This article is based off of a dharma talk I gave this past Monday for the Burlington Dharma Collective. That talk is available to paid subscribers here. If you want to access it but can’t afford a paid subscription, just let me know and I’ll give you one, no questions asked.
This post is about love. And when I talk about love, I’m also talking about mindfulness, because mindfulness is synonymous with love. To really allow something to fully be just as it is, and to stay present, nonjudgmental, and curious with it through whatever pain and wonder it undergoes, is to love.
As we try to bring mindfulness off the cushion and into our real lives, into facing the current events of the world, our kindness and love are easily challenged. Hatred has a sneaky way of hiding covertly in our motivations. It can even hide behind the guise of love.
Last weekend I went to write a dharma talk at a coffee shop in Burlington, and on the window in huge letters were the words “F*CK ICE.”
I understand the sentiment there, but I don’t find it very helpful. There’s hatred behind those words. There is also love in there somewhere, there is care for the people who are being murdered, deported, separated from their children, their mothers and fathers. But love, real love, does not divide us. It erases lines in the sand, it doesn’t draw more of them. “F*CK ICE” draws lines.
While it is indeed subversive to publicly renounce ICE when there’s clearly danger in doing that, what would be even more subversive would be to try to love the people you disagree with, the people you hate, and who hate you. Whether it’s the ICE agents, the lawmakers or the politicians, the person with the signs in their yard across the street from you, or the person in your family who is estranged or causing division. To listen, or find patience, or try to understand their histories, their stories, where they came from, why they are doing what they are doing. How might they be like me? Because if we really want to get to the root of the problem, we would not be subverting each other, we would be subverting hatred itself. And we cannot do that with more hatred. It doesn’t work that way. We can only do that with love.
“Hatred never ceases with hatred, but by love alone is healed”
-the Buddha
When I say love, I don’t mean a valentine’s day card, I mean whatever the beginning of love might look like for you towards someone who really bothers you. Maybe it’s just looking at them from a distance, seeing that they are a human, that they were once a baby. Maybe it’s understanding that they, too, feel pain, and are just trying to feel ok. Maybe it’s seeing that they were badly wounded at some point in their lives, and their harmful behavior is how they’re coping with that. That they don’t know better, otherwise they would do better.
What if you watched some of the video footage of violence and pretended to be the one who is the offender, looked at them thinking “that’s me”? Or “that’s my child”?
Hatred is sneaky, and can masquerade as love. We call it “fierce compassion,” misusing that term to justify our hate-motivated actions. It feels good to be angry, it feels like protection. And the energy of anger can indeed be quite useful for boundary setting, for standing firmly in knowing that we deserve to be treated with respect and care, for standing up for what is good, for what is right. But anger also burns. It burns people around us as it burns our own hearts.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. When we’re mindful of anger, we honor it, we listen to all of what it has to say - the love behind it says that people deserve to be treated with care and respect. The pain behind it burns. When we’re mindful of anger, we don’t shame the anger away (that’s also just more hatred), we tend to the whole of the experience, and naturally the mind keeps the assertive, protective energy behind the anger (because that part feels good), and leaves behind the part of it that wants to cause more harm (the part that feels bad). Through experiential understanding, the mind lets go of the suffering and keeps the love.
For me, the tricky place of trigger tends to be when people have the same political beliefs as me, but they’re trying to make change from a place of hatred. There’s another message behind that sign, to everyone who hates ICE: you belong here. You’re part of our tribe. Sometimes, the more entrenched we get in our beliefs, the more we feel a sense of belonging. For some people, it might never have been about the ideology, it was always about having a safe place to belong, a family who will protect us. We are social creatures, and we’ve survived this long by depending on each other for support. Political parties and ideologies are like tribes.
The other side of the “you belong here” message of the sign is that if you disagree, with this sign, then you are definitely not part of our tribe. You do not belong here. And also, perhaps, F*ck You.
This bothered me, but when I break it down, it’s not hard to understand that we all want to belong somewhere, or that we feel excruciatingly helpless in the face of all this horrendous violence, and we just want to do something about it. Writing F*CK ICE in big letters satisfies that need on some level. So I almost wanted to say “fuck this coffee shop,” but I caught myself. My red flag was the irritation, the subtle sense of self-righteousness as I stood in line. I felt a tightening in my chest and throat. I noticed it and realized what was happening. Anger. Burning me.
My practice has to be to keep locating love as my north star. So I say yes to the anger, yes, of course I am irritated seeing something that I think is contributing to the problem. I’m afraid that in our efforts to protect, we’re going to incite even more violence. There was love behind my irritation, a desire for peace. But I don’t need the the self-righteousness. That is actually separating me even more from others, and from the deep grief within me that needs to come out, that needs to mourn my own state of confusion and pain. It’s more of the very problem I am irritated at.
Hatred is like a disease that wants to replicate itself. It infects us and then tries to infect everyone we touch. It keeps itself alive by convincing us that it is justifiable, that it is, in fact, love. When we’re angry, we want to hurt other people, inciting anger in them. But love works the same way. It wants to spread, to multiply, to fill all the hearts it connects with. When love connects with hatred, it manifests as compassion and begins to heal the anger. Grief arises, connecting us all in our shared pain.
Mindfulness is love. It’s nonjudgmental attention to whatever is happening. That is the subversion that’s needed to change the trajectory of violence. Change can happen, and place of leverage is right here in our own hearts. When we lead with love, love is what influences every interaction we have. That’s what spreads. Not hatred.
We must stop believing in the power of hatred and advocating on its behalf to solve the problem of hatred. Time to believe in love.
I realize this post might bring up some strong feelings, so I wholeheartedly welcome your honest comments below.
