Choose Love, Not Hate ... for Martin Luther King

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear…”

Martin Luther King spoke those words and his life was an embodiment of this sentiment. King died in 1968, the year my younger daughter was born, which now feels like eons of time ago. But the thing about wise words is that they never become dated or tired or irrelevant….Their message is universal, touching all of humanity. King believed in the universal right and wrong, the just and unjust. When I came to Buddhist practice over 20 years ago I remember being touched by these words: “hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone…” Words from Gotama Buddha from over 2500 years ago. Clearly King was a brother to the Buddha, as he was to India’s Mahatma Gandhi.

Today I want to talk about why love feels familiar to me and hatred alien. It started with my grandmother who gave me the unconditional love from my earliest days (3 years and up) that my mother could not. It showed up in her teaching me piano, dominos, taking me to the opera, telling me stories of her childhood, teaching me table manners, guiding me to the duck pond to feed the ducks, reading the Greek myths, and getting that special pair of patent leather shoes I had seen in Macy’s window so I could look ever so grown up when we went to our next concert together. And then some time later there was Elda in Florence who shared the creation and joy of making food with me - I was eleven at the time. An uneducated peasant woman, she lived and breathed affection for her tomatoes, parmesan, basil, and beautiful egg noodles. The year I spent witnessing her culinary artistry was a year I spent witnessing love, I think. And there was Michael Stephens, a long haired beau I held close, Concetto Amatore, a Sicilian young man who sang Italian ballads to me and whose green eyes melted with pleasure just looking at me. In a highly improbably romance, I was carried along in a sweet bubble of love and affection. I temporarily forgot my anxious and unreachable mother who spent the majority of her time drinking, dressing up, and fabricating a new persona for herself. When I was an adolescent I tried to conjure up anger and hatred for this neglectful woman, to pay her back for ignoring me, but it was hard… I saw in her a loneliness a sadness and confusion that I also detected in myself. Part of me wanted to hate her because I felt so abandoned, but it never really worked. I resigned myself to melancholy and disappointment.

I married a young man whom I felt a kinship with — our minds seemed to do a dance together when we first met in college and soon enough we became seriously embroiled with one another. Married at 20 — not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination - we lurched forward into married life and parenting. A very hard road. But we had love going for us, at least at the very beginning. It was an imperfect love, but it boiled down to deeply felt good will and kindness, and that seemed to be enough. Then came two beautiful daughters …. a terrifying responsibility of course. From them on parenting seemed to be the glue that kept us together. I remember becoming passionately political at a certain point and saying we “hated” Richard Nixon (and didn’t a lot of young intellectuals after all?), but as I look back now I realize it wasn’t really hate. It was a sense of moral outrage and confusion that our country could be led by a mean spirited crook…. And today in 2020, we are faced with a similar landscape: a government run by a gangster (like Nixon) and mental incompetent (not Nixon). When I reflect on my feelings about the darkness and cruelty today I don’t find hatred at play - but rather a supreme sadness, yes even some anger, at the delusion that brought this all about. Our current president whom I choose not to name is a product of what the Buddha called “causes and conditions” and his chaotic and destructive dance unfolds largely because of what came before. He has done great harm, but I believe that hating him only subtracts from our own sense of purpose and wellbeing.

I remember asking my grandmother when I was young if there was anyone she hated and she replied that there was not, even though she sharply disagreed with some and was angered at others. She talked of these difficult people as being persons who were damaged by what they lived through, the way they were treated, and she believed they didn’t deserve hatred. I think my grandmother Dimond found hatred to be alien, really. She, like the Buddha, saw human beings as essentially worthy beings who got into terrible trouble because of unfortunate motivations (greed) and ignorance, and cruelty. She lived by a code of non-harming. Not always easy, but clearly a path to peace and ease. She was a Buddhist in the core of her being, I think, and most likely didn’t know this; I still regret not having the opportunity to share my understandings of Buddhism with her…

This last Saturday I attended a rally at San Francisco Civic Center for the 4th annual Women’s March. On a brisk and bright afternoon people - more women than men - many with little pink hats and sassy and bold signs of protest - came together to listen to speakers for justice of all kinds: climate, immigration, reproduction, employment. Some brought dogs, many had children, some sported homemade hats and red wigs, and the mood was vibrant and upbeat. A lone gentleman carried a small humble sign that said, “lock him up” with an image of our president. Many policeman were scattered about on the periphery and yet they were not needed. This was a gathering of peaceful protest. Not a hateful expression to be found. I stood there on that chilly afternoon and I knew that I was looking at the path to change, a feeling I had experienced in Washington DC during that epic first Women’s March in 2017. Here in San Francisco on January 18, 2020, there were women, kids in strollers, men in pink hats, dogs, terrific signs … all voicing the same idea: change must come, justice must be done - AND no harm will come from us. I left the rally inspired and full of hope (for a change!).

It feels good to be hopeful. Who was it that had the word HOPE beautifully emblazoned on a campaign poster recently? Barack Obama- ah yes. I miss him… Hopefulness is about life - not death. Hopefulness is about harmony and connection and good will… which brings me back to the eloquence of Martin Luther King, who shouted his truth to the universe, “I have a dream!”

Dear Readers: I invite you to go to www.bowingtoelephants.com/gift to receive my recent 10 minute lovingkindness meditation. On Martin Luther King Day it seems appropriate to consider embracing such a daily, life-changing practice...