Rising Above Love and Hate to Compassion

Don’t do anything. Just be aware of it. Whenever you feel hate, just be aware of it. Feel what this hatefulness is, feel the fact of it. Don’t try to escape from it.

So if you feel hatred, anger, greed, or anything, don’t try to do something right away, just be aware of it. First see the ugliness of it, see the poisonousness of it, see what it is. Once you see what hate is in its totality, it will drop by itself. Hatred can continue only if you have not known it in its totality.

Whenever it appears, be aware of it; meditate on it. The second thing, which is even more subtle, is your thinking, ”I feel hatred inside me. I feel anger and greed and ego.” This again is a very deceptive trick of the mind, a very cunning trick, because then, in a very subtle way, you have separated yourself from the hatred. You are saying, ”I see hatred in me, I see greed in me. The greed is something which is in me, it is not me. I am not greed, I am not hatred, I am not anger. It is something accidental, something foreign that is inside me.” This is how the mind thinks and how language deceives us. Language says, ”There is anger in me,” but this is not the fact. When you are angry it is not that anger is in you... you are hate. There cannot be two entities there, only one. Either hate can be present or you can be present, but both cannot be present. If you are there then hate will dissolve; if hate is there then you are not there.

Go into the problem existentially. When there is hate, become aware of whether you are there or only the hate is there. Then a very subtle change happens in your consciousness. Once you begin to be aware of whether ”I am” or hate is, your consciousness begins to emerge. And the more conscious you become, the more the hatred will dissolve. Both cannot exist simultaneously. Hate is possible only when one is unconscious: not conscious, not mindful, not alert.

When hate has gone, anger has gone, violence has gone, and you think about it retrospectively it becomes part of your memory. Now you can divide yourself from it.

You are separate from the anger and the anger is separate from you. Now it is part of your memory. This is how the linguistic fallacy I was talking about is supported by your experience.

You were angry a moment ago, now you are not – the anger has gone. You are separate from the anger: you are one thing, the anger is something different – the anger has become part of your memory.

Now there are two things: the memory of your past experience of anger, and you. But in the act of anger itself, there was only one thing: you were anger. So whenever there is hate, feel it deeply. Be aware of it: you have become hate, you are hate. This awareness will change the whole thing.

When you love someone you become love. When you hate someone you become hate. But if you just remain yourself, then you can neither love nor hate in the ordinary way.

Remember this – not retrospectively but in the very moment of the happening. When you feel that hate is there, close your eyes, forget the situation outside, and be conscious of what is happening inside you. The whole energy has become hate. If you watch it, then suddenly part of the energy will begin to transform itself into awareness.

A pillar of consciousness will arise out of the chaos of hate or love or whatever. And the more the pillar arises, the more the chaos inside will drop and disappear. Then, when you feel that you are, you will notice that hate is no longer there: you become a self, a center; the other can no longer be the center which either attracts or repels.

This meditation has to be done at the very moment of the happening. Then you will be a different person altogether. Not that you will have conquered your hatred, not that you will have a controlled mind. Now you will be a consciousness, a light unto yourself. Because of this light, darkness will have become impossible. Now you are a conscious being. Hate has become impossible because hate needs your unconsciousness as its basic requirement.

This must be understood very distinctly and clearly: hate needs your unconsciousness. That is the food for hate, that is where hate gets its strength. So don’t do anything about hate, just do something about your consciousness. Become more conscious of your acts, of your thoughts, of your moods – of whatever happens. A conscious being is neither hateful nor love-full.

Compassion Above Love and Hate

That is why we have used different words in talking about Buddha. We could say that Buddha loves everyone, but then the word would carry the same meaning that we ordinarily associate with it. Buddha cannot love you because he cannot hate you. He cannot be repulsed by you and he cannot be attracted by you either; in both cases, the other is the center. Buddha is not love but compassion, and the difference is very deep.

When you feel compassion, you remain the center; you can be neither repulsed nor attracted. It is a very neutral state. The other will feel very deeply that you love him, but....

If you come to a Buddha, you may feel that he loves you. That is your freedom. At any moment you can also feel that he hates you. That is also your freedom. It is your projection that he loves or hates. In fact, he neither loves nor hates; he remains himself, and the compassion flows.

See the difference? If you are not in this room, I cannot love you nor can I hate you. If I want to hate you I must have an object to hate, so if you are not here I will have to imagine that you are here. Love stops when the loved one is absent and hate stops when the enemy is not there. If they are absent, you make them present in your imagination.

Compassion means that even if there is no one there, Buddha will still be compassionate. It is not because of his imagination; it is his natural state. Just as a river flows, Buddha is compassionate. The other is not a part of it at all, the other is not the center, he himself remains the center.

When one becomes a center, when one becomes crystallized, there is neither repulsion nor attraction to anyone. This creates a deeper problem because it means that you cannot go beyond hate unless you go beyond love. Everyone wants to go beyond hate, but no one wants to go beyond love. But that creates an impossible situation for you because hate is a part of the one phenomenon of repulsion and attraction.

How can you just be in love, how can you be attracted to everything? We go on trying to love in many, many ways, but the only easy way is to hate one person and to love someone else. That is the easy way. You make one person your enemy and another person your friend. Then you can be at ease, you can love. You can be attracted to A and be repulsed by B. This is one way. Another way, even more complicated, is to hate the same person that you love..

Hate will disappear not by your doing anything, but by being more aware, more conscious, more alert. Become a conscious being and you will be at your center, and no one will be able to take you away from your center. Right now, anyone can do it. Some do it by love and some do it by hate, but anyone can take you away from your center. You have no center really, only a bogus center which is just waiting for anyone to come and take you away from it. Consciousness means centering, being continuously centered inside. Then both love and hate disappear. Only when both disappear are you at peace.

Compassion

When someone is in love he becomes tired, exhausted, and bored by the ordinary things – just as in hate. Both are tensions, both are diseases. When I say ”disease,” I am using the literal meaning of the word: dis-ease. You cannot be at ease either in love or in hate, you can only be at ease if there is nothing inside you, neither love nor hate. Then you remain in yourself, alone in your consciousness. You exist without anyone else, the other has become irrelevant: you are centered.

Then, compassion will happen. It is a happening that follows once centering is there. Compassion is neither love nor hate, it is neither attraction nor repulsion, it is a totally different dimension. It is just being yourself, moving according to yourself, living according to yourself. Many may be attracted to you, many may be repulsed by you, but these are just their projections – it is their problem. You can laugh about it and remain unconcerned.