Is It Possible That Hate Doesn’t Really Exist after All?
Love just happens. Hate has to be cultivated
Ask pretty much anyone what the opposite of Love is, and they will likely tell you that it’s Hate.
Because everything, after all, has to have an opposite, right? Or does it?
It seems that the human race is obsessed with the need for opposing forces.
Love and hate, just for starters. War and peace. Wisdom and Ignorance. Kindness and meanness. Chaos and order.
Opposites are handy things; useful for measuring and quantifying. We can compare one degree of intelligence with another, and one level of kindness with another. It can get toxic as hell to do so, but it can also be satisfying.
Reassuring.
To achieve wisdom, we need to pass through ignorance. Like a stop on the train journey to our destination. And it is often a similar path to kindness and to peace.
But love is a different journey, if it can even be called a journey at all.
Which is why I am questioning whether hate has any relevance at all as the polar opposite of love, for you don’t pass through hate to reach the destination of love.
Not ever.
The role of opposites and “duality”
The ancient eastern philosophies do quite a good job of explaining humanity’s need for opposing forces.
Daoism uses the symbol of yin and yang to express the duality of the universe. They represent masculine and feminine, opposing energies and opposing forces. Yin-Yang is not a conflict between the two but a perfect balance.
In Buddhist terms, duality is essential for everything in between to exist.
In both Buddhism and Hinduism, duality includes the distinction between “I” and everything else; the separation between the ego and everything that is not a part of the ego.
Nirvana, the ultimate goal of the Buddhist path, is the transcendence of suffering, and the transcendence of duality. As long as duality exists for the individual and his ego, he will be forever caught in Samsara, the cycle of suffering.
The Buddhist teachings discuss The Two Truths: Absolute Truth and Relative Truth. The Absolute Truth states that all phenomena are simply one and the same whereas the Relative Truth is where opposites, and everything in between, exist — where phenomena are many and exist in relative terms to one another. Relative Truth is where duality is necessary.
“There are two choices available in duality — one side or the other side. Everything is formed from that.” ~ Frederick Lenz
Relative truth gives meaning to our lives and helps to sustain the ego. We thrive on discovering our talents and we measure those talents by having people with lesser abilities to compare them to.
But all of that is simply manufactured in our minds. None of it is concrete. Just think how big a part confidence plays in our abilities and achievements. If my confidence dropped right now, I would no longer have the same ability to write and publish for an audience.
According to the Buddhist teachings, the moment that duality no longer plays a part in a person’s consciousness is when true liberation occurs.
That is the moment that the ego dissolves and there is no longer separation between himself and everything surrounding him.
Somewhere in the world of duality, hate became the opposite of love and I disagree
As children, we are working hard to create our egos.
The “no” stage is vital for a child to state her separation from her primary carer. The “why” stage is where he builds his knowledge to form his own version of reality.
As we mature and take in the world around us, we pass through the stages of the ego’s journey. From ignorance to relative wisdom. Through creating conflict to choosing peace. And through inflicting suffering on others to treating them with love and kindness.
Admit it — most of us have tried a bit of meanness in our time, if only to find out how horrible it feels to be mean. And then we choose to learn from that experience and become kinder.
It’s the mistakes — the low end of the spectrum of experiences — that we learn from and grow from, into more evolved and enlightened humans.
But when have we ever needed to “hate” in order to “love”?
Tell me that!
Love is something that goes way beyond basic emotion. It is the very core of human existence.
It is the natural number one phenomenon when a man and a woman make love and an egg is fertilised by sperm. It is the very cause of the embryo to begin forming. And it is the very thing that induces the necessary hormones for the mother to begin her journey of labour and birth, and to produce the milk to nourish her baby.
And her baby? She receives that blanket of love from the very moment she begins existing.
So where does hate even come into anything?
Hate is not a natural stop on the path towards love.
Oh, I am not saying it doesn’t have a purpose in the right circumstances, and that purpose could easily inspire a much deeper discussion. In the simplest terms, when we have been severely wronged and hurt, experiencing those feelings of hatred can have a profoundly healing effect.
But hate is only cultivated as a result of painful emotions. Unlike love, it is not a phenomenon in its own right but comes about in response to, or as an effect of suffering and pain.
Love exists in its own right and doesn’t require hate to define it.
Equally, it is possible to never choose hate when those emotions arise and, instead, cultivate greater self-love in order to heal from painful experiences.
My point is that not only does hate bear no relation to love, it doesn’t need to exist, ever, for a human to experience a rich and joyous existence.
Love just is. It’s a fact of life. Hate, on the other hand, has no substance, and nothing to show that it really exists.
Choose Love and there is no room for Hate.
This piece is in response to Amy Shearn’s #WriteHere prompt, “x doesn’t exist”. Why not write about something that you believe may not exist.
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