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The Roots (3 of 5) Hostility

The Wholesome and Unwholesome

We are in the middle of this series on the three roots of the unwholesome and the three roots of the wholesome. The words kusala^[1] and akusala^[2]—wholesome and unwholesome—could also be understood as skillful and unskillful. I think of wholesome as being that which is healthy, and unwholesome as what is unhealthy. I think of skillful as that which is helpful, and unskillful as that which is unhelpful. That distinction represents a fundamental distinction that the Buddha makes. It helps us to find our way in any situation.

We are always coming to a fork in the road, and that fork can go either in the wholesome direction or the unwholesome direction. To some degree, that is our choice. To learn to sit in the place of mindfulness is to be able to have some choice in which of those forks we take. We do not just have to go along with things; we can decide what we avoid and what we go along with.

There is a statement by the Buddha around the wholesome and unwholesome, the skillful and unskillful, that for some people has been a very powerful teaching that galvanizes them around practice and what the Buddha had to teach. I would like to read it to you. The Buddha said:

"Abandon what is unwholesome; it is possible to abandon what is unwholesome. If it were not possible to abandon what is unwholesome, I would not say to you, 'Abandon what is unwholesome.' But because it is possible to abandon what is unwholesome, I say to you, 'Abandon what is unwholesome.' If this abandoning of what is unwholesome were conducive to harm and pain, I would not say to you, 'Abandon what is unwholesome.' But because this abandoning of what is unwholesome is conducive to benefit and happiness, I say, 'Abandon what is unwholesome.'

"Develop what is wholesome; it is possible to develop what is wholesome. If it were not possible to develop what is wholesome, I would not say to you, 'Develop what is wholesome.' But because it is possible to develop what is wholesome, I say to you, 'Develop what is wholesome.' If this development of what is wholesome were conducive to harm and pain, I would not say to you, 'Develop what is wholesome.' But because this development of what is wholesome is conducive to benefit and happiness, I say to you, 'Develop what is wholesome.'"

This is very definitive. He is very clear, very definitive, and very confident in what he is saying. There is nothing wishy-washy about this. It is possible to do something. It is possible to change, to grow and develop, and to be able to let go of the things we are doing inside that are causing us and others harm. It is possible to cultivate that which is for our benefit, well-being, and happiness, and also to cultivate those qualities within that are beneficial for the world around us. I would like to suggest that these two are not separate or distinct; as we develop what brings benefit, well-being, and real happiness to ourselves, it is inseparable from developing a concern and a desire for the welfare and happiness of the world around us.

We are asked to abandon the unwholesome, so we have to be a little bit wise about this. Abandoning is not aversion; it is not hostility to what is unwholesome. You cannot use the unwholesome to get rid of the unwholesome. We use the wholesome to abandon, to let go, to dry up, to evaporate, and to thaw what is unwholesome.

The Spectrum of Anger

I want to mention a little bit today about the second of the three unwholesome roots, which is hate. The three roots are greed, hatred, and delusion. So, there is hate or hostility. Sometimes people will relate this to anger. I would like to suggest that this is a semantic issue. Over my career as a Buddhist teacher, I have talked to many people about the English word "anger." People have a lot of opinions about anger. It is amazing how quickly people are defensive of anger. I do not think there is any other emotion where I haven't had people in Dharma^[3] talks, and afterwards, want to defend it. I do not know what it is about anger that people feel so strongly they want to defend it.

But I would suggest that the word "anger" is an umbrella term, like the word "desire" that I talked about yesterday. The word "anger" is a general term within which is held a range of other motivations, feelings, and attitudes that can include hostility and hatred on the unwholesome part of the spectrum. On the wholesome part of the spectrum, there can be fierce disapproval—strong disapproval of something. It might look in English like that person who has a strong disapproval is angry. However, the inner life is very different for someone who is hostile compared to someone who has deep stability, stillness inside, warmth, love, and freedom.

The inner life is very different for a person who has strong disapproval. It is clear that the Buddha had strong disapproval. When I read the suttas^[4] in English translations, sometimes I feel the Buddha is pretty stern. "Stern" is my language; I don't know if you would read the same thing into it. But maybe the strong disapproval sometimes has a sternness to it. My romantic idea earlier in life of what a compassionate person is, is not always accurate. Sometimes compassion does involve sternness, clear disapproval, or a clear "no."

But the inner life is different. In the unwholesome, unskillful spectrum—the side of this "anger" word that I am using—we are harming ourselves. There is self-harm involved. If it is the wholesome side of the range, then it really leads to benefit. Maybe I am a little shy to say it leads to happiness, but maybe in the long term it does; it certainly leads to benefit. We need to feel the difference. To feel how hostility and hatred really is a violence to oneself. The hateful person is destroying themselves. It is a kind of poverty to be living in hate.

The Characteristics of Hatred

The commentaries have a description of hatred. Perhaps we can take it to apply to the entire unwholesome side of anger. Even the mildest irritation can have hostility, anger, or annoyance. Even complaining can sometimes have a little hostility in it.

This is the translation that Nyanaponika^[5] gives, though some might choose different words for the English translation: "Hatred has the characteristic of savageness, like a provoked snake. Its function is to spread like a drop of poison, or its function is to burn up its own support, like a forest fire. It is manifested as persecuting, like an enemy that has got its chance to destroy. Its proximate cause is the grounds for annoyance." And it should be regarded as being "like stale urine mixed with poison." I think in the ancient world, they used urine as a kind of medicine. To have it be stale urine is pretty bad, but then you don't even taste the poison.

That is strong language, but maybe there is a time and place for definitive, clear language about something that can cause so much harm in our world. I think many of us probably do not want to think of ourselves as hateful people. But if we see the spectrum—all the way from the wholesome to the unwholesome side of what we might call anger—sometimes we are just a little bit into the unwholesome. It is annoyance or criticalness. Sometimes we are so identified with it that we do not really see what we are doing. It feels obvious that something is true or that we are supposed to be acting this way.

As we practice mindfulness, the idea is to become more and more familiar with the cost of having unwholesome anger and unwholesome hostility. What does it cost us? Even though anger sometimes motivates us to act in the world and get things done, there might always be a better way. There might be a skillfulness to learn—the skill of how to have strong disapproval, a strong "no," that has no hostility in it.

Also, strong disapproval—the fierce kind of "no"—sometimes gets mixed up with hostility. Sometimes the energy of hostility can feel pleasant for some people. It can feel like there is a rightness to it, or there is a very strong identification and a sense of personal power that comes with it. The attachment might not be to the hostility itself, but to the power, the identity, or the way we feel good about ourselves that might come from it.

Reflections on Hostility

That is my brief message for today. What I hope to leave you with is the idea that hate and hostility are phenomenally important issues for our world to address. There is so much of it in all directions. We really, as a people, need to study, understand, and get to the bottom of hostility. How do we wisely separate out the healthy sides of anger or fierceness from the unhealthy side? How do we learn to act from better places than places of hate?

How do we go into ourselves in such a deep way that we not only heal the suffering and the poverty from which our hatred comes, but we really tap into that which is deeper still? Deep inside, underneath the hard shell of hatred and hostility, there is love, and that is wholesome.

Study this today. I will do that as well, because I do not feel like I understand all that I wish I understood about how this works. For these next couple of days, it can be a subject of conversation with your friends, and a subject for reflection. Maybe read about it. We want to become wise to this whole idea of hostility and hatred. It will be a good thing for the world for us to have that wisdom.

Thank you very, very much, and I look forward to tomorrow.