All religions profess against hatred. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Of all the characters of Shakespeare, Hamlet, the hero of the eponymous play, is the one who is the least emotional and the most philosophical. He is the incarnation of detachment. Everything he says is philosophical as the following dialogue he utters in the play: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
As A.C. Bradley says in his Shakespearean Tragedy, “This man, the Hamlet of the play, is a heroic, terrible figure. He would have been formidable to Othello or Macbeth. If the sentimental Hamlet had crossed him, he would have hurled him from his path with one sweep of his arm.”
I always wish to be as detached and philosophical as Hamlet is, but fails invariably. It seems we humans are basically emotional beings. That is why we fail to live the way the religious texts urge us to. Religions are founded by philosophical and detached people and all religious texts are filled with teachings that urge us to conquer our emotions. The Bible says: “Whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well” (Matthew 5:38-39). “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6: 27). “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong” (Thessalonians 5:15). “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9).
The Koran says: “Paradise is for those who command their anger, for those who pardon offences and for those who return good for evil.”
The Bhagavad Gita says that “if one is able to tolerate the urges of the material senses and to check the force of desire and anger, he is well situated and is happy in this world.”
Jawaharlal Nehru says in his Glimpses of World History that the Buddha “condemned the sacrifices of all manner of things to the gods, and said we must sacrifice, instead, our anger and hatred and envy and wrong-thinking.”
Humans are asked by every religion to conquer their anger and hatred and wrong-thinking; but anger and hatred and wrong-thinking easily conquer the humans and the followers of one religion are hated by the followers of another; the citizens of one nation are hated by those of the other. Hatred causes conflict, conflict causes irrevocable destruction and suffering.
The root cause of the sufferings of humanity is the emotions called anger, hatred and greed. I wish to have a world without these negative traits. But I am not able to control my individual anger against my personal enemies. I certainly cannot do good to someone who hates me, and I have never tried to do so. If it is so difficult to control anger and hatred even at an individual level, how communities and nations can control their collective anger and hatred against other communities and nations. After all, communities and nations are formed by individuals like you and I who fail to overpower our own anger and hatred even against our dear and near ones.
It is easy to preach philosophy, but very difficult to live philosophically, I presume. Only people like the Buddha and the Mahatma can preach philosophy and live philosophically.
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