We must quench our hate in the waters of love

"He insulted me, he beat me, robbed me". Think this way and hatred never ends.

"He insulted me, he beat me, robbed me" Give this up and in you hatred ends. Not by hate is hate defeated; hate is quenched by love. This is eternal law. - Dhammapada

Conflict, even violence, is a fact of life caused by desire and attachment. So striving to end conflict, while worthy, can never fully succeed. What we can fully control is our response to conflict. When we are attacked, it is natural to want to attack back, but the Buddha urges us to go beyond this simplistic reactivity. If we meet others' attacks with our own attacks, joining in their negative karma, we are simply adding fuel to the fire, and endangering everyone, including ourselves.

The Buddha counsels us it is not blood this situation demands; it is compassion. Wise teachers throughout the ages have echoed the Buddha's wisdom; Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Maha Ghosananda, the Dalai Lama, and many others in many cultures. These leaders have never taught weakness, but they have always taught love, and they have overcome greater foes than both home-grown domestic terrorists and foreign terrorists like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

You may believe there are things love is not well-suited to conquer, but love is perfectly suited to conquer hate. Violence, retaliation responses currently being advocated by many add to the tremendous energy embodied in hatred. Love, on the other hand, takes the energy of hate and redirects it. Hate cannot go beyond itself. It draws its strength from contraction. Love lives to go beyond itself, drawing its strength from expansion. Love can thus comprehend hate, integrating it into something larger. Slowly hate is defeated, as a grain of salt dissolves into the sweetness of a pond.
This is a profound challenge. Of course. We are just human, as the Buddha knows and as he was, too.
But harboring hatred because others have hurt us is like swallowing poison and hoping others will die.

And we become prisoners of our own anger, and of the vicious cycle that is terrorism, we must quench our hate in the waters of love.