Page 132 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

(ii) The Hindrance of Hatred. This consists of hatred in all its gross

and subtle forms: antagonism, aggressiveness, dislike, even
righteous indignation. Only yesterday a woman came into Sakura

*and tried to give us a little tract on the Messiah. We couldn't
help getting into conversation with her, and eventually the
discussion turned upon the Bible and she asked us what we

thought about Jesus. We said that we certainly respected and
even admired him, but there were a few things in the Gospels

which we couldn't quite understand. One of these was the way in
which Christ seemed to lose his temper with the moneychangers
in the Temple and drove them out. She said that that was

righteous indignation and did not come under the heading of
anger or anything like that. I said that Buddhists usually believed

that a perfect man does not exhibit greed or anger or any such
thing, but to this she replied that Christ was God and with God it
was different. Unfortunately, as I pointed out to this woman,

righteous indignation is the thin end of the wedge, and whether
or not it was exhibited by Christ himself it opened the way, in

Christian Europe, for all sorts of very unfortunate developments
in the form of religious persecution, the Inquisition, the Crusades,
and so on. Buddhism would say that all these unpleasant

phenomena, which are sufficiently familiar to us from our study
of history, are forms of violence, which is itself manifestation of

the Hindrance of hatred. Instead of trying to rationalize the
Hindrances, one should try to be honest with oneself and to see
what one's mental state is really like.

* The Buddhist shop in Central London in the basement of which the first FWBO shrine
and meditation centre was situated.

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