From: The Buddha's sermon at Rajagaha; verses 19-22:

19 "Do not deceive, do not despise each other anywhere. Do not be angry nor bear secret resentments; for as a mother will risk her life and watches over her child,
so boundless be your love to all, so tender, kind and mild.

20 Cherish good will right and left, early and late, and without hindrance, without stint, be free of hate and envy, while standing and walking and sitting down,
what ever you have in mind, the rule of life that is always best is to be loving-kind.

21 Gifts are great, founding temples is meritorious, meditations and religious exercises pacify the heart,comprehension of the truth leads to Nirvana,
but greater than all is lovingkindness.

22 As the light of the moon is 16 times stronger than the light of all the stars, so lovingkindness is 16 times more efficacious in liberating the heart than
all other religious accomplishments taken together."

From" The Gospel of the Buddha" Paul Carus, 1915, Open court Publishing source:"The Mahavagga" Sacred books of the East. Oxford, 1881-82

THE VIRTUE OF HATE

by: Meir Y. Soloveichik

From: First Things-the Journal of Religion and Public Life
www.firstthings.com

EXCERPT: "The Protestant theologian Harvey Cox, who is married to a Jew, wrote a book on his impressions of Jewish ritual. Cox describes
the Jewish holiday of Purim, on which the defeat of Haman is celebrated by the reading of the book of Esther. Enamored with the biblical story,
Cox enjoys the tale until the end, where, as noted above, Esther wreaks vengeance upon her enemies. Like Sister Johanna, he is disturbed by
Jewish hatred. It cannot be a coincidence, he argues, that precisely on Purim a Jew by the name of Baruch Goldstein murdered twenty innocent
Muslims engaged in prayer in Hebron.

There is something to Cox’s remarks. The danger inherent in hatred is that it must be very limited, directed only at the most evil and unrepentant.
According to the Talmud, the angels began singing a song of triumph upon the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt until God interrupted them:
“My creatures are drowning, and you wish to sing a song?” Yet the rabbis also state that God wreaked further vengeance upon Pharoah himself,
ordering the sea to spit him out, so that he could return to Egypt alone, without his army.

Apparently one must cross some terrible moral boundary in order to be a justified target of God’s hatred—and of ours.
An Israeli mother is right to raise her child to hate Saddam Hussein, but she would fail as a parent if she taught him to despise every Arab.
We who hate must be wary lest we, like Goldstein, become like those we are taught to despise."