How Can We Move Beyond Hatred and Despair?

Donald Trump as Buddha

On Amazon this week, I bought a small statue of Donald Trump as the Buddha. He was $13.59. I bought him as a joke. And the people who noticed him on my desk got quite a chuckle.

But I've come to understand that for me, this is not a joke after all. For me, Donald Trump as the Buddha is going to be a part of my personal spiritual practice for the next four years. The events of recent weeks have created an enormous dilemma for me that perhaps you have shared, which is this: How do we work with hatred and despair?

Now, for you (as for half the US), the current political situation may not be a source of anger. But each of us knows the experience of outrage. How do we manage and work with the intense emotions that arise in every one of us at some points in our lives? Think about when in your own life hatred has arisen, anger so strong that you feel it's almost unbearable.

The Dalai Lama tells the story of his friend, a Tibetan monk, who was held in a Chinese labor camp for 15 years. And when his friend was finally released, the Dalai Lama asked him what the hardest part of his captivity was. Was it the torture? Was it the brutality of hard labor? The monk said he was in danger many times. And when the Dalai Lama asked him what the danger was, he said, “I was in danger of losing compassion for my captors.”

When I first heard this story, I wasn't buying it. I thought this was an example of what’s often called a spiritual bypass. In other words, under the guise of spirituality, it’s easy to pretend that our experience isn't what it is. “Who, me? I don't feel hatred. I'm an enlightened spiritual being. I don't have an angry bone in my body.”

And of course, that's not true for any human being. The Buddha taught about the toxic effects of the 3 poisons of greed and hatred and delusive certainty. These are part of life for all of us. They’re called poisons because they harm us, and when we act on them, they harm the world.

For me, the hardest one of these to bear is hatred. And hatred is what keeps coming up as I witness so much unnecessary harm in recent weeks: people in my community who are undocumented or who are transgender and are suddenly terrified to leave their homes. Or someone who works for USAID and talks about her inability to distribute lifesaving medications and food to people when the food and the medication are right there, ready to be distributed. People who rely on food subsidies and are suddenly without enough to eat. Climate denial that will speed the destruction of our world.

So why not just let ourselves be enraged? What’s the danger in that? The Buddha warned his students, “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. It is appeased only by lovingkindness.” We know what happens when people respond to hatred with hatred, when people commit atrocities, and then those who are harmed commit atrocities in response. It sets up cycles that go on and on. And the Buddha saw that the only way out of these cycles is through lovingkindness.

Buddhism talks about what we call skillful means. Rather than labeling things as right or wrong, we think of actions as skillful or unskillful. It’s abundantly clear that certain actions are unskillful. They just don't work. Cruel and hateful actions are unskillful because they beget the same in return. When we lose all compassion, we fall into the “othering” that keeps us from according basic human dignity to others. At its worst, this keeps us from seeing each other as fully human. This is the slippery slope that throughout history has drawn us again and again toward genocide.

The Dalai Lama is famous for saying, “The wise selfish person takes care of other people.” He reminds us that when we really understand how connected we are with everyone and everything on earth, we see that what goes around comes around. Unless we want to sign up to be part of a circular firing squad, finding a way through hatred is not optional.

Is the alternative, then, simply to put up with whatever happens, to offer no resistance to cruelty and injustice? That’s not what great leaders and spiritual traditions have taught. They teach us to pause, to discern what skillful responses are available to us, and then to step forward. They teach us to set limits, to push back against what causes harm. So while I need to work hard to avoid demonizing the people who are causing so much suffering, I also need to do everything in my power to stop them.

The temptation, at times, is to give up. Zen offers perspectives that can help us when we are feeling overwhelmed with hatred, with despair. I come back to these often:

• All of this is how life unfolds. Taking a bird’s eye view, the universe is just doing what it has always done. There have always been people who rise to power and do great damage in the world before they're stopped, just as some people work tirelessly to ease suffering.

• Every person suffers and deserves compassion. Let’s look closely at this person who sits alone in the middle of the night tweeting about being persecuted, about winners and losers, about dominance and submission. This person’s inner world has to be a hellscape. We can have compassion, even as we oppose the harms being done.

• Things never turn out exactly as we predict. How often in your life were you absolutely certain that something was going to be wonderful, or terrible? And then it turns out to be different – something you could not have predicted. That “not-knowing” perspective can keep us from getting lost in doomsday predictions that may never come true.

These three perspectives can offer solace when we start to sink into despair and inaction. And the support of others is essential when we feel like we’re drowning. The challenge for all of us is to hang in there – to turn toward what we’re feeling, to find a skillful response, and then to move forward.

Day after day, I’ll be relying on my Donald Trump Buddha to help keep me pointed in the right direction.

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