Fruits of Poison
Yesterday a man said to harbor extremist views opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, killing one security guard and wounding another person, still unidentified. Addressing this tragedy, Joan Walsh of Salon asks, "Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?"
In Buddhism, the answer, clearly, is yes. Violent actions begin with violent thoughts. Violent words spread violent thoughts like a virus. Through mass media and the Internet, violence can become pandemic.
In the Dhammapada, the Buddha said,
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow. [Acharya Buddharakkhita translation]
The Buddhist approach to morality is not to follow a list of moral rules but to discipline mind, and thereby thoughts, words and actions. Essential to this discipline is not harboring the Three Poisons -- greed, hate and ignorance.
In western culture we tend to think that feeling hate, thinking hate, even speaking hate, is not that big a deal as long as we don't commit violent acts. People have a right to say what they think, after all, and as a civil matter of course they do. And I have a right to cover myself in maple syrup and sit on an anthill, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
It's useful to think of hate as a poison. In "Right Speech" I described a cab ride with a driver who appeared to spend his workdays listening to talk radio. The man literally was squirming with hate; he wriggled in his seat, barking responses to the radio chatter and pounding the dashboard with his hand for emphasis. It was obvious that listening to hateful speech hour after hour had poisoned him. I never saw the man again and do not know if he acted out his hate, but certainly he was primed to do so.
Reporters for the New York Daily News interviewed the ex-wife of the man accused of the Holocaust Museum shooting.
When his ex-wife met him in the mid-1960s, he was a wine swiller consumed by hatred. "[It] ate him alive like a cancer," said the 69-year-old woman, who did not want her name used. "It's all he would talk about. When I questioned him, he would get angry and abusive.
This is precisely what Buddhism teaches that hate will do to us, if we harbor it.
We must not assume that hate is a problem only for some people and not for others. In America angry speech comes from all parts of the political spectrum. But as my friend David Neiwert documents in his book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, currently speech coming from the Right is much more likely to be eliminationist -- that is, expressing the desire to eliminate one's opponents.
He also documents that in other times in American history, an epidemic of eliminationist rhetoric has been followed by actual violence. To some people, hateful rhetoric gives permission to commit violence. And today we are finding that people who commit violent acts because of hate first engaged in hateful, violent speech.
The word culture is very appropriate here. Zealots spewing hateful speech culture hate, and this creates a culture in which cruelty and violence, even murder, become permissible. People with a head full of hate are genuine hotheads, fevered with passions that burn away reason. They are poisoned.
I see the connection between hateful speech and violent acts as clearly as I see my hands on the keyboard right now. And it seems to me that speech in mass media and the Internet is growing more extreme. The speakers, consciously or unconsciously, are encouraging each other to push their rhetoric further and further into a red zone.
What can we do? As individuals we can keep our cool and not give in to the temptation to answer hate with hate. We can practice the Four Immeasurables and cultivate loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. We can hope that, eventually, more people will understand that thoughts and speech really are connected to violence. In the short term, however, I don't know what can be done to persuade people that their rhetoric really is causing violence.
See also: "Dealing With Anger" and a Shambhala Sun interview with Charles Johnson.
Comments
Well put. I’ve thought about this as well, especially when watching some of the clips that the Daily Show shows off from Fox News and the like. The political talkers on these news shows are definitely fueling hate in themselves and to those who watch them, which is why I don’t watch them. Unfortunately, a number of people find them entertaining so the people don’t change their rhetoric.
I just try to lead by example when I can and have rationale and calm discussions about whatever is going on. Calling these people out publicly can help as well, hopefully the make them take a moment to look at them self in the mirror. Won’t always work, but over time…
Thank you for this. I often think of the famous Hakuin story in which the sage confronts the violent samurai warrior. The warrior rudely demands to know whether there is a heaven and a hell. Hakuin deliberately insults the samurai to compel him to draw his sword in anger, whereupon he tells the armed man that the gate of hell just opened. The samurai, stunned and shamed when he realizes the man risked his life to teach a lesson, sheaths his sword, whereupon Hakuin tells him that now the gate of heaven just opened. The samurai presumably was a changed man. Is it possible today to calmly face down a hate monger, to shame him or her into changing? One hopes so. Hakuin faced his task like a warrior and risked everything. I wish I had even a tiny portion of that kind of courage. But maybe that’s it. If you can’t convince, maybe you can at least stand between such people and harm.
I think one can go still further with a Buddhist analysis of this hate speech we hear so much today.
Buddhist psychology points out that the (illusory) self constantly tries to keep itself alive by prolonging what feels pleasant to it as long as possible and avoiding what feels painful as much as possible. These people have apparently built up selves for themselves which find hate–one of the Three Poisons–very pleasant, because they feel safe and comfortable only when they are defending themselves from people they take to be “enemies”–people of different colors, religions, nationalities, etc., from themselves. Even indulging in hateful remarks about these “enemies,” but not going so far as to take up weapons and kill them, feels like at least a symbolic defense to these folks, and therefore gives them the feeling of safety and comfort they crave.
I think that this is the connection between the hate-speakers, such as the talk show hosts, bloggers, etc., who engage in hate speech, and the hate-doers, such as the killers of Dr. Tiller and Mr. Jones. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we cannot force them to stop speaking and writing hate. But perhaps we can do everything possible to spread an atmosphere of calm and Right Speech, which can have a beneficial effect in the long run.
Beg pardon: the deceased man’s name should be “Johns,” not “Jones.”
Hate begets hate. It is difficult to respond with equanimity in the face of hatred and malice, but we can save our own mindsets only by resisting being pulled in. One way to practice is by watching and not responding. In any situation from traffic to resentful blather on the radio, we can test ourselves by seeing if we can allow something to happen without becoming angry. In that moment we find peace in ourselves and freedom from the poison of arrogance.