Absorption

June 13, 2009

How is one supposed to respond to hate? "Turn the other cheek."

All hateful acts are a sort of striking. All loving acts are a sort of welcoming. Thus to respond to hate with love is to invite a blow. If the striker is open, he will be transformed thereafter. The flesh of the cheek absorbs the knuckles and cups the fist. A fist is relieved of its hateful potency when that which is struck does not resist.

What is it for one person to resist the hate of another? To respond in kind. When a person asserts in a situation that they will not respond in kind--as with the presentation of a cheek--hate is preemptively disarmed. It announces the futility of all kinds of striking. It keeps the hater at bay, even when he draws near. To strike an object that does not respond is a futile interaction; the only change that can occur is in the striker alone. If he is open, his fist will reverberate with its own frustrated energy. The turned cheek adds no hateful energy of its own, but only returns passively what it was given. It alters the expected outcome of the striking--the one the hater anticipates--by amending loving energy to the input.

On one view, this leaves he outcome at nil for the two opposing energies cancel each other out. On another view, this produces a positive outcome. Hate, which is the movement of evil, is at once retrograde (moving away from where one ought to go) and stationary (making no progress of its own). It is the lack of righteous movement as evil is the lack of love, of good. Something positive added to nothing is positive.