The Spectrum Of Hatred

Today we'll continue to look at what are known as the three fires.

And in this teaching from the Buddha,

It said that this was his third discourse.

And this this discourse,

This teaching was to 1000 people who before they had heard the four noble truths,

Worshiped fire.

So in this teaching story,

The Buddha is walking with these new practitioners,

This group of 1000 new monastics,

And they're above a valley.

And they're experiencing like the valley below them is experiencing a forest fire.

And he turns the whole idea of fire worship entirely on its head by saying,

All is burning,

All is burning with the fires of greed,

Hatred and delusion.

So this is a pretty strong statement,

All is burning with the fires of greed,

Hatred and delusion.

And then the Buddha goes on to describe all the ways that the fire burns within us all the ways we experience wanting in the body,

With the culmination of that wanting being greed,

All the ways we experience aversion in the body.

And the culmination is hatred,

And all the ways that we're confused or checked out,

Or simply not seeing clearly,

That leads to delusion.

So then he speaks about when we see this spectrum of fire within us,

The big flames,

Greed,

Hatred and delusion,

And the little flames,

When we see it,

We become disenchanted and dispassionate.

So we're no longer under the spell,

Disenchantment,

We're no longer under the spell of wanting or not wanting.

We're cool to it.

I think of dispassion as a coolness,

Kind of like a cold shoulder.

So when we give our wanting mind the cold shoulder,

It stops wanting,

Or maybe it doesn't stop wanting,

But we're not engaged.

It cools.

So Tuesday,

We looked at the spectrum of greed.

And I call it a spectrum,

Because if we feed the wanting,

Our insatiable wanting,

The craving,

The grasping,

It kind of leads over to this really greedy side of ourselves.

Our wanting is not a problem to fix.

You know,

Wanting is as natural as breathing.

We want this next breath to arise.

What's being suggested is that we don't have to be under the spell of our wanting,

Enchanted and passionate about our wanting.

It doesn't have to lead us around all of our lives.

Where are we on that spectrum of our wanting?

And this is a good and wholesome thing to see.

The text reads,

A well instructed,

Noble disciple sees this burning and thus becomes disenchanted.

Okay,

So check it out for yourself.

I see my wanting.

I'm aware of it.

I'm not going to feed it.

What's that going to be like in this body?

It's kind of a pithy statement,

But we've got to see it to free it,

Right?

It's sort of like that.

So today,

The fire of aversion and at its extreme,

It's hatred.

There's certain people and situations that we have this hatred for,

All of us,

One mind,

Right?

And at its more mild state,

It's just pushing away.

It's like a little irritation or discomfort,

Aversion,

Just like greed.

We experience it on a spectrum.

And if we feed it and it has that power of a spell,

We're under its enchantment.

And when we're under the enchantment of aversion,

It looks like,

Well,

They're wrong.

And I'm right.

And I don't like this.

It's a spell of not good enough,

Pushing away,

Walking away from situations.

I use the example of,

You know,

This body sitting here is aging and this aging body has its aches and pains and it needs to be stretched every day.

And when I accept that,

That reality without the spell that it should be otherwise,

There's no fire.

There's no fire.

It's a simple example.

There's not many subjects that I can claim to be an expert in,

But I feel like I'm pretty much an expert in aversion.

I can walk into a room and find out what needs improving within like seconds.

So it's on a spectrum though.

It can manifest like problem solving at the low end,

And it moves up through the spectrum,

Crossing so many emotions and experiences.

Maybe aversion looks like anger or judgment or just a little irritation or even boredom.

Maybe aversion is fear or resistance.

Maybe it occurs to you as denial or impatience or annoyance.

It can be as simple as not wanting or not liking or controlling.

It can be as big as rage and hatred or somewhere in the middle,

Like depression and sorrow and regret.

And when we feed these,

They grow,

They grow.

And this aversion,

This particular poison or fire within us is also learned in families.

It's conditioned in families.

In my family,

There was a lot of aversion and its flavor was that the person who got the angriest and the loudest won.

And that was pretty much just my dad.

So it's important to recognize that whatever form we're experiencing of aversion,

Wherever we are on the spectrum,

From just irritation and annoyance to full blown hatred,

No matter what the content,

It's arising as a response to a present moment sense experience.

Something happens,

A sight,

A sound,

A thought,

An emotion,

A physical experience in the body.

And even if this something that happened 10 years ago,

Or it might be something that may happen 10 years from now,

What's actually happening is a response of aversion in the moment,

In the moment.

So mindfulness is our strongest protection because once we can actually recognize what's happening in the moment,

The immediate felt sense of aversion,

The sort of no in the body,

In the moment that we see aversion arising,

And we bring mindfulness to it,

Right to that sense door right to that contraction,

Where do I feel this in my body,

As soon as we do that,

We're countering the aversion with present moment awareness.

Without that,

Aversion just builds and moves towards deep hatred,

Or can't stand this,

Right.

So in a sense,

It takes some willingness to connect with what's unpleasant.

And somehow through our cultural conditioning,

We have this underlying belief that I can somehow separate myself from this unpleasant experience.

So what we keep doing habitually,

Is trying to manipulate our circumstances to make the unpleasantness go away.

This happens all the time.

It's really I noticed on vacation,

In particular,

When we're on vacation.

There's this manipulation is at work a lot,

You know,

We don't want to have anything unpleasant.

And it can be it's like,

The taxi cab is late to take me to the from the airport to the hotel.

And that's unpleasant.

And we have to manipulate my circumstances to make it go away,

Right.

So it's really apparent when we're seeking pleasant experiences.

So to become disenchanted from it is noticing the sensations like right at the moment of the unpleasantness happening.

And it's as simple as,

You know,

Just labeling it unpleasant or noting aversion,

Aversion,

This is aversion.

It's just what's happening.

And I the body has aversion towards it.

Another helpful practice for those types that are aversive like me,

Is to deliberately start noticing what's not wrong,

What's not wrong in this situation.

You know,

This practice that we do is a practice of balance.

It's the practice of the middle path.

I think this quote by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago sums up this second fire of aversion beautifully.

He wrote,

If only it were all so simple,

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,

And it were only necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being and who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart.

So we practice with the protection of mindfulness,

And we see the spectrum of our mind moving from good to evil,

This spectrum,

This swinging,

And we come to the middle over and over and over again.