Poor Casey Anthony! (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, TheGrio.com

Hating hateful actions (like murder) or hateful actors (like murderers) makes us guilty of hate. Hate is toxic to all who harbor it, and it is not cured by vigilantism or revenge.

There are those who give free rein to hate when it arises like stampeding horses. There are others who pull the reins and control their chariot even when the horses are bolting. The Buddha called the latter "charioteers," whereas the former are merely holding the reins.

American hatred has grown so great -- animosity at a mother or a trial gone wrong -- that citizens are ready to lynch anyone named Casey Anthony.

Searching Facebook, many have found a man by the same name and tormented him. His response to the vigilante mob? "I can't change my name, ladies and gentlemen."

"Casey Anthony" is a 43-year-old African-American male. He lives in Darby, Pennsylvania, and just happens to share the name of a 25-year-old Anglo-American female from Orlando, Florida, who is infamous for being found not guilty of killing her 2-year-old daughter.

• PHOTO: The other Casey Anthony from Pennsylvania (NBC Philadelphia)
• She's to be released Sunday; some fear for her safety
• Casey Anthony gets and loses job in pornography

Mr. Casey Anthony has been bombarded on Facebook. He estimates that he has gotten at least 300 friend requests, messages, and posts, all targeting the other Casey Anthony.

"After the verdict that day, it went crazy. It was like everybody wanted to know and wanted to comment on this Casey Anthony situation," he explains.

The Antidote is the Opposite
There are Three Poisons of the heart/mind: greed, hatred (often expressed as fear), and delusion. It is wise to root them out at every opportunity. It is easier to transmute or transform them into something useful than it is to rid oneself of them.

But surely if they remain, they are serving as the basis of unprofitable karma (unskillful action of mind, speech, or body). Their "antidotes" are categories of opposite states -- nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion. Three immediate remedies are given as:

1. letting go
2. generating compassion
3. being mindful of the present moment.

Why would one even try to avoid or abandon hatred if it is manifesting as "righteous indignation"? Surely, that justifies it and strengthens us to act in opposition!?

No, what it does is obscure the mind, cause one to act in ways that result in remorse, that bring about suffering for us (when those actions later ripen), the bring humans down to subhuman states.

Hate helps no one. And those who say it does are trying to make the best of a bad situation. Transform it, transmute it, let it go, be freed from it, free others from it -- for it will surely drag us down, and we will only realize it too late.

• A man named Casey Anthony (thegrio.com)
• What if Casey Anthony were black?
• The notion of race and coverage disparity also applies to Casey Anthony herself. Would she have been so easily acquitted if she were a Black woman?
• Prof. Boyce Watkins: Would a black Casey Anthony been exonerated? Most blacks don't think so
  

Hating Osama only begets hate (MLK quote)

Wisdom Quarterly

Put away the blood lust fists, pack the flags of nationalism. All life is precious, and a life has been taken. That loss makes the heart heavy. Those who call for hate suffer in fear.

Martin Luther King Jr. followed the example of Gandhi, who followed the example of Jesus and the Buddha centuries before Christ. The Buddha taught in the "The Imprints of the Dharma" (Dhammapada) that hate always begets hate. Only love conquers hate. This is a timeless truth.

The word hate is a translation of a much broader Buddhist term. Whereas in English hate refers exclusively to passionate anger, in Buddhism the term spans the entire range from slight annoyance to enduring resentment to violent wrath. Counterintuitively, it includes fear. In fear we kill, not out of bravery. Hate is an all-around terrible thing to cultivate.


Jessica Dovey recently became Internet-famous yesterday for confounding two quotes, her own and MLK's. She wisely said:

• “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.”

This, of course, is not the only thing the Buddha had to say about "hate." Hatred, or dosa in the exclusively Buddhist language Pali, is one of the three poisons that corrupt the heart/mind. Along with craving and delusion, hatred is sometimes compared to the flaring up of fire, craving to smoldering embers, and delusion to smoke.

Actions motivated by any of these three roots are invariably unskillful, unprofitable, unwholesome karma.

"Actions" (karma) may simply be mental. They may grow into words. They find their ultimate expression in deeds. Even when they remain as thoughts or impulses, they have volition and condition an unpleasant, unwelcome result.

To march in support of killing, to delight in the death of someone, to call for the death of someone, or to rejoice in that death -- all of these are unskillful acts that ripen in suffering for the doer. They are doubly harmful when they become verbal or physical because they then are influencing others to hate. By love alone does hate subside. There is no need to "drive out" darkness; it is enough to bring in light.


MLK was echoing these sentiments when he eloquently stated in the stirring voice of a Southern preacher:

• "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction…. The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

Martin Luther King Jr. with Buddhist monk and Vietnam War dissident, Thich Nhat Hanh