"...all is burning. And what...is the all that is burning? The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye contact is burning, and whatever feeling arises with eye contact as condition — whether pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant– that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of delusion; with sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair, I say."

Buddha, The Fire Sermon

Truth.

Freedom.

Fairness.

What I learned writing Lily's Blog 3 is about the nature of hate.

I struggled with feelings of rage and hate towards the director of the downtown Seattle YMCA,
who let me have it.

But then I realized that my hatred was a stop-gap measure, a mask for what I  had not been able to understand:

I didn't need to hate if I could told the truth:  I was verbally assaulted.  "Letting someone have it" is not what I expected coming from a person in authority at an ortganization which ostensibly prides itself on "values."

Nor the contempt, distortions, prevarication, aggression.

But as Wayne Dyer said, "The way other people treat you is their karma.  The way you react is yours."

And I free myself from the hatred of others by trying to release myself from not hating back.  
How?
By telling the truth without getting lost or stuck in hating or raging against the other person.

Time passes and with it an understanding reveals itself, hopefully.

And if state my view that African-Americans in this country are the only group who are, largely, not criticized, blamed or reviled for hating and raging, I think I can expect much hatred not just from them but from many Caucasians (and others as well).

"The darker the color of one's skin, the more one can get away with at the downtown Seattle YMCA."
from a review update June 2015, censored by Yelp


Hatred for telling the truth.
Hatred for not telling the truth.

The end of Lily's Blog 3.