Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich,
and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.
Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
After my last monthly email, which I also published as the previous podcast episode,
I hosted a Live video Q&A, so Buddhist Boot Camp readers and podcast listeners
can tune-in from all over the world to ask questions and further discuss the topic
of understanding hatred, which is only possible by first being honest enough to
confront the hatred that is within each of us.
Problem is: our ego disguises our own hatred and justifies it as us simply being "right,"
while anyone with an opposing opinion or belief is "Wrong."
Israelis hate Palestinians who hate them in return, the people on the left hate the guy
in the Oval Office, while the people on the right want him re-elected,
Racists hate blacks, and homophobes hate gays, who hate them in return for so doing.
It's a vicious cycle Gandhi described as: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
One listener used the perfect example of peace activists fighting to prove
they are peace activists. The thing is we weren't born hateful. Our parents, teachers,
preachers, friends, society, and the media, have trained us to segregate over the years,
ultimately leading to a huge divide between Us and Them, making segregation the root
of hatred, though, it is subtly disguised as merely convenient or even necessary.
Perhaps the most beautiful outcome from the online discussion were comments by listeners
who said, "It's hard when you perceive that others are filled with hate, but now I see
"they may feel the same about me." And that's when another listener admitted that
talking about conflict between other people is a lot easier than facing the conflict
within herself. "But change comes from within," someone else said,
"and you can't change someone else, anyway; what you feed becomes stronger."
So one solution to overcoming the impulse to hate or reject that which we don't understand
is to respond to it by saying, "That's interesting." Not just to other people's
comments and remarks about what they believe, but to our own thoughts.
One listener said that when he sees something as unacceptable in someone else,
it actually mirrors for him what is unacceptable in himself.
It helps him on his journey from conditional love to unconditional love.
So whenever he feels defensive, he uses that feeling as a flag that his fear and ego
is defending itself because it has been triggered to fight.
One listener's solution was to stay away from those who think they are right.
I just don't know how that's possible. I'm surrounded by people who think they're right,
I just listen to them and think to myself, "That's interesting," without feeding
the ego's desire to correct or educate them, because that would imply that they are wrong
and I am right, and it's my job to "fix it," so everyone agrees with me.
But when it came to the big question of the hour, of whether there is a difference
between the hatred a Neo-Nazi feels towards the black, gay man, or the hatred he feels
towards the Neo-Nazi, there's absolutely no difference. Both sides are scared that their
rights, freedoms, values, and everything they hold dear, will be compromised by the other.
And both sides will go to extreme lengths to defend their beliefs, even violence.
My friend Marianne, who recently moved from a conservative state to a liberal one
with such different beliefs, said the move has been very interesting as she recognizes
hatred on both sides. The key, therefore, is to recognize hatred as what it is: a defense
against something that is threatening our egos. In the same way we often confuse
a bruised ego with a broken heart, we also defend ourselves when the ego perceives
other people's general opinion as a personal attack when it isn't. If we want peace,
it has to start with us being peaceful.
Someone may say something against my race and I don't need to take it personally,
attack back, or even defend it. I walk away from that experience reminded that people
will always hate what they don't understand. But that doesn't mean I have to act hatefully
towards anyone regardless of how I try to justify it. Because my beliefs don't make me
a better person, my behavior does. To be a kind, peaceful people, we must actually
BE kind and peaceful, not just toward those who agree with us, but toward everyone.
What they believe or do says everything we need to know about them,
how we respond says everything about us.
At the monastery, we used to chant, "GREED, HATRED, and IGNORANCE rise endlessly,
"I vow to abandon them." We acknowledge that the battle with greed, hatred,
and ignorance isn't a battle that we're going to win once and for all, it is a battle
that we're going to win time and time again.
If you want to know when the next Live Q&A will be, sign up to receive just one email
a month from me on the first of each month at BuddhistBootCamp.com
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or post them online. The book isn't mine, it's ours. So thank you for walking beside me
on this journey, I appreciate you.
Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless
and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com,
where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project,
watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.
We hope you have enjoyed this episode
and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions.
Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼