The Monk Talks: What Would Buddha Do If Someone Hated Him?
(Alvin’s Note: Our dear fellow Life Coach, and passionate personal development extraodinaire, Paiboon Busayarak, has embarked on a 3 month initiation into Buddhist monkhood in his native Thailand. He just sent me this post via email sharing the conversations he’s had with his teacher. The words are his, the grammer tweaking is mine 
Enjoy!)
What would Buddha do if someone hated him?
Not by hate is hate defeated;
Hate is quenched by love.
This is the eternal law.Dhammapada 5
In these few words Buddha teaches what might be the greatest spiritual law. The Roman poet Virgil wrote “love conquers all.” I believe there are things that love is not well-suited to conquer, but love is perfectly suited to conquer hate.
Why?
Because it is so hard for hate to combat. Violence, revenge, sometimes even civil disobedience, add to the tremendous energy embodied in hatred. Love, on the other hand, takes the energy of hate and redirects it, as a martial artist might – only here the arts are not the war but of love. As the song tells us, “Only love can conquer hate.”
Love confronts hate in the way hate cannot comprehend, with something beyond itself – with compassion. Hate cannot go beyond itself. It draws its strength from the self’s defense of self.
Love lives to go beyond itself, drawing its strength from that very act. Love can thus comprehend hate, integrating it into something larger. Slowly hate is defeated, as a grain of salt dissolves into sweetness of a pond.
Thank you for the article, Alvin. That’s beautiful.
Hi Alvin, just wanted to introduce my self. I think I found my way over here from Andrew Wee’s blog, but I could be wrong. I absolutely love what and how you wrote about this experience in Thailand. Very inspiring. I never even thought about what meditations could really do until I recently listen to the audio book of “Autobiography of a Yogi” which I really enjoyed. Thanks again for this post. I look forward to reading more in the future.
Thanks guys, I’m glad you found my post of value
I can’t wait to try Vipassana meditation myself. Meditation for me consists of me doing Yoga for twenty minutes then Shavasana for ten. I need to step up my meditation to a new level.
Thanks for the push!
Are you still anticipating in Vipassana every now and then? I do it everyday now, makes my life much smoother than before. Glad to see people who actually care for the goods of others