Hatred is pacified not by hatred, but only by loving-kindness
At one time the Buddha was staying at the Jetavana Monastery in Sāvatti which was donated to the Buddha by the chief benefactor Anāthapindika.
There was a certain young man who lived with his parents and when his father passed away, he looked after his mother while attending to the household work as well as work on his farm on his own. Though he was unwilling to find a wife, as his mother was insisting that he must get married, he gave in and married a certain woman who turned out to be infertile. His mother thought that if there were no children, the family line would not be continued and hence proposed to his son that he should find another woman who could bear children. He was not happy about it, but the mother repeatedly insisted that he find a second wife who could have children. When his first wife overheard their conversation, she was alarmed and offered to find another wife herself who would be a woman of her choice. So she went to a certain family and persuaded the parents to let her bring their daughter to be her husband’s second wife.
When the second wife became pregnant with a child, the first wife was afraid that her position in the family would be lost if the other woman bore a child and hence decided to cause an abortion. This she did twice by giving food mixed with poison to the second wife causing her to lose two children through miscarriage. When the second wife was pregnant for the third time, the first wife did the same as before to cause a miscarriage but this time the second wife also died while aborting her unborn baby. But having realized that it was the other woman who caused her to abort three babies and that she was also going to die this time, she developed a hatred towards the other woman and vowed to be reborn as an ogress so that she could eat the children of the other woman.
She was reborn as a cat and the other woman who was the first wife was reborn as a hen. The hen laid eggs and the cat ate them three times. The hen made a vow to be reborn so that she could eat the cat and her offspring and was reborn as a leopardess while the cat was reborn as a doe. The doe gave birth to three offspring and the leopardess ate all three of them. As the doe was dying, she took a vow to eat the leopardess and her offspring in her future birth and was reborn as an ogress, while the leopardess was reborn as a young woman in the city of Savatti.
The young woman eventually got married and moved to live with her husband. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and the ogress disguised as a close friend visited the family and ate the newborn baby. The ogress did the same when the young woman gave birth to her second son. When the third son was born, one day the ogress was pursuing them to eat that baby too, but learning that the Buddha was giving a sermon to a congregation at the Jetavana Monastery, the young woman fled to the monastery with the baby and placed the baby at the feet of the Buddha. The ogress could not enter the monastery as she was stopped at the gate by the guardian spirit of the monastery.
The Buddha then got the ogress also to come in and reprimanded both the young woman and the ogress for continuing with their hatred for each other, eating each other’s offspring life after life. The Buddha said that had they not come face to face with a Buddha-like him, they would have continued with their hatred towards each other for an eon. The Buddha advised both of them that hatred is pacified not by hatred but only by loving-kindness. Then the Buddha recited the following verse which is recorded as the 5th verse of the Dhammapada.
“Nahi verena verāni,
sammantīdha kudacanaṁ,
averena ca sammanti,
esa dhammo sanantano.”
“Hatred is indeed, never appeased by hatred it is appeased by loving kindness, this is an eternal law.”
At the end of the discourse, the ogress was established in Sotapatti Fruition and the long-standing feud came to an end.
- We have all been in countless cycles of hatred, in this infinite Samsarā. Even today, we have people who want to hurt us and who don’t like us and vice versa. By reaching at least the sotāpanna stage, we can stop having mortal hatred for others. In the Sakadāgāmi stage this anger is weakened and in the Anagami stage all anger, even a small one, disappears without a trace.
