Hating Osama only begets hate (MLK quote)

Wisdom Quarterly

Put away the blood lust fists, pack the flags of nationalism. All life is precious, and a life has been taken. That loss makes the heart heavy. Those who call for hate suffer in fear.

Martin Luther King Jr. followed the example of Gandhi, who followed the example of Jesus and the Buddha centuries before Christ. The Buddha taught in the "The Imprints of the Dharma" (Dhammapada) that hate always begets hate. Only love conquers hate. This is a timeless truth.

The word hate is a translation of a much broader Buddhist term. Whereas in English hate refers exclusively to passionate anger, in Buddhism the term spans the entire range from slight annoyance to enduring resentment to violent wrath. Counterintuitively, it includes fear. In fear we kill, not out of bravery. Hate is an all-around terrible thing to cultivate.


Jessica Dovey recently became Internet-famous yesterday for confounding two quotes, her own and MLK's. She wisely said:

• “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.”

This, of course, is not the only thing the Buddha had to say about "hate." Hatred, or dosa in the exclusively Buddhist language Pali, is one of the three poisons that corrupt the heart/mind. Along with craving and delusion, hatred is sometimes compared to the flaring up of fire, craving to smoldering embers, and delusion to smoke.

Actions motivated by any of these three roots are invariably unskillful, unprofitable, unwholesome karma.

"Actions" (karma) may simply be mental. They may grow into words. They find their ultimate expression in deeds. Even when they remain as thoughts or impulses, they have volition and condition an unpleasant, unwelcome result.

To march in support of killing, to delight in the death of someone, to call for the death of someone, or to rejoice in that death -- all of these are unskillful acts that ripen in suffering for the doer. They are doubly harmful when they become verbal or physical because they then are influencing others to hate. By love alone does hate subside. There is no need to "drive out" darkness; it is enough to bring in light.


MLK was echoing these sentiments when he eloquently stated in the stirring voice of a Southern preacher:

• "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction…. The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

Martin Luther King Jr. with Buddhist monk and Vietnam War dissident, Thich Nhat Hanh