Hate

Recently I have been reading more widely in Buddhist literature at the recommendation of several friends who know that, while interested in topics of spirituality in general, I am not a religious man. I believe in the value of many of the spiritual traditions, but I have no desire to join any organized religion or religious movement. This is not because, like Groucho Marx, I would not want to belong to any group that would accept me. Rather it is because I have yet to find such a group that does not claim to have access to the whole and complete truth while at the same time preaching at least some things that are patently untrue. Sorry if that offends you. Perhaps I should say, at least some things that appear to me, under my most careful scrutiny, to fail the evidential demands of the case. Maybe it is that undergraduate training in philosophy and that graduate training in law. Whatever.

One thing I like about the Buddhist literature I am reading is that it is much like what Jews and Christians call the wisdom literature. It tends to the practical and realistic rather than the theoretical and speculative. I find that, as with the wisdom literature of the Kethuvim, parts of what Christians call amusingly the Old Testament, the life lessons are often helpful even when the theological and cosmological background is not.

At the moment, I am reading the Dhammapada, a collection of sayings attributed to the Buddha. There I encountered this valuable note: 

Let us live happily then, not hating those who hate us! 
Among men who hate us, let us dwell free from hatred! 
~ Dhammapada 197

As a gay man in America, as a progressive man in America, as a man from a Jewish background in America, I need to ponder this advice. To live happily. To not hate those who hate me. To live free from the hatred of others and free from my own inclinations to hate.

This is a life task in itself.