The Fire of Revenge

A famous British psychologist once observed: “Hatred is like an acid. It can do more damage to the container in which it is stored than to the object on which it is poured.”

If you nurse hatred for someone with the intent of harming him, a fire of hatred will burn into your heart which will flare up day in and day out. But it will affect the other person only if you are successful in harming him in some material sense. But it is very rare for a person to successfully harm another in the way that he desires. The plans of one who acts under the influence of hatred turn out in most cases to be unsuccessful.

In every situation one of two punishments is destined for one who is consumed by hatred. The fire of revenge will burn in him until he is successful in having his revenge, but after that his conscience will bear down upon him. By killing his enemy he kills his own peace of mind forever. In his passion for revenge, his human feelings are buried, but, after achieving success over his enemy, his passion for revenge cools down and then his conscience awakens and pricks him throughout his life for having done something very wrong.

A criminal defense lawyer once told me that he often met criminals charged with murder. But the murderers he had seen throughout his life were such as had guilty feelings. In a fit of passion they had committed murder but when their passion was spent, their hearts heaped blame on them. This is the state of every criminal. No criminal is able to free himself from his own feelings. After the crime every criminal’s mind becomes a psychological prison in which he suffers endlessly. The reality is that negative activity is directed primarily, but unwittingly, against oneself. The result of negative activity is that whether or not it reaches others, its harm reaches oneself.

To develop a positive personality one should be completely free of hatred against others.