Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

90
Hate
Hate is not a word we use easily, as its connotations are too strong.
We do not mention hate, as we do not mention cancer, for we think
of it as something incurable. We rather speak of aversion, of having
a grudge. Yet, basically they are all the same: a resistance in
opposition. How to be aware of hate, when we even avoid the name
thereof?
Hate is like an internally festering wound, a cankerous growth,
which slowly poisons the entire system, all thought and action. It is
a resistance which is building up when there is a no understanding,
no intelligent approach, no awareness. When a problem arises and
is approached only with emotional feelings (vedanā) without perception
(saññā), there is a growth, a complex (saṅkhāra) which is
a conflict (sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā). A partial approach to a problem
with one’s emotions is naturally one of opposition. Thus one
meets others with a feeling of self-defence, either in the repulsion,
of non-acceptance of the unknown, or in the greedy attraction of
usefulness. It is always measured by the standard of ‘self’.
For hate there is no cure. No amount of loving thoughts can dismiss
that stance of opposition which has soured the very approach
and initial contact. There may be physical diseases and deformities
which repulse, but at the same time call out for compassion and
help. But, hate is an aversion, a turning away, an opposing force a
destructive tendency. It leaves no room for understanding, for compassion
and love. It is probably the strongest passion in man, always
lurking to flare up at any moment of frustration, of contradiction,
of abstraction. There is no particular remedy for this disease. It
has to be uprooted from the soil in which it grows.
What is that soil? And what is hate? From what does it turn
away in aversion, in opposition, in conflict? What is the object of
hate? It cannot be the harmful object, the man who has stolen
my wife, who has been slinging mud on my name, who looted my