President Barack Obama awards the 2013 National National Humanities Medal to Krista Tippett, radio host, from St. Paul, Minn., during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Monday, July 28, 2014. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Today’s On Being with Krista Tippett is an interview with a couple of American Buddhists on how we relate to our enemies and our suffering.  It is a part of the work that she and On Being are doing on nurturing Civil Conversations.  When we operate out of a cognitive map that defines people as either allies or enemies, and which legitimizes not only the emotion of anger but its expression in violence, we construct suffering — and not just for others but for ourselves as well.

What is the alternative? Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but as Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman point out in the piece, that way of being requires development.  We evolve into a way of being that replaces hate and fear and anger with concern and care and love.  We have to first of all stop the hate before we can start the love.  It takes more than intention to make this shift; we also need discipline.

This is just the approach that we will be taking in the conversation on January 14 that I am calling Interpersonal Nonviolence.  We are not only stopping the violence, we are also embodying the love that arises when we can more and more fully experience the fact that we are all connected…that we are all a part of the same body.  For more information about that workshop, follow this link.