Sermonette
by Bhikkhu Sīlācāra
“Verily not by hatred do hatreds cease here ever; by non-hatred do they cease; this is the eternal law of things.”
So
runs one of the best known and most widely quoted texts in the
Dhammapada, rendered in English that exactly follows the Pali word for
word, except for the addition of the two words “of things” at the end,
an addition made in order to bring out the meaning of “Dhamma” as
something not made or invented by men, but inherent in the universe, in
things as they are.
We
use these words “universe” and “things” because they are terms of
current speech, and there are no others available to express more nearly
what we mean; but in the Buddhist way of envisaging life there is no
“universe” and no “things” in the sense in which these words are
ordinarily used. For the Buddhist way of envisaging what is here is one
that is not satisfied to skim surfaces, but goes into things, penetrates
them, and seeks to find out what they are at the bottom. In so doing,
Buddhism finds that the primary reality is thinking; that the world is
not a world of things, but a world of thinkings, of thinkings that for
us have got themselves externalised and solidified into so-called
“things.” Hence the problem of “how to make the world better” hardly
troubles the Buddhist. All he troubles about is how to make his
thinking, and the thinking of others, better; and then the “world” will
become better of itself, without any need to trouble about it.
It
makes a Buddhist melancholy sometimes—he cannot help it—to see numbers
of excellent, well-meaning people running around in the world, all
fussily engaged in “doing good,” as they think, and all unwittingly
doing a great deal of harm. If only they would sit down quietly
sometimes, and try to “think good” and teach others to “think good,”
they would come much nearer to actually helping the world than they do
with their present activities. The most that can be said for these
busy-bodies is that they do themselves some good by these expressions of
the goodwill that is in them; but that they do others all the good they
imagine they are doing them, is very, very doubtful indeed,
notwithstanding all their goodwill and earnestness.
If
the apples in an orchard are unpleasant, small, sour and hard, and not
what the gardener or anybody else wants, the gardener does not go around
the trees with a paint brush in his hand and paint all the small green
fruits a pretty pink to make them look well. In fact, he does not
trouble about the apples at all in his designs for improving his
orchard. What he thinks about is the trees, from which the apples grow.
And if he is seriously determined to have a better crop of apples, he
resolves to change his trees. When he has done that he knows that he
does not need to think about the apples. With better trees, better
apples will follow, surely, inevitably, because they must, because they
cannot help it.
With
regard to this big orchard of the world, the Buddhist is in the
position of any sensible orchard gardener. He thinks about the trees in
the world orchard, and these trees are thinkings, thoughts. With these
mended, everything is mended. With these not mended, nothing is mended,
no matter how prettily you paint them and try to pretend that, in vulgar
phrase, “everything in the garden is lovely.”
Now
what is the ugliest tree that grows in the world-orchard, producing the
ugliest, most poisonous fruit? Surely it is the tree of hate, of hating
thought. Could anything be uglier, more repulsive than the words and
deeds that spring from hating thought and poison and darken the world?
Great is the need, then, to change these all too plentiful trees of
hating thought into their opposite, into trees of non-hatred. For
“non-hatred” as Buddhists use the word, is the opposite of hatred. It is
not simply a negative term of neutral import. As the word “untruth” in
English conveys the positive meaning of “lie” to anyone who hears it; or
the word “uncertain” the positive meaning of “doubtful,” so the Pali
word averenawhich we have here translated as “by non-hatred,“ conveys to
a Buddhist’s mind the opposite, positive meaning of “by love,“ that is,
by metta. Hatred, then, according to our text, never ceases by hatred,
by hating back; it ceases only by love.
And
the business of a Buddhist in the world is to bring about the ceasing
of hatred (and other undesirable ways of thinking). It is not his own
gratification he is to think of, like the satisfaction which some people
get out of hating back the person who has shown hate towards them. His
business is to abolish, to wipe out, to neutralise, to destroy, a hating
thought directed towards himself which he finds in the world, and to
not add another hating thought of his own to it, and thus make two
hating thoughts in the world where before there was only one. And the
only effective way of doing this is to send forth a thought of love to
meet the thought of hate, and so to cancel it and wipe it out of the
kammaaccount book of the world.
But
what is this love, a thought of which will cancel out a thought of
hate? Is it what is usually called love? Far from it! Love as it is
usually spoken of is mostly kāma, a burning flame that seeks to get
something for itself, which wants to devour and eat up, to feed itself.
But Buddhist love is metta, an altogether different thing. We do not
say, as one grievously mistaken translator of this very book from which
our present text is taken, makes a certain passage in it say: “By love
comes sorrow, by love comes fear. He that is without love is without
sorrow and fear.” What we say is: “By lust comes sorrow, by lust comes
fear. He that is free from lust is free from sorrow and fear,“ which,
like every word that comes from the Exalted One’s mouth, is an
indisputably true statement, as indisputably true as that other is
indisputably false.
Accordingly
we are instructed how we may beget in ourselves thoughts of metta, of
love, of real love, such as a mother has for her child. A mother never
wants anything back from her child in return for all that she does for
it. All she asks is to be allowed to do something for it, to give it
something, anything at all that she has, any service at all that she can
render; and whether it pays her back for it or not, she does not care,
does not even think about. So we have to learn to practice mettatowards
others, and with metta, with love, to wipe out and cancel hate. But how?
Well,
the first thing is to think of someone whom we love selflessly, with
some approach to metta, to real love, free from all self-seeking of any
kind. When we think of such a one, we do not find it difficult to hold a
thought of mettatowards them in our mind. Indeed, we find it fairly
easy, for it is already with us a habitual, natural thing to do. And
now, having dwelt on this mettathought long enough and steadily enough
to make it strong in our minds, we now have to think of another person
who is further away from us in our thoughts, one for whom we have not so
strong a natural liking or love as we have for the first person we have
been thinking of in our practice of metta. And of this second person we
now must think steadily and strongly, until we have produced in our
minds as strong a feeling or thought of mettaor love towards him as we
had towards the first person with whom we began this practice of metta
or loving thought. And now, having done this successfully, we next turn
our thought or feeling of mettaon to some other third person we know
still further removed from our natural, ordinary feelings of affection
that the first and second persons towards whom we have been directing
our thoughts of metta, until, towards this third person also, we have
begotten in our minds feelings and thoughts of mettaas strong and
sincere as those felt towards the first two persons. Thus on and on we
go, spreading our thoughts a little further and further away towards
others, towards whom we naturally feel rather indifferent, until at
last, with this practice, our thoughts of metta, from being a mere thin
stream, have become a broad flood. We are able, or we ought to be able,
to direct them and maintain them active in full tide, towards some
person or persons against whom we usually have feelings of dislike,
perhaps even, of active hate, of desire to injure and hurt. This is the
full triumph of the practice of metta-thought, its complete victory.
When we are able thus to feel love, metta, even to those who have
injured us, we are acting on the principle expressed in our text; now we
are actually putting into effect the only true alchemy there is in the
world—the turning of hatred into love, the dull dross of hate into the
bright gold of affection. Now we are making the practical proof that
hatred never ceases by hatred, that it ceases only by love—the old, the
never-failing, the eternal law of things.
This
practice of metta-thought is called a Brahma-vihāra, a dwelling with
Brahma, a dwelling with the highest god, and that is indeed what it is.
To be a god is to be able to create good, and here in this practice, if
we practise it successfully, we create gold, the richest metal in the
world, the gold of love. But it is in the power of the gods also to
destroy. And the man who practises mettabecomes thereby also a
destroyer, a destroyer of the ugliest, the most unbeautiful thing there
is in the world—hatred, enmity, ill-will.
Thus,
by the practice of mettā-thought as taught by the Buddha, a man becomes
an equal of the gods, a creator and a destroyer of the most beneficent
kind—a creator of good and a destroyer of evil. Such a one, after death,
must surely go to the realms of the gods to be one of them, to be one
of the beneficent forces of the world, sending down showers of blessings
from his loftier seat to those on lower levels. And then, when the good
doing that has brought him so happy a lot, has exhausted its course, he
will be born again on the lower levels, not as one condemned to
unhappiness, but as one happy in himself, whatever the wealth, or lack
of wealth, the fame or lack of fame, the high position or lack of it he
may have to enjoy or endure in the world of the kāma-loka. For love
makes happy, now, and in the future and always. It makes happy him who
gives it and him who receives it. May we all seek this one sure way to
be happy, and to make others happy—the way of love that makes hatreds
cease because they cannot live in love’s pure atmosphere, but must
wither away and die. May all beings be happy; May all beings learn to
love! For when all beings love, then will all beings be happy.
Source:
BPS Bodhi Leaves 80 (excerpt), Kandy, Sri Lanka. For free
distribution only. Originally published in the Buddhist Annual of
Ceylon, 1927.