Fighting hate with hate only fuels more hate

This caught my eye today...

"Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love."

It's a quote from Buddha that makes me think about negativity.

There are countless times where something makes us so angry that it seems the only way we can react to it, and the easiest way to react to it, is to lash out back with just as hateful a thought or word as was thrown at us.

But let's stop for a minute and think about it. When I react to hate with more hate, what have I accomplished? Have I put out the fire and resolved the issue at hand?

Absolutely not.

More times than not, all I'll have ended up doing was feeding the fire, the fire of hate, making it larger, full of even more bad potential.

It's kind of like that saying - "two wrongs don't make a right." Just because someone hates me or hates something I do, is the situation then alleviated by my return of that hate? Nope. It just keeps that wheel turning.

I thought of a recent statement that a friend who's going through a very painful divorce said regarding the situation - "It's very sad when people become consumed by revenge." In this particular case, one person was so upset, and so hateful about the split, that they have become all-consumed by their need for revenge and their need to create as much hurt as they can.

They do so because THEY are hurt. But it certainly has not helped the process, nor the hurt inside of them. My friend understood this, and has been doing their best not to react the same way...not to meet that revenge with more anger, but with an understanding of the pain the other party is going through.

What Buddha tells us to do is to stop for a moment before we react in anger, before we return the hate, and calmly ask ourselves what the right thing to do in the situation is.

If we love, if we forgive, if we show compassion, instead of returning hate with hate, only then can we start to douse the fires of hate that come into our lives.

Media consumption

Much like the food that we take in several times a day, media too, gets ingested into our system on a daily basis, quickly becoming a part of our make-up. All that violence and cynical mindset that we view on the TV, read in the paper, see on the web...it all gets planted in our brains and in our psyche...seeds that can harm both us and the environment around us.

I say this, of course, being, a card-carrying member of the media. I fully admit that from the inside, as well as the outside viewer-standpoint, it does get into our system, shape us, and change us.

All of these things that we witness every day desensitize us to the world we inhabit. When I sit back and realize all the horrific scenes I've witnessed, wrote about, talked about in daily discussion...I once in a while pause...and ask myself 'how is this normal?' Discussing brutal crimes, or the corruption of political systems and the like...those things have a way of just becoming such a part of our normal lives and intake that we lose the sensitivity to all the life around us.

It's a scary slope to walk...and it doesn't surprise me that I've run into so many jaded journalists in my day.


Look at the figures - by the time an average American is 18 years old, they have seen 16,000 simulated murders, and another 200,000 other acts of violence. That's insane. No wonder it's so hard to find non-cynics in the world today - we just continue to breed that jaded cynism...and as a member of the media, I find myself just as guilty, if not moreso.

I've always tried to keep my optimism churning, even when it seems difficult. Even I will admit, however, that the more time I spend in the business, the harder it can become. I laugh when I think of my first year or so in journalism. I was sitting with a colleague and discussing some situation, and trying to look on the bright side of things . Her response to me was "I just want to take off those rose-colored glasses of yours and stomp on them!"

No, I was not actually wearing rose-colored sunglasses...but you get the point.

I've always looked at that moment as one of those that epitomized my conflict with the business I was in. Here I was, an eternal ball of optimism for most of my life, fairly new to the journalism game...running smack-dab against the wall that was a journalist...and the inherent cynicism that she the career had already started to fill her with.

Sometimes when I find myself becoming a bit too caught up in the doom and gloom of the news business, I try to remember that moment and remind myself of the wealth of optimism that used to surge through my system, and strike it again like a match against a matchbox.

In other words, I find those rose-colored glasses, dust them off, and throw them back on my face. They're not broken...they can never be broken...unless you let them.

I'm not talking about banning all the media we take in. I'm not lobbying for some massive shutdown.

While we hold the switch to turn on this cynicism and ingest the material that may be desensitizing us, we also have the same power to turn the switch it off.

To Tell the Truth...

"A person is born with an axe in his mouth. He whose speech is unwholesome cuts himself with an axe."

Those are the words of the Buddha when it comes to lying.

Now, what exactly does the Buddha mean about cutting ourselves? Think of it like this - what we decide to say about other people is often true of ourselves...often times the reason we noticed it in the first place.

When we stop criticizing others, as well as ourselves, we will find just how much energy we free up. Humanity wastes way too much time and energy into picking apart and putting down each other.

However, the reverse is true, as well. When we say we love something, and truly, sincerely mean it, we bring more love into the world.

Sure, Buddhism knows that mere words can't describe the truth that we are...but we can always find our Middle Way within silence and speech.

What does that mean?

It means knowing what TO say and what NOT to say.

So, the next time we find ourselves ready to talk about someone at work, or the guy down the block, or spread the most recent gossip we've learned, think about how much energy you're putting it into your criticism or ragging, and put it into spreading love instead, whether it be by saying something nice you truly sincerely mean, or knowing that it is best not to say anything at all.