Robert Thurman: Love Your Enemy | Big Think

Robert Thurman: Love Your Enemy

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Lovingkindness, Thurman says, is not an abstract idea but rater a practice that allows us to appreciate that everyone, including our enemies, want to be happy. And so instead of reflexively categorizing people as bad and wasting our energy by fighting them, we can elevate kindness and compassion “as the strengths they really are.”

Thurman explains how the concept of “love your enemies” is sometimes difficult to understand in a modern setting. “People get nervous about it because they think if you love your enemies it means you’re going to cave to them, you’re going to be a martyr, you’re going to invite them to come and destroy you and just be a masochist and so forth,” he says.

However, that is not what love means.

“You can have fierce compassion,” Thurman says, pointing to the example of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who told his followers during a Civil Rights march in Birmingham that hatred was “a ridiculous waste of our energy.”

“If you go around nursing hatred and vindictiveness” and how to get back at your enemy, Thurman says, “you’re hurting yourself.”

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Robert Thurman :

Robert Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of Tibet House US, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. The New York Times recently hailed him as "the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism."

The first American to have been ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk and a personal friend of the Dalai Lama for over 40 years, Professor Thurman is a passionate advocate and spokesperson for the truth regarding the current Tibet-China situation and the human rights violations suffered by the Tibetan people under Chinese rule. His commitment to finding a peaceful, win-win solution for Tibet and China inspired him to write his latest book, Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet and the World, published in June of 2008.

Professor Thurman also translates important Tibetan and Sanskrit philosophical writings and lectures and writes on Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism; on Asian history, particularly the history of the monastic institution in the Asian civilization; and on critical philosophy, with a focus on the dialogue between the material and inner sciences of the world's religious traditions.

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TRANSCRIPT:

The Buddhist psychology tradition, in particular, and the Asian psychologies in general and actually the ancient Christian monastic psychologies do have a strong theory and a strong practice really of overcoming bitterness, hatred, resentment, vengefulness and so forth. Carrying a little further from Moses's already restraining idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. In other words, you don't take a leg or a life for an eye, you know. Or a life for a tooth, you know, just another tooth. Which was already a step forward from the old vengeance idea of tribal attitude. And Jesus's and Buddha's greater idea of really love your enemies and how to unpack that in a modern setting. And people get nervous about it because they think if you love your enemies it means you're gonna cave to them, you're gonna be a martyr, you're gonna invite them to come and destroy you and just be a masochist and so forth. And that is not at all what it means. Love means in the Asian psychological term and I think really in any term it means the wish for the beloved happiness. To want to make the one you love happy. That's what love really is. It isn't really greed and wish to possess although some kinds of love tend to mix with that of the egotistical person. The reason someone is your enemy is they think you're preventing their happiness. Somehow you have something they want, you're in their way, whatever it is, the world isn't big enough for the both of you type of attitude. And so they're gonna be your enemy because they're unhappy and they think by getting rid of you they'll be happy. So if they were happy already without messing with you they might be wanting to leave you alone because it's no fun to go attack people. It's like, it's an exercise, you know. It's not like you are giving a caress or receiving one.

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