Cessation of Hatred
Nothing ever changes in this world through hating the enemy. Nothing
ever changes through aggression and hatred. So if it's pushing your
buttons, whether it's Hitler or an abusive parent or an immoral war –
Hitler was wrong, a parent who abuses a child is wrong – you have go to
keep working with your own negativity, with those feelings that keep
coming up inside you. We have also had the experience of seeing wrong
being done when there is no confusion and no bewilderment and we just
say, Stop it! No buttons have been pushed. It's just wrong,
unaccompanied by righteous indignation. When I feel righteous
indignation, I know that it has something to do with me. In order to be
effective in stopping brutality on this planet, you have to work with
your own aggressions, with what has been triggered in you, so that you
can communicate from the heart with the rapist, the abuser, the murderer.
-Pema Chödrön, /Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. III/, #1
