Dhammapada 5 - 6

na hi verena verāni, sammantīdha kudācanaṃ
averena ca sammanti, esa dhammo sanantano

pere ca na vijānanti, mayamettha yamāmase
ye ca tattha tato sammanti medhagā

Not by hatred are hatreds calmed at any time
By non-hatred they cease, this teaching is primeval

And others don't realise that we should be restrained.
But if they do realise this, then they will settle quarrels.

Verse 5 is one of the most famous Buddhist aphorisms. Hatred is like fuel on the fire, it only leads to more hatred. These two verse continue the theme established in verses 3 and 4: that we are never justified in holding a grudge. Vera, translated here as hatred can also mean "revenge, hostile action." It's actually related to the term vīra which usually translates as "hero" but can also mean something like "mighty". Avera then is the absence of hatred: "friendliness, friendly, peaceable".

The verses tell us that this idea is sanantano or "primeval, or "of old, for ever, eternal", the word being related to the Latin senex, and the English senile. So it could mean that the teaching is old, or that it will always apply.

Either way it is an important principle. And those who know this principle restrain their hatred (line 6a). Actually the first line of verse 6 is difficult to translate because the word yamāmase seems only to occur once (a hapax legomenon), and is of unclear etymology. I have followed K.R. Norman in reading it as an optative of √yam a verbal root meaning 'restraint'. Others relate it to the god of death Yama, and make the line say something like: Others do not know that we must all face death. There is good and useful Dharma in this approach. It reminds us that our future destination depends on our conduct in this life. If we indulge in hatred the traditions suggests that we are destined for the hell-realms. I would say that being angry has a hellish quality anyway. [see also Jayarava Rave. 08-02-2008: The Anger Eating Yakkha] That said however, the idea of restraint seems to fit the context a little better I think.

Although it is clear that the text is saying not to hold grudges, and that when one feels anger one should restrain oneself, it's not entirely clear how one might do that from these verses. There is such a plan in the Aṅguttara Nikāya however (sutta V.161). Here we find five methods for dealing with grudges:

• Practice the brahma-vihāra meditations. If you feel hatred towards someone then try to cultivate the opposite: ie love, compassion, equanimity. (the text suggests mettā, karuṇā, and upekkhā but leaves out muditā and so counts this as three methods). We could call this 'cultivating the opposite'.
  
• Pay the person no attention, give no thought to them. This is sometimes called the "blue sky mind" approach - don't feed the feelings and they will subside.
  
• Reflect on the consequences. Particularly reflect that whatever bad thing that person has done to you, they will have to experience the fruit of that action which will be painful for them!
  

There is an obvious link between non-hatred (avera) and loving-kindness (mettā), so cultivating mettā could well have been what the Buddha meant in this case. When we cultivate love, the opposite of hate, then hate cannot find a purchase in our hearts. I suspect that muditā or sympathetic joy was left off the list because it would be difficult to cultivate towards someone to whom you grudge happiness. Best to start with simply not hating them, build towards love, and then perhaps we can take joy in their joys.

A more active form of the blue sky approach which I find quite useful is to think about something else. Many of my raves for this blog have resulted from me taking up a subject to reflect on precisely to stop my attention wandering onto less helpful subjects.

Reflecting on the consequences is also, effectively, reflecting on the Dharma. This is inherently positive. In Dhammapada 3-4 we saw that hatred is never a good thing - that the effects on us of entertaining anger are always negative. So reflect on the consequences of that person shouting at you, or bashing you. As I noted last week, our culture is one in which we seek to punish (ie inflict harm upon) anyone who breaks the law. But since some one who abuses us will suffer anyway, is there really a need to inflict more suffering on them. The question is: "would seeing another person suffer make us happy?" If we see that other person as a human being, then we will not feel joy at their suffering. We know what suffering feels like. We know how unbearable it can be. We know that if we inflict pain because we are angry, that person will become angry and inflict pain also. This has to stop. We must try to stop the cycle of anger and harming. Really reflecting on the causes and consequences of anger and hatred is quite sobering. If we reflect on what might have led a person to want to harm us, we will find fear and anger at the root of it. If we wonder why are they experiencing fear and anger, then we will see that they too have been victims of other people's fear and anger. They have learned this wrong lesson that we seem to teach everyone - that despite what we may say, anger and lashing out are legitimate responses some times.

I recall in Michael Moore's film, Bowling for Columbine, Mike was interviewing a PR man at Lockheed-Martin the massive weapons manufacturing business. They were standing in front of a very large missile, one that could only be used to strike at many people a very long way away (i.e. a weapon of mass destruction). He held his arms wide and his hands open, in the classic gesture of honesty, and said that he did not understand why these boys, who had gunned down many of their school mates, would resort to violence to resolve their problems. Why indeed? A very large missile, designed to deliver weapons of mass destruction is just the result of coordinated hatred, and of course our leaders do often resort to violence to solve their problems with the help of weapons manufacturers like Lockheed-Martin. And we often allow the emotions like hatred to persist in our minds. Of course we might take our revenge by something as simple as withdrawing our affection, or by doing something we know to be annoying. We might not be using a missile to kill thousands of people, or a handgun to kill our classmates. But it is only the scale that is different. If we were angry enough, and someone put a gun in our hand... well sometimes perhaps it doesn't pay to dwell on the consequences for too long. Just enough get the message and move on.

There is a definite sense in these early texts of working to eliminate negative or harmful mental states. There is none of the psycho-babble about allowing your anger to have expression or find an outlet. This is because from the Buddhist point of view the angry thought harms you, and any action undertaken with anger in mind will cause harm (viz my post on Dhammapada 1 - 2). Hatred is harmful so do what you can, whatever you have to, in order for it to subside. There is also no sense in early Buddhist texts of just thinking of anger as 'energy' as some Tantric traditions might do. Sure, there is energy: but are we alert enough, aware enough, Awake enough to refrain from hurting when we are angry? Not in most cases I think. Not without a great deal of training, and a great deal of mettā. Better to err on the side of caution with anger. It can be insidious. We can find ourselves justifying little cruelties to ourselves and others on the basis that "it's just energy", or "it's for their own good". Better to just nip it in the bud.

Bearing grudges only makes you miserable, and you are probably holding onto the possibility of harming someone in return for the harm they caused you. Hatred is never pacified by hatred - it never has been and it never will be. It is only by the opposite, by avera - non-hatred, that hatred is pacified. The good news is that by not bearing grudges, by not holding out for revenge, the hate will subside in you. When hate subsides it makes room for other more positive emotions. Dwelling in mettā all the time is equated with nibbāna in many texts.


See also my commentary on Dhammapada v.1-2, and v.3-4

Dhammapada verses 3 - 4

akkocchi maṃ avadhi maṃ ajinji maṃ ahāsi me
ye ca taṃ upanayhanti veraṃ tesaṃ na sammati

akkocchi maṃ avadhi maṃ ajinji maṃ ahāsi me
ye ca taṃ n'upanayhanti veraṃ tesaūpasammati

"He abused me, he beat me, he overpowered me, he took from me."
In those who bear these grudges hatred is not stilled

"He abused me, he beat me, he overpowered me, he took from me."
In those who don't bear these grudges hatred settles and ceases.

akkocchi is verbal abuse, while avadhi is physical abuse. ajini comes from the root ji which means "to have power" or "to conquer" and so can mean overpowered, conquered, vanquished. Āhara is the past tense of hara "to take" and me is probably the genitive, so āhara me literally means "he took mine" - it is most often translated as "robbed me" or "stole from me". Sangharakshita has pointed out that the second precept against "taking the not given" has a broader frame of reference - it is not just stealing material things, but taking from someone anything which they have not willingly given you - their time or energy for instance.

These verses are said to have been spoken by the Buddha approximately 25 centuries ago. What this immediately tells us is that some things have not changed. Back then people shouted abuse at each other, they physically attacked each other. Some people tried to dominate their fellows. Some people took things that weren't theirs or that they were not entitled to. I find this quite a thing to reflect on. In 2500 years the human species as a whole has not evolved at all in the ethical sphere. So much for progress. Fortunately some individuals have evolved, and as individuals we all have the potential to evolve ethically and spiritually.

These two verses are only the bear bones of a manifesto for an ethical evolution, even perhaps a revolution. What they are fundamentally saying is that bearing hatred (vera) towards someone is never justified, no matter what they have done to you. This is not what we have learnt in our lives, not what we do on the whole, and seems almost shocking on first contact. Hatred in all it's manifestations is never justified. There is no righteous anger in Buddhism, no room for righteous indignation. Both terms are oxymoronic according to the Buddha. Most of us feel justified in being angry about something or someone, and about cultivating that anger, keeping it alive, feeding it, allowing it to fester. But the Buddha says no to all of this. Never allow anger to persist.

Because we are human our first response to being shouted at, or hit, or if someone tries to overpower us, or take our stuff, may be fear; but anger is usually not far behind. This is understandable. We can see anger is helpful for survival: it marshals our energy reserves (by preparing the body for action) and moves us away from danger, or prepares us to fight for survival. Most often there is nothing we can do about our physiological response to a threat - the reaction is instinctive, and most of us might not be alive today if that response had not kicked in at some appropriate moment in the past.

It is important not to beat yourself up for getting angry. Angry is instinctual. The verb in the second line of each verse is upanayhati which means: 1. to come into touch with; 2. to bear enmity towards, grudge, scorn. I've translated as "bear a grudge" because this seems the most useful way to approach it. For most of us it's not the initial reaction that is problematic, it is the ongoing anger, the grudge, the holding onto hurt, the contemplation or seeking of revenge.

When we hold on to hateful thoughts what happens? One thing is that while we replay the images or the conversation in our head we continue to re-experience the physical responses associated with the event. Say someone shouts at us, and there is an altercation. Our body prepares for action: the adrenal glands release adrenaline into our blood; our heart rate jumps and blood pressure rises; muscles tense ready for action. This can all happen in a moment, and yet it takes quite a few minutes to allow everything to settle back to a resting state. If we constantly replay the events in our minds, then we stir our bodies up, we may even vividly re-experience the the upset or even trauma of an event. Our bodies may continue to maintain a state of alertness for danger, of readiness for action, without ever fully relaxing. Over a long period of time this can be quite damaging to our body and our mind: one thinks of heart problems for instance, or of clinical depression. So holding onto hateful thoughts might be bad for our health in the long term.

Another possibility is that we become "an angry person". When we are constantly stimulating anger in ourselves, we feel angry, and we look angry: we scowl, we frown and grimace. We SOUND angry! Our body language communicates anger as well. Other people will be aware of this incipient hatred and experience it as a threat. It is quite clear to us when someone is angry, and we all know from experience that angry people are the ones who shout and hit, who try to overpower us, and so what do we do? We avoid them. It's only logical to avoid angry people - it is self preservation. Compare for instance the Rev. Iain Paisley with the Dalai Lama. Who would you rather spend time with? One very angry man (though admittedly much less so these days) and one who despite provocation does not express anger (in public at least). What's more people who are angry find it hard to communicate: even if you have something reasonable to say, you'll find that people are much less willing to listen if you are angry (unless perhaps they are angry about the same thing). So if you're angry a lot you're likely also to be lonely.

Holding grudges and exacting revenge prolongs conflicts and creates the conditions for more and more people to be harmed. We've all of us been harmed by someone, and probably all done harm even if only inadvertently. As the proverb goes: if an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth were really the rule; we would all be blind and toothless. The cycle has to stop somewhere. Why not with you, in you, right now?

On a deeper level there is the underlying tendency to refuse painful experiences. We can't avoid some unpleasant sensations. It makes sense to avoid pain if it is avoidable, but sometimes we must simply have a painful experience. At the very least we are all going to die, and then we must be prepared to hold that pain in our awareness just as we would a pleasurable sensation. Holding of grudges suggests that somewhere in our being we are saying "it's not fair", and we are holding back from experiencing the pain of that injustice. This is a wrong view of the world. Such a view causes us constant disappointment. Of course it isn't fair if someone shouts at us or bashes us. But life isn't fair. Experiences arise in dependence on causes, and we must constantly be trying to see this process in action whether we enjoy the experience or not.

So I think it's clear that bearing grudges is counter-productive by any rational criteria - whether or not you believe in rebirth, or Awakening, or other traditional Buddhist beliefs. What these verses do not tell us is the "how". How can we possibly not hate the person who has inflicted harm on us? The next two verses go into this little, and I'll deal with them in my next post along with some help from another text.

See also my commentary on Dhammapada v.1-2.