Love Thy Enemy?

Box Lump · Post by **Box Lump** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:51 pm

I get along well with my family and I almost never talk to anyone else. I'm sure some people don't like me very much, but none of them would care enough to say so.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:05 pm

fable wrote: So if a Mandela (or someone like him, without any of the celebrity) were to speak about how he feels regarding his enemies, I would listen closely, and consider those words at length. But someone who quotes verse and chapter at me without having experienced what a true enemy can do, and says they love their enemies in spite of everything an enemy can truly do? Not much weight to that, as I see it. So I await Claudius' response.

Indeed, entirely agreed...
Not to cause offense to Claudius, but when somebody is able to declare they love their enemies I am forced to wonder about their degree of real life experience...
I too have experienced nastiness, sabotage and spite at the hands of my enemies. One person in particular has had such an adverse impact on my family and I as a whole that I actually wish the individual's death, and I have fantasized about slowly torturing them until they literally beg for the end. If I ever hear of that person meeting their well-deserved demise, I'll waste no time at all breaking open the champagne.

jklinders · Post by **jklinders** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:14 pm

I am not in the habit of making enemies in my personal life(such as it is)

. At work I have stayed above it mostly by my unshakable workplace virtue. I have little to fear from a backstabber in the office when I know my every action backs my words. As such none of the failed workplace plots against me has been personal enough to warrant more than a few minutes notice. they only enhance my credibility at the expense of theirs.

Bigby's Nose · Post by **Bigby's Nose** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:41 pm

Fable: Heh, I doubt that Mandela loved his enemies. The ability to love enemies is the mark of a saint, not a freedom fighter. Of course, I'm neither a saint nor a freedom fighter so I'm just making theories.

But I would be equally surprised if he was consumed with hate for them. Good to know that you're ok.

LeoStarDragon1 · Post by **LeoStarDragon1** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:07 pm

It Doesn't Have To Be Personal, You Know!

As far as I know, I've never met Osama Bin Laden, but I consider him an enemy of mine.

One of the guys that trained for the mission came into the "Wal*Mart Supercenter" that I worked in at the time, the West Side one. He needed some help and I helped him. He was very cordial. Too bad that none of us knew who he was at the time. Even though he was friendly, I still consider him an enemy.

jklinders · Post by **jklinders** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:51 pm

LeoStarDragon1 wrote:As far as I know, I've never met Osama Bin Laden, but I consider him an enemy of mine.

One of the guys that trained for the mission came into the "Wal*Mart Supercenter" that I worked in at the time, the West Side one. He needed some help and I helped him. He was very cordial. Too bad that none of us knew who he was at the time. Even though he was friendly, I still consider him an enemy.

Of coarse, those cretins are an enemy of anyone who lives the western lifestyle. Hatred does not come into in this case though; at least not for me. Approuch an idealogical conflict with too much hatred and you will end up becoming what you hate. At the end of this road is losing in victory.

However since I am not a soldier I will not likely have to address my emotional relationship with these enemies in any real way. I promise that if I actually meet a terrorist in person I'll update here on how I emotionally react to them. Incidentally I am not being trite here. I simply do not believe I can properly hate something without understanding it.

Claudius · Post by **Claudius** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:23 pm

Some of the monks in the Sangha would get beat up when they did their alms rounds. Their are teachings about how they should not let being beat additionally upset their state of mind. This was in the time of the buddha.

"Good men, at all times, surrender in truth all attachments. The holy spend not idle words on things of desire. When pleasure or pain come to them the wise feel above pleasure or pain."

and

"'He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me.' Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate.

For hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal."

None of this is to say that you can't tell your supervisor the truth about your performance at work. But that can be out of love of the truth and your work rather than anger at a liar. By the truth a lie is conquered. And if your supervisor doesn't know the difference between lies and truth then he is not a good one to rely on. Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and infamy. These are not good ones to rely on. At least not solidly. Like you get a new car and you don't enjoy it because it has a scratch on it!

anger isn't bad actually but it is just a distortion. inside the anger is clarity and love but its a lot of work unwinding it. people are angry to protect possessions and even ideas. But why do they want to protect those things?

and the teachings isn't to make people feel guilty about anger

I am not bible thumping I hope. People can make their own decisions. To each his own.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:02 pm

Claudius, you seem to have missed a question I asked you on the last page, and reiterated by DW at the top of this one. Easily done, given the way posts zoom past us, though I know in the past you've commented on posts one or two pages back. Still--I can restate it for you. You wrote:

Its possible to also desire your enemies happiness and be sympathetically joyful when THEY are happy much as you are happy when your children are happy.

I would like to know if your comment above, derives from people who treated you horribly, regularly--let's say, beat you every day for years, or killed your parents and then raped your sister, people who would truly be counted as enemies? Did these things happen to you? If so, then your remarks about deriving happiness from the happiness of your enemies is really something. On the other hand, if you're just repeating what you've been told or read, your same comments have a lot less weight. Which is it? A simple question.

Claudius · Post by **Claudius** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:17 pm

No fable I have not realized this teaching in the case of someone raping or beating me. And also I will repeat that this teaching does not cause you to have no feeling or response. When you are hurt you feel it. The point is to not throw kerosene on that hurt. If you were attacked you can call the police, for example. And if you ARE angry you don't say "I am bad because I am angry".. The point is to prevent yourself additional pain. I have been cheated on in a relationship and once I let go of the ideals of having that dream of what I wanted in the relationship and person it shifted my mind. I don't know how to explain it. I still noticed when I was harmed but it didn't hurt as bad because I knew I wasn't losing anything of value. If I were beaten I would probably press charges. If only to prevent that violent person from beating someone else. But that is a separate purpose from revenge.

The sympathetic joy would come if the person who beat me regretted violence and turned over a new leaf. I wouldn't feel sympathetic joy because they ate a good hamburger and enjoyed it. Well maybe not much haha.

Fable and you and DW actually follow what I am trying to say. The point is not to be rigidly identified with views and thinking particularly nightmare thinking. So the rigid thought that being angry at people is evil would be very harmful.

You and DW are very smart to just be angry. But my point is that sometimes anger hurts me more than it hurts my enemies. Regardless of how clever I try to be.. Thats what I am saying. Its a coal I hold in my hand to throw at my enemy. But who gets burnt? ME

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:19 pm

So in other words, when you write

Its possible to also desire your enemies happiness and be sympathetically joyful when THEY are happy much as you are happy when your children are happy.

...you are writing theoretically, based on something you've read or been told that it's possible to feel towards true enemies, rather than experienced.

That's what I wanted to know. Thank you.

sparky_kat · Post by **sparky_kat** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:32 pm

I would say that I am probably a mix of 4, 5, AND 6 (maybe occationally 7 if i am in the proper mood

)

Like blue sky the 4th was very.... amusing, while going with my divorce. then days like today i am a 6. (last night was 7)

@BS...

:laugh:

...of course you would say something like that in this type of thread

Claudius · Post by **Claudius** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:45 pm

Fable you don't think I have ever been screwed over? Fable its like Sophie's World....sophie read's about philosophy in a book. Then she starts getting letters in the mail. It becomes real. I was cheated on that is kind of not so nice. Numerous squabbles. One guy who the girl I was living with picked up playing pool started calling me names. I didn't hold it against him but I told him what my name was and that it made me angry to call me a different name. Eventually he claimed that he was talking about a different person he and his buddy knew. All kinds of things like that. I get my feelings hurt too fable. My caseworker trying to get work rehabilitated didn't return my e-mails or phone calls. Then he wanted to just put me through hoops going through seminars about job interviewing when that is not my problem...I interview fine aside from being honest that I am mentally ill. Sometimes I imagine that people are insulting me when they really are not. I get angry at them. Sometimes I hear voices in my head from them telling me they hate me.

I think you just think that I think I am better than you. That is not true. I just personally feel no reason to be angry! Why would I get angry fighting over nothing?

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?o ... ew&id=1756

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:07 pm

Fable you don't think I have ever been screwed over?

My question wasn't about being screwed over, was it? We've all been screwed over, at one time or another. There isn't a single person on the whole planet who hasn't been done dirt by a love interest. It is impossible to consider this of identical weight to somebody who spent 30 years in prison, being beaten daily--or someone who watched their parents killed deliberately before their eyes--or someone who while still a baby had all four limbs lopped off because of belonging to the wrong tribe.

If a person who had gone through this had words for me not merely repeating cant about "loving one's enemy" but explaining how they themselves did it, I would listen, and with great respect. But being screwed over by a love interest? Going through a bad divorce? Having a person rear end your car and take off? That happens to us all, and it doesn't make any of us, in my opinion, fit to utter those words about "desiring your enemies' happiness and be sympathetically joyful when THEY are happy." Because with respect, we haven't lived the words, haven't experienced that level of facing true enemies that really made "desiring your enemies' happiness" more than just a cant phrase.

Claudius · Post by **Claudius** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:30 pm

Fable its a high realization to love your enemy in those cases. Requires a realization of emptiness. The link in my last post was a kitchen sink version of how to care for anger. You treat it like a baby. You introduce some tenderness to care for the anger. I would have no choice but to apply the teachings if I were brutalized. Of course when you apply teachings you are realistic if they are working. If they are not then you ask for help from your teacher.

Some monks were brutalized by the chinese. I can't find a link but one was interviewed by the Indian press. He said the one thing he feared was that he would lose his compassion for his captors. They did abuse him. You think he was lying? Why would he do that? If his belief was that hating his captors was a valuable treasure he would have said that too.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:38 pm

Claudius wrote:Fable its a high realization to love your enemy in those cases. Requires a realization of emptiness...

Some monks were brutalized by the chinese. I can't find a link but one was interviewed by the Indian press...

Please drop it, Claudius. If one of those monks who was brutalized not once, but repeatedly over several decades spent in a reeducation camp by the Chinese cares to come up here and explain how much he desires the happiness of his captors, I'll listen carefully to all he has to say. But the words mean nothing when they aren't alive--meaning, directed by personal experience.

LeoStarDragon1 · Post by **LeoStarDragon1** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:40 pm

jklinders wrote:Of coarse, those cretins are an enemy of anyone who lives the Western lifestyle. Hatred does not come into in this case though; at least not for me. Approach an idealogical conflict with too much hatred and you will end up becoming what you hate. At the end of this road is losing in victory.

However since I am not a soldier I will not likely have to address my emotional relationship with these enemies in any real way. I promise that if I actually meet a terrorist in person I'll update here on how I emotionally react to them. Incidentally I am not being trite here. I simply do not believe I can properly hate something without understanding it.

Huh? Uh, no. It isn't the means is it? It's the resolution. If you hit me, I may ask why did you do that, and if I don't agree that you had a good reason to hit me, then I'll hit you to make it even. Maybe even once more for punishment. That is, unless I defend myself first by preventing you from hitting me to begin with. Then I may ask you why, and if I don't like the answer, you're still in trouble with me. Hate may or may not play a factor in it.

If I have to hit somebody I'm not going to be mad at myself for hitting that person if I did it on purpose. I only apologize for accidents and mean it. I'll be mad at the person I hit for provoking me to hit them. Of course, it would be my choice to hit them instead of scold them, or shoot them or have them arrested, or what ever the other options are. The point is, I'm not going to let someone who wronged me get away with it if I can at all help it.

Western lifestyle? Shoot fire! His side attacked my side, that's all. That's enough for me. What his motives were, I don't care if they were the best of intentions. Because it wouldn't be, "I did it because the aliens told me that if I didn't, they would destroy the whole planet and I believed them." His stated intentions only matter to his side who condone his actions and his causes.

Unless it is in the sense of prevention. Like if we understood what he was doing and why, we could prevent it in the future. That's different.

So I don't believe that you are being trite. For me it is, what's not to get?

A toddler provokes an angry response from his or her parent by repeatedly misbehaving and the angered parent picks up the child and throws him or her through a window. Who's side do you chose? "Oh, I've had children annoy me like that, so I choose the parent!" This isn't a cartoon situation. You advocate for the child as the parent went to far. But what if that child were Adolf Hitler and you knew he was going to become what he became. Who's side do you choose then?

Well an analogy like that doesn't work when dealing with nations. Kuwait didn't provoke Iraq into invading it. We didn't provoke Japan into attacking us at Pearl Harbor. Oops! I've rambled on and on again. I hope I made my point somewhere along the way.

Lady Dragonfly · Post by **Lady Dragonfly** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:08 pm

fable wrote:It is impossible to consider this of identical weight to somebody who spent 30 years in prison, being beaten daily--or someone who watched their parents killed deliberately before their eyes--or someone who while still a baby had all four limbs lopped off because of belonging to the wrong tribe.

You are right, of course, but those examples are extreme. If we go by your definition of enemies, most of us should never complain because our problems are trivial compared to the horrors you described.
I think it requires a life-long religious conditioning and brainwashing (Orwell's novels come to mind) to be able to "love" your oppressor.

Demortis · Post by **Demortis** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 1:21 am

fable wrote:Please drop it, Claudius. If one of those monks who was brutalized not once, but repeatedly over several decades spent in a reeducation camp by the Chinese cares to come up here and explain how much he desires the happiness of his captors, I'll listen carefully to all he has to say. But the words mean nothing when they aren't alive--meaning, directed by personal experience.

I think this is the first time I have ever seen Fable start to get ticked about something here... *puts a helmet on and hides under tables* The Turtle always said that in case of a nuke, hide under a table!!!

jklinders · Post by **jklinders** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:09 am

LeoStarDragon1 wrote:Huh? Uh, no. It isn't the means is it? It's the resolution. If you hit me, I may ask why did you do that, and if I don't agree that you had a good reason to hit me, then I'll hit you to make it even. Maybe even once more for punishment. That is, unless I defend myself first by preventing you from hitting me to begin with. Then I may ask you why, and if I don't like the answer, you're still in trouble with me. Hate may or may not play a factor in it.

If I have to hit somebody I'm not going to be mad at myself for hitting that person if I did it on purpose. I only apologize for accidents and mean it. I'll be mad at the person I hit for provoking me to hit them. Of course, it would be my choice to hit them instead of scold them, or shoot them or have them arrested, or what ever the other options are. The point is, I'm not going to let someone who wronged me get away with it if I can at all help it.

Western lifestyle? Shoot fire! His side attacked my side, that's all. That's enough for me. What his motives were, I don't care if they were the best of intentions. Because it wouldn't be, "I did it because the aliens told me that if I didn't, they would destroy the whole planet and I believed them." His stated intentions only matter to his side who condone his actions and his causes.

Unless it is in the sense of prevention. Like if we understood what he was doing and why, we could prevent it in the future. That's different.

So I don't believe that you are being trite. For me it is, what's not to get?

A toddler provokes an angry response from his or her parent by repeatedly misbehaving and the angered parent picks up the child and throws them through a window. Who's side do you chose? "Oh, I've had children annoy me like that, so I choose the parent!" This isn't a cartoon situation. You advocate for the child as the parent went to far. But what if that child were Adolf Hitler and you knew he was going to become what he became. Who's side do you choose then?

Well an analogy like that doesn't work when dealing with nations. Kuwait didn't provoke Iraq into invading it. We didn't provoke Japan into attacking us at Pearl Harbor. Oops! I've rambled on and on again. I hope I made my point somewhere along the way.

Treading carefully here as it was not my country that was attacked.

What you have said makes perfect sense, but the examples given have only reinforced my point. Actions taken by these people have caused your people to take actions that have harmed themselves(patriot act)Lash out at the wrong target (Iraq) and for a time at least tarnish reputation in the rest of the world.

I will claim to understand some motives of those folks(extreme poverty, brainwashing) The leaders are motivated by something else, and it is not the welfare of their people. I know those those folks do not know me, and hate me none the less, but hatred is a very strong word and emotion I reserve for VERY personal occasions.

As hatable as bin Ladin is, he does not meet that criteria...yet for me. However this only applies to me. others are free to walk a different path.

PS I'll debate this further only in a different thread

Demortis · Post by **Demortis** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:46 am

Why do I get the strangest feeling that this went from just normal hating someone, to hatred on a WHOLE other level?

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Love Thy Enemy?

Indeed, why should you bother?