The Art of Loving Your Enemy

Growing up in the Catholic education system I was exposed many a time to the ‘Love thy enemy’ scripture from the sermon on the mount, as I’m sure many readers were also. I always struggled with this notion, and the Catholic standpoint on good and evil led me to discount this nugget of wisdom from Jesus. If we are born in sin and there are good people and people who are evil, I don’t want to love my enemy because my enemy is evil. I’m obviously oversimplifying it and it’s not what they actually- it was my interpretation at the time. Still, I don’t think the good vs evil cosmic battle narrative within Christianity their followers many favours.

It was my Metta meditation practice that breathed new life into why I should ‘love’ my enemy. ‘Metta’ is the Pali word for ‘loving-kindness.’ In Metta, the meditator focusses on conjuring up feelings of loving-kindness. This is done initially through thinking of someone it’s easy to feel loving-kindness towards, let’s say your best friend. You focus on this person and wish them well- ‘may you be happy,’ ‘may you be free from suffering,’ ‘may all your dreams in this life be realized.’ You soon realize that you genuinely believe what you are saying, you really do want the best for this person, if you could take away this person’s suffering, you would. From there you graduate to using people you feel indifferent towards as your object of loving-kindness before wishing yourself well. There are a few more challenges here, but for the most part its all well and good.

It gets somewhat sticky and for less experienced meditators, near impossible when one attempts to use their enemy as an object of loving-kindness. These are people who have wronged you at some point- people you hate or resent. This is obviously not something that comes naturally for most of us. One of the culprits could be the Christian notion of ‘evil’ existing in our collective consciousness. The thought that there is a sinister force that wants the destruction of all that its good. That this can act through people because of original sin (thanks Eve), the concept that humans are born into sin. This makes it easy to flippantly, although probably subconsciously, label our enemy as ‘evil,’ or at least very bad people. Pair this with the fact that harbouring feelings of hate and resentment towards another person, historically dictated whether our species lived or died in the hunter gatherer days. The cards are really stacked against our ability to love our enemy, both from a standpoint of collective consciousness and an evolutionary psychological perspective.

To work through this, it helps understanding what Buddhists believe about why people seemingly commit evil acts. A central idea in Buddhism is Dukkha. Dukkha is a Pali word that can loosely be associated with anxiety, distress, frustration, unease, and un-satisfactoriness.  Buddhists believe that people commit misdeeds not because they are inherently evil, but because they are ignorant- ignorant of the effects of Duhkka. These people remain slaves to their anger, violence, discriminatory behaviour, and dissatisfaction with the world.

This is not a pleasant way to be living. It must be so tiring operating from a rage filled framework, it would be such an unpleasant and painful way to move through life. These kinds of people do not know how to be live, they are ignorant of the truth. They are not necessarily bad people but are they quite often good people who have done bad things. However, they are ignorant that there is a better way to operate, a way of love, of kindness and tolerance.

It is important to note that when a meditator begins focussing on their ‘enemy’ in Metta practice, they are encouraged not to use anyone that has abused them or terrifies them- it is possible to work up to this point but it shouldn’t be dabbled with right away. Meditation teacher and Waking Up Course creator Sam Harris provides this insight on how to use Metta for your enemies:

“Recognize that this person didn’t create himself. He was once a child, destined to become the person he now is. Consider how much of this person’s behaviour is the product of their own suffering, and anxiety and self-doubt and lack of connection to others. Think of how much ordinary misery this person has experienced and will experience in his life. See if you can simply wish them well.”

Duhkka has affected us all differently. If I were unfortunate enough to be born into the circumstance of my enemy who is to say I would have turned out any differently to him? Harris makes a case that this person has experienced immense suffering in their life- just like we have and perhaps even worse. They will continue this suffering until the day they die, they will lose everyone they love in this life. Why should we feel anything but compassion towards them in the meantime, even in spite of all they have done to wrong us.

The ultimate goal of Metta meditation is to realize that you wish all living beings to be full of happiness, and to be free from suffering. Our enemy is a living being too. It is easier to paint them with the broad brush of evil makes it so easy to do but unfortunately it is not that simple. The Christian framework of original sin and our evolutionary hardwiring has not done us any favours in seeing through the illusion of evil.

We must relate the familiarity and the inevitability of our own suffering, to acknowledge our ‘enemies’ are lost. That they are walking through the bramble bushes of a poorly lit path- the wrong path. Metta helped me to de-stigmatize and take away my fear and hatred of people who have wronged me. It allowed me to remove the snarling demonic masks that I had placed on them and to see the teary-eyed lost children that they were behind their misdeeds and actions. I could forgive them and even further than that, work towards loving them.