How can we give up hating a person?

From: Sahana

Being a very inferior human being, I had developed a lot of hatred towards a person, and constantly think bad of the person. I always try to chant when i realise that this evil thoughts are wasting my precious time and energy, but still cannot control mostly. Kindly provide your valuable guidance to come out of this situation.

Transcript

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Question from Sahanam. Being a very inferior human being, I had developed a lot of hatred towards a person.
I am constantly thinking bad of that person. I always try to chant when I realize that these evil thoughts are wasting my precious time and energy, but still cannot control mostly. Can you provide your valuable guidance to come out of this situation? Answer.
We can look at this problem at three levels, practical, philosophical and devotional. At a practical level, if certain person’s thoughts are stimulating and agitating and invoking negative emotions within our minds, then we need to minimize the stimulus that will bring those thoughts to us. So, we can avoid interactions with that person as much as possible.
And if we have to interact, we can minimize those interactions and keep those interactions non-emotional. We can keep them official and curved so that further emotions are not invoked. It is important that we don’t add fuel to the fire that is within.
And one way the fuel can be added is by further interaction with that person and especially interaction that reinforces the previous hateful patterns. Sometimes avoiding may not be possible, but whatever is possible. That’s the practical level.
At the philosophical level, we need to understand that even if that person has done something wrong to us, ultimately it is our karma coming to us. And surely, if that person has done something wrong, that person will get a karmic reaction for that. And whatever we had done wrong, we have got a karmic reaction for that.
But we don’t have to increase our suffering by hating that person. Because when we have negative emotions towards somebody else, actually it’s like holding a burning firewood in our hands in the hope of throwing it at that person when we encounter that person. So if and when we encounter that person, we might be able to throw it at that person and that person may or may not be hurt.
But all the time we are holding that burning firewood in our hands and it’s going to hurt us, burn us much more than burns that person. So like that, from the biological medical point of view, negative thoughts about other people create negative enzymes in our body. And they literally bait us in bad health producing enzymes and they harm our health.
So from the intellectual point of view, you need to understand that this is not going to help me. So we need to redirect our mind. Okay, for whatever bad karma I had done, if we blame the person, then we become vindictive.
Yes, he has caused my suffering or she has caused my suffering and I have to hit back at that person. But if you understand it’s my karma, then in trying to hit back at that person, I will be complicating my own karmic situation. So let me just get that person out of my way and out of my mind as much as possible.
And chanting is a good way to do that. But along with chanting, we can also try to use our intellect, use our intellect to drag our mind back towards the holy name. That means whatever philosophical or logical points impel us to stop thinking of that person.
The philosophical point I mentioned was our own karma coming to us. And the logical point is that we are hurting ourselves by bathing our own bodies in bad health enzymes by cultivating negative emotions. So whatever philosophical logical points like this convince us that I should stop doing this, in a small pocket diary we can note down those points.
And whenever negative thoughts come, we refer to those points. And then when the renewed intellectual conviction got from these points, I should not think about this and I will not think about this person. Then we can drag the mind away from that person to the holy name.
Chanting is powerful, but ultimately it depends on our conviction whether we chant wholeheartedly or halfheartedly. And our conviction is more if we have some intellectually processed points that strengthen and reinforce the conviction. At the devotional level, we need to understand that ultimately the only compatible relationship is between us and Krishna.
And all other relationships are only varying degrees of incompatibility. Some may be slightly incompatible, some may be horrendously incompatible. And a relationship in which you are experiencing hatred towards some other person, that is horrendously incompatible or it is in that side of the spectrum.
Therefore we need to understand that ultimately Krishna is giving me a glimpse of the nature of any relationship apart from the relationship with him. Therefore let me focus on my relationship with Krishna. And initially we chant because we don’t want to think about other things.
But when we understand that only our relationship with Krishna is what will be compatible and satisfying for us, then we chant, not to avoid thinking of some other person, but we chant so that we can think about Krishna. Because that is the most compatible relationship and most satisfying relationship that we can ever have. So this particular negative relationship that we have had, we can take that as a lesson, a realization of the futility of all relationships apart from our relationship with Krishna and focus on our relationship with Krishna primarily.
So there is an article on this website, Is Forgiveness Practical? That may also be helpful in overcoming that hatred towards the person, if that person has wronged us and if we are in need of forgiving that person and requiring resources about how to actually practically implement forgiveness. Thank you.