This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Sunday Morning Sitting and Talk with Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.

The End of Hatred - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 25, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning everyone and welcome. I'd like to begin with a somewhat famous poem. I call it the Buddhist poem for peace that goes back to the ancient times. It has had a big impact down through history, this poem. You can memorize it if you want; it's short.

Hate is never overcome by hate. By love alone is hate overcome. This is the ancient truth.

I hope that in hearing this poem, you feel challenged by it. Because how can we meet hate with love? But that's the call. That's the challenge. And I'm hoping that this talk I give today is a challenging talk in that spirit, in that way. It could be challenging in other ways for some of you to hear. I'm also hoping this talk challenges me in this way. The poem is challenging, so hopefully, it's okay for you to be challenged.

The Communal Chant

In the ancient texts or teachings that survive, they were originally formulated to be chanted, to be memorized. There were no written books in the time of the Buddha. Writing was probably almost non-existent in India. And so, a lot of these ancient texts are kind of boring to read in the modern way. If you think you're going to sit down and read a novel, it's really boring; you'll fall asleep.

But if you understand that they were meant to be chanted—chanted together in community, in unison—you get a whole different feel for the impact and the power of these poems, these teachings. And the one teaching that I have memorized that I think was chanted together, I'd like you to listen to maybe in that spirit of it being a communal chant.

Others will be cruel. I will not be cruel. Others will be violent. We will not be violent. Others will kill. We will not kill. Others will steal. We will not steal. Others will engage in sexual misconduct. We will not engage in sexual misconduct. Others will lie. We will not lie. Others will speak divisively. We will not speak divisively. Others will speak harshly. We will not speak harshly. Others will speak pointlessly. I will not speak pointlessly. Others will be avaricious. We will not be avaricious. Others will have ill will, have hatred. We will not have ill will, hatred.

In the ancient text this comes from, this continues with 34 more of those statements. And the people who memorize and chanted in the way the text is written, they'll do it each of these 44 statements, four times. So you get into the rhythm of it. And when you get into a rhythm of a chant, it kind of goes and touches you deeply. It touches something very different. Maybe it has a chance sometimes to touch the place of love, the place that really is a source for that kind of motivation to not be cruel, not be violent, not be divisive. To do it over and over again, to make that kind of evocation of that place, that possibility for us, I think is a quite a beautiful and powerful thing.

It's hard to do just the absence of those things. It's hard not to respond in ways that belong to any one of those things. It's hard not to respond with harshness and divisiveness. It's hard not to respond with ill will and anger and hostility. It's hard sometimes to avoid being cruel or being violent, even with our words. Human life is challenging.

The Story of Frankie Manning

Yesterday I learned a wonderful story about one of the great American dancers, a man named Frankie Manning. He grew up in Harlem; he was a black man and one of the founders of Lindy Hop and Swing. He died at the age of 94. He was born in, I think, 1914. He grew up dancing in the parts of the Harlem dance scene that was integrated with blacks and whites.

Then he went into the military during World War II, and he was assigned to a black platoon with a white sergeant who was a racist. He didn't just racist; he hated blacks, and he treated them that way, apparently with hostility and disdain and maybe cruelty. This story came down to me yesterday from a man who heard it from Frankie Manning himself, a student of his.

So they were fighting in the South Pacific. And at some point in one of these firefights, the sergeant was shot and wounded pretty badly by the Japanese. He lay there wounded on the battlefield in the line of fire. And his black soldiers were not that motivated to save his life. Some of them even thought, "You know, he deserves this." But Frankie Manning didn't do this. Frankie Manning went out into the fire and brought him to safety, risking his own life.

That's a remarkable thing to do. Remarkable not to hold a grudge, to hold hostility, not to have what can seem like a natural thing for humans. Maybe it is a natural thing, and that's why it's such a big problem: to harbor ill will, to harbor a kind of wish of cruelty to someone who's been cruel to you. But there is another way. And there is a way of love, and that's also natural. These two very natural ways, hatred and love, fear and peace—we're all capable of this. And where do we want to come from? What do we want to evoke in us? And what would you want to do for our society around us?

To be cruel and violent and hateful and to steal creates a lasting impact on so many people. It has a lasting impact on the person who was cruel. And it's painful and unfortunate to see that. It's hard to imagine it doesn't have a lasting impact on their family and their children who live in that and experience that and maybe then perpetuate it. It has a lasting impact on those who witness it. It has a lasting impact on those who experience it. Love has a very different lasting impact. I'm inspired by the story of Frankie in World War II, a story that comes from almost 80 years ago. I'm inspired by that. My parents-in-law survived the concentration camps, and I'm inspired by how they dealt with that after the war, how they tried to bring love into their family and tried hard to create a very different context for their children to grow up in. I've known lots of people who are children of Holocaust victims, and the harm continues into the generations.

The Beautiful and the Harmful

So, what causes lasting welfare and happiness is one of the core questions the Buddha explicitly asked. What is it that does that? And it's hard to imagine that happens when there's divisiveness and hostility.

The Buddha taught these ten things I just chanted from the chant in different ways. It was very important for him. He has a teaching where he says, "What is harmful?" What is harmful is to do the opposite of those. What is harmful is to be violent and to kill. What's harmful is to steal. What's harmful is to engage in sexual misconduct, sexual harm. What's harmful is to lie. What's harmful is to speak divisively. What's harmful is to speak harshly. What's harmful is to speak pointlessly. What's harmful is to be covetous, to want other people's things. What's harmful is to have ill will or hostility or hatred. So those are harmful. He makes it clear these are harmful.

And then he makes an interesting statement. He says, "What's even more harmful than harmful? What's worse than doing harm?" What's worse is to prompt and encourage others to be violent and to kill. To prompt and encourage others to steal. To prompt others to engage in sexual misconduct. To prompt others to lie, to be divisive, to be harsh, to be pointless in their speech. To encourage others to be avaricious. To encourage others to have hate. That's worse than harmful.

And then the Buddha switches. And he uses this wonderful Pali word, Kalyāṇa¹. Some of you know the word Kalyāṇa because the primary way it comes to us or is used in the Bay Area is Kalyāṇa mitta, which usually is translated as "good spiritual friend." And so Kalyāṇa is translated as "good" or "spiritual." I'm not going to argue that, but the primary or the first definition of Kalyāṇa is beautiful. So rather than "good spiritual friend," it's your beautiful friend. The word is used a lot in the text, but we miss it because usually it's not translated that way into English. But one of the meanings of this "beautiful" is to be of beautiful integrity, beautiful ethics. To associate ethics with beauty points to the deep effect in ourselves and others when we live with integrity, when we live with goodness and wholesomeness.

So the Buddha said, "What is beautiful?" And he said, "What is beautiful is not to be violent and to kill, not to steal, not to engage in sexual misconduct, not to lie, not to speak divisively, harshly, pointlessly. Not to have avarice, not to have ill will." So that's nice.

But then this is where it gets challenging. Hopefully, this talk is already challenging, but now listen to this challenge. "What's more beautiful than beauty?" And the Buddha said, "What's more beautiful than beautiful is to prompt and encourage others to not kill, not be violent. To prompt and encourage others not to steal. To prompt and encourage others not to engage in sexual harm. To prompt others to not lie. To prompt others not to be cruel, divisive. To prompt others not to be harsh, to speak pointlessly. To encourage others not to be avaricious. To encourage others not to hate. That is beautiful."

In this ancient tradition of Buddhism, all these "nots"—not to kill, not to lie, not to do all these knots—it was explicitly understood that this implied the positive quality. It wasn't just the absence. That's why this ancient teaching that's translated as "hate is not overcome by hate, by love alone is it overcome." The actual word is not love, it's non-hate. But universally down through the ages, it's understood to be more than just the absence of hate, it's understood to be love. That's one of the reasons why maybe calling it "love" is a little bit narrow and limiting. Even when the tradition understands that the absence of something means the positive, there are many more positives than love that we can live by. So love, generosity, respect, dignity, appreciation, valuing human life—there are all these beautiful things we can do, but we summarize it all in "love" in such a nice way.

Responding with Love in Our Time

We have examples in this society now where all the things the Buddha was talking about, these ten things, are being enacted in plain sight. We're seeing it in all these videos we get. It's remarkable what we're seeing—the violence and the cruelty. We have a president who is cruel, who is making America cruel again rather than making America care again. And it's painful to see that. It hurts to see that. It's painful to see him and the pain that he's living in. It's painful to see how ugly it is when we know he's capable of beauty. We know he's capable of love and care, and that's what we want to see come out of this man. Can we bring it out? Can we support it? It's a tough task.

We know that the people at ICE in Minneapolis don't have to be the way they are. They're being egged on. They're being encouraged. They have a whole culture, who knows, that has supported them to be as cruel as they are. They might even have been told they're doing the right thing. But they're capable of another way. They're capable of doing things beautifully.

One of the kind of beautiful examples that came to my mind this morning, thinking about all this—and it doesn't sound beautiful, it sounds awful. The act was awful, but what the recipient of the act did was beautiful. It was John Lewis walking across that bridge in 1963 or so, 64, with the police with the batons waiting for him and the civil rights marchers. He was hit over the head and knocked down. But it wasn't the first time he was hit over the head and went unconscious. Earlier in the civil rights movement, he was in a Greyhound bus station, and young Ku Klux Klan members came and beat him up, hit him over the head, and he was unconscious. But he did not have hate for them. He was in a movement that was really working on love, speaking from love, being reminded of love, having love for the people who were attacking them. That was beautiful, to not respond in kind.

And then there's this wonderful story that the man who beat him up—I think he hit him over the head with a chair or something, and he had a concussion—and John Lewis became a congressman for many years in Washington D.C. About 40 years later, that man came to Washington D.C. to his office in Congress with his own son to apologize. The way that John Lewis behaved and lived his life set the conditions, I think, for this man to be able to apologize 40 years later in the presence of his own son.

So, we have this horrible situation going on. We have cruelty and violence being done to children, gratuitous violence being done to people in awful ways. We have people being killed. If we follow the Buddha's instructions, we want to prompt and encourage people not to kill. But can we do it with love? That's the challenge. Can we stop it with love? This Buddha's message is not a message of passivity. It's not a message of just going and meditating and wishing well. I think it's a message to go and show up.

To Stand Up for What is Beautiful

I'm inspired by what's happened in Minneapolis because it's clear that what's happening there, the amazing cruelty, is not just cruelty. There's cruelty, violence, killing. I don't know if they're stealing exactly there, but the president wants to steal. It's kind of amazing to have a president publicly saying he feels he has a right to steal and he's going to steal. But that's not beautiful. It's ugly. It's terrible. It creates lasting harm for all of us. Can we encourage the other? Can we see the possibility of other things? Can we stand up in love and say, "No, not in our name"?

And then there's lying. It's so amazing to see so many lies come out of the administration. It's not like a political issue, because of this amazing video culture we live in, it's obvious that what we're seeing on video from many different angles is completely different than the made-up stories about what ICE is doing in Minneapolis and other places. For one of the most powerful countries in the world to have this leadership blatantly lying that everyone in the world can see undermines the integrity of the whole country in the view of others. This causes lasting harm. We won't do that. Let's not lie. They lie with hate, they lie with cruelty. Let us do the opposite. Let us do what's beautiful. Let us find a way with love to encourage others to change and bring out the best in themselves.

The Buddha put a tremendous emphasis on speaking to create unity. He was very explicit about it: to bring together those who are divided, to create concord, to create harmony in society. So how do we do that? And I'm certainly hoping in giving this kind of talk today that's meant to challenge all of us, it's not to create divisiveness in our society, not to perpetuate it, but this stuff has to be named. It has to be addressed when it's so obvious. Of course, there are differences in politics, different opinions, different values that people have. And those differences should be respected, and the people who have them should be respected. But it's not okay to do such ugly things. It's not okay to intentionally harm in such awful ways. It's not okay to bypass a whole long tradition of law and order. It's not okay for the administration to be the party of no law and no order. I remember when I was young, Republicans were the party of law and order. But they can come back to that. It's possible to return. It's possible to bring the best of our country out into the public again, out into the world.

And I think it begins with us. Not because we're so special here at IMC, but just because you're you. How could any of this start without it being everyone who is a "me," everyone who is a "you"? It has to start with you. Can you love? Can you care? Can you meet the world in kindness? And can you do the beautiful thing, which with love and respect, in ways that promote the possibility for unity, the possibility for concord? Can you and me and all of us stand up for what's beautiful? To encourage. I love this word "prompt" or "encourage." It's really difficult to do. It's easier to protest. It's easier to go up and yell hate back. It's easier to fight. It's much, much more difficult to do what John Lewis did, which was not to hate, not to fight back. But people like John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, in their unwillingness to hate, changed the world. And now it's our time to change the world in our way.

Stories of Courage

We go through these cycles. This happens. I grew up with this. I grew up with riot police on American campuses killing students.

I'll end with a story of a friend of mine, who eventually became Blanche Hartman, the abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center, a wonderful Buddhist teacher. A turning point for her in her life, which moved her into her whole spiritual path as a Zen Buddhist, was when she was at San Francisco State University. The campuses were kind of the center of a lot of the anti-Vietnam movement and other things. She was at a demonstration, and the riot police were there. There was a long line of these riot police in their gear. And somehow, in the way she was positioned in the demonstration, the crowd pushed her up against the riot police, almost chest to chest. She looked into the eyes of the officer who was there, and he looked into her eyes. And that changed her life. She saw his humanity, and she saw her own.

Hate is not overcome by hate. By love alone is hate overcome. This is the ancient truth. "Ancient truth" for me means it's kind of encoded in our DNA, that we have this capacity to care and love and to change the world, not through violence but through love and care and respect. So that's the challenge. And it's a challenge to learn how to do this. It's a challenge to trust it. It's a challenge to meet it. And just like some people will die with violent change, some people will die with nonviolent change. That's what happened in the civil rights movement.

I'll tell you one more story. This was maybe almost 30 years ago. There was a woman, a white woman, who had been a civil rights worker in the South during the 60s. She had been in a variety of different demonstrations. She told me that she was at a street corner with a group of people with signs protesting the racism of the times. A pickup truck came by filled with young, white racist men, and they jumped out of the bed of the pickup truck and started beating them up. Then they drove off.

So they went back to the same street corner the next day, stood there, maybe with bandages on. The same truck came by, and the guys did the same thing. The third day, they went there to stand, and the same thing happened. These guys jumped out of their pickup truck, and one of them was standing over her. She said she looked up at him, and he had his fist lifted up. He looked into her eyes and he said, "What in the world are you doing?" He was just stunned, like, "Why? What's happening here?" He had never seen anybody like this. And then they had a conversation. That day there was no violence.

That takes courage. That takes a lot of love, a lot of believing that something like this is possible.

Conclusion

So here we are. We live in our time of challenge. All of us, every generation, maybe every life, lives through these kinds of challenges. This is ours. Maybe some of you came to leave with a big smile on your face, happy and delighted by everything, and didn't want this heavy talk. But I'm pointing to something beautiful. I'm pointing to something profound and possible. So I hope that it's a challenge you're willing to take on.

Thank you.