Question: “I’m a Buddhist practitioner, still at the beginning. I’ve been noticing that I have so much hate and anger toward other people. I’ve read the discourse on loving kindness and more explanation of it. I also read and practiced some methods to deal with the hindrance of anger. I’ve been practicing Vipassana meditation for the last 2-3 weeks everyday. I did become better. I have dealt with anger & hate, but I was secluded. In the last few days I’ve been finding it so difficult to deal with these…”
Hate is of course one of the most strongest emotions we have. Sometimes it’s so deep and heated that it overwhelms us and takes over us, and we end up doing and saying horrible things that we can’t take back. Hate is self-created and unnatural. We are not born to hate. We are born with the natural feelings of love for all. When we are infants and children, whenever we see our friends and family, it automatically brings us joy and happiness. It is only as we grow older and conditioned by our environment and society that we are taught to hate and discriminate.
As we age and get older, the same hate and anger we have when we were younger will only intensify and develop unless we do something about it. We can’t get rid of it in a day, a week, a month, or maybe even a year. Because it’s been something stewing in our consciousness and habit energies for so long, it’s going to need twice as much love to even make a mark of change.
Meditation is wonderful. I teach the “Why?” meditation method to a lot of people who ask about getting rid of anger and hate. The method forces you to self-discover why you are angry and have hate. It helps you realize the core reason or issue of why you hold so much anger and hate. When you sit to meditate, you bring up something or something that you are angry at/hate. You start to have a dialogue with yourself about it, and you continuously ask yourself “Why?” and you ask again and again, peeling away each layer, reason, and excuse, until you get to the core truth of the emotion.
One at the core and we know exactly why we feel the way we do, we can work on eliminating it and ridding it from our lives. Sometimes the reason is something very simple and mundane, sometimes the reasons ends up being a person, location, or a group of people. Sometimes we have to make hard decisions and breakup negative or abusive friendships, relationships, and family if that is the reason. Sometimes we discover the truth and it’s scary, but we always have a choice, and we have to choose to love.
Smile and be well!