Vajra and Hawkeye-
I think that you have summed up what I was trying to express pretty well. BUT there is a little issue with the idea of hatred, at least as I've experienced it clincially.
There is not much tendency to differentiate between hatred and rage in common speech - Were I to spill my hot coffee while trying both to sip it and negociate a tight turn in my car I might say, "Oh, bollocks, I hate it when that happens."
Yet this is imprecise, and is not what is actually meant.
Rage is a natural response for self preservation. Were I to stand on your favorite toe, whether or not by accident, you'd initially try to remove me nicely, but rapidly, as your color reddens and temperature and blood pressure rise, you soon would give me a healthy shove, or whatever else might be needed. Then, the problem having been solved, life goes on. Your toe is saved, and I learn to be more careful. That's the purpose of rage. Unless we get carried away, it's a win-win deal.
Hatred is a regenerative emotional state in which we carry the wound and keep scratching it open. With each bitter scratch we redirect rage at the perceived source. I see it in the pathology of souls who have dragged insults from prior lifetimes over into the present, and they still tear open their bleeding carcasses i order to spew venom in the direction of others. As you might guess, that causes life to become difficult.
To hate means changing the basic personality and making it contingent on hostile actions against others, whether in mind or deed. It is a deliberately acquired state. Regrettably, the English language tends to mask our participation in hatred, as we tend to say, "He makes me hate him", or the equivalent. In my clinical practice I point out that in French one says, "Je me fache de ca," which translates into "I anger myself from that." The French stay in charge.
An example, visiting a friend with an infant who is happy and gurgling and chortles as we bounce it over our shoulder. Often the abrupt result, especially after dinner, is that the infant spits up. We generally laugh, clean ourselves off, and forget it. (Also, we learn to put a diaper over the shoulder before burping the kid.) But if twenty years later we were to embrace a friend who promptly pukes on us, we tend to react differently. There is a strong tendency to become enraged, as if the situation has brought something different. But the only difference (except perhaps for volume) is that we view things differently. The facts as we experience them are no different. In the second case we project motivation and react to our projection. The fact might be that our friend has an upset tummy, but the tendency is to project blame, and in some cases, to decide to hate that person.
Clinically, hatred thus means that we add a contingency to our lives that involves keeping a source of pain handy, and reacting to it in an unpleasant manner, so that we can rekindle the initial painful event. Whatever happened, it remains in present time through hatred. This is the problem with "rape therapy" in which the therapist tells the victim (male or female - men get it too) that they'll feel better if they can embrace their hatred. It just doesn't work - and it is often true that this is part of the projections of the therapist who got diddled back a few years in time, whch makes matters even worse. The solution is to "forgive" in the sense of letting go and getting on with life.
As we look at Tibetan deities, Mahakala is a typical wrathful deity. I occasionally have handed out Mahakala cards to kids who needed a protector to keep the ghosts out of the closet at night. But there are no "hateful" deities.
So I'm very much in favor of rage as a healthy response to thngs getting messed up. It's a great motivator. But to hate is self-destructive. It's a pity that our language so often fulfils the gloomy predictions of semanticists who claim that the words we use shape our thoughts.
As for eating meat or not - that's a personal matter. Not my department. However, I note in passing, that most of the less technological hunting societies do, in actual fact, love and respect the animal that is hunted. In many cases, even a tree is asked to understand and forgive before it is cut down. (And I've observed that there are places on the Internet where we can find a new and not necessarily desired definition of "animal husbandry".)
Hmmm - I think I've located the limit.
dave
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