The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #63751   Message #1380596
Posted By: Little Hawk
17-Jan-05 - 10:43 AM
Thread Name: BS: On Not Hating One's Enemies
Subject: RE: BS: On Not Hating One's Enemies
I'm glad it had that effect on you, Lilyfestre.

A wise person does not look for enemies. He looks for opportunities to do positive things in the World. It may be that someone decides he is their enemy, because of his positive activities. That happens, specially when those activities have a big effect. It happened in the case of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many others. It seems that great good is annoying to certain people. :-) (Mainly because it threatens established power structures.)

Well, there's no use hating those kind of enemies, because if you subscribe to the consciousness termed "hate", you start becoming just like them. It's a toxic emotion.

What you have to do is continue to love the good in this World, and not waste your energy hating the evil. Those who love the good are quite good at defending it.

Joan of Arc loved France dearly. Accordingly, she proved to be an excellent battle commander and defeated the English time and again when no other French commander had been able to do so for 75 years prior to her campaigns. Yet...it was noted time and again that she had great compassion for the English who fell in battle. She gave them far more generous terms in defeat than was customary, allowing them to leave surrendered fortresses with their horses and their weapons, as long as they would leave peacefully. Others at the time would have simply killed them all without mercy. She wept over slain enemy soldiers, pitying their families who would not see them again. These were powerful demonstrations of a person wise enough to fight for what she loved, yet not to hate her enemies.

That is the wisdom given to saints, and it's a shining example to the rest of us.