ of love. But what we call it is not as important as understanding the qualities of it, and how we can connect with it.
The first time I personally connected with this kind of love was long before I came to Buddhism. I was fifteen, had just started high school, and was beginning to feel pretty comfortable with my queer identity. The bullying I had faced during junior high seemed to have been left behind upon graduating to high school. It was in this space that I could really think about who I was with confidence and a sense of contentment and ease. As I considered this, I considered that there were people I did not know, who I had never met and probably never would, who hated me. They hated me enough that they wished I was dead or that I’d never been born. They hated me just for existing. This opened up further as I considered all the other people for whom this was also true. How many human beings on the planet are ‘othered’ or oppressed, vilified and marginalised because of their embodiments: The colour of their skin, their ability, their cognition, their gender?
As my heart broke open to considering that kind of pain, I thought of what a person has to cut off in themselves to hate like that. What must be fed to us as children by the people who are supposed to love and care for us, that could cause us to hate so intensely? What must societies and cultures perpetuate and uphold to enable anyone to deny their own humanity by denying the humanity of another?
The tender quality of this experience was my first shift from ‘I am suffering’ to ‘there is suffering’. The heartbreak I felt was for the vastness of the human condition and the pain we all carry and contribute to. To be human is to contain multitudes, both individually and collectively. To be human is to have the capacity to connect with a deep sense of care for all beings. And to be human is to be capable of causing each other great harm.
Agape, bodhicitta, unconditional love — whatever you want to call it, whatever works for you — invites us to respond to the fullness of a situation and the humanity of everyone involved. It expands our capacity to care for others. It enables us to show up and bear witness to suffering, not with stoicism, but with open hearts and skilful means. It gives us the strength to name when harm is being caused and establish boundaries for protection. It also invites others to connect with the same in themselves.
Connecting with this kind of love need not be some lofty challenge. It’s right there in the hatred we are feeling, the anger and hurt and fear. If we believed anyone to be incapable of redemption, and therefore incapable of love, we would not respond with such feelings. We would simply accept them, as they are, and expect nothing better of them. To do otherwise would be like hating a rock for being hard or fire for being hot. We would not be surprised by their actions or appalled by the harm they were causing if we didn’t recognise the humanity of their inhumanity.
When we stop seeing those who hate us as fixed, immutable anomalies and instead see them as fellow human beings subject to the very same systems of exploitation and inequality as we are, we have a better idea of what we are all up against. This does not mean we condone wrongdoing, turn a blind eye to harm, or excuse the violent, cruel or willfully ignorant ways in which someone contributes to systems of inequality. Holding people accountable for their actions, because we believe them to be capable of change and worthy of redemption, is an act of love. A deep, unshakable love that doesn’t belong to anyone but can be felt by everyone.
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This blog was originally published on Medium.
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