Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode

number 53. I am your host, Noah Rasheda, and today I'm talking about freedom

from the bonds of anger and hatred.

Like many of you, I woke up this morning to the sad news of yet another mass shooting,

another senseless act of violence that affected the lives of so many innocent people.

Prior to this event, I had already been thinking a lot about anger and hatred and how these

common emotions in our society and how hatred can erupt so easily in our society today

as well as in our own personal lives and our relationships and how these emotions affect

us so deeply. I think it's important to clarify the difference between anger and hatred.

According to Dr. Joseph Bergo, the voice behind the psychology today blog called Shame,

he says we can distinguish between anger and hatred in two ways, intensity and duration.

It helps to think of them as occurring along a spectrum. Anger might be triggered when

a loved one does something that frustrates us. It tends to come and go and it doesn't

crowd out to all of the other feelings for that person. We can often voice it in ways

that aren't hurtful and hatred lasts longer and it's more pervasive. It tends to overwhelm

us and obscure everything else we might feel. It makes us want to take action, to hurt or

destroy whatever inspires the hatred. I think it's interesting that he mentions that anger

doesn't necessarily crowd out all the other feelings, something we can still work with,

but hatred does. I think that's the key difference. I'm sure you've heard of the expression

blind rage. To me, this is the danger of an emotion like hatred as opposed to anger.

It binds us and it blinds us from the moment to moment feelings that we have from other

emotions. Often other emotions that are also present like love or kindness, but these

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