Father Damien and Mother Maryanne
Star of the Sea Painted Church
Kalaupapa, Moloka'i, HI, 1980

My dear friends,

In Romans 12:9-21, The Apostle Paul does not offer us a theory of love. He gives us a pattern of life: a series of brief, urgent practices through which love becomes visible in a community. From the viewpoint of the Bodhisattva path, these counsels describe bodhicitta in action—the awakened intention to seek wisdom and to labor for the liberation of every being. Such love is not merely a feeling we possess. It is a way of meeting each person and each circumstance.

Genuine love has no hidden bargain in it. It does not offer kindness in order to win approval, exercise control, or secure a reward. The Bodhisattva learns to recognize the subtle self-interest that can disguise itself as virtue, and returns again and again to the simple wish that others may be free from suffering. Christian love and bodhicitta begin in the same honesty: we must care for the other as an end, not as an instrument of the self.

Compassion is not passive approval of whatever happens. To hate what is evil is to refuse the cruelty, greed, and delusion that injure living beings, while resisting the temptation to hate the people caught in them. The Bodhisattva holds fast to what is good by cultivating wholesome states of mind and supporting actions that relieve suffering. We oppose evil most faithfully when we do not allow opposition to reproduce its hatred within us.

Mutual affection recognizes that no one awakens alone. Because our lives arise through countless relationships, the well-being of one is inseparable from the well-being of all. To “outdo one another in showing honor” is therefore not a competition for moral superiority, but a joyful reversal of ordinary competition: instead of struggling to be seen, we compete to see and honor the dignity of others.

The Bodhisattva vow is vast, and enthusiasm can fade when its fulfillment seems impossibly distant. Paul reminds us that zeal is renewed through service. We need not wait for heroic opportunities; every ordinary task can become an offering when it is done attentively for the benefit of others. Ardent spirit is not restless excitement, but the steady energy of love returning to its work.

Hope, patience, and prayer sustain one another. Hope keeps affliction from defining the whole horizon; patience keeps us from adding resentment to pain; and prayer releases the anxious illusion that everything depends upon our control. Buddhist practice similarly joins joyful perseverance, patient endurance, and meditative steadiness. Neither path promises escape from difficulty; both teach us how suffering can deepen rather than close the heart.

Compassion becomes credible when it reaches our possessions, our homes, and our tables. Generosity loosens the grip of attachment by teaching us that what we call “mine” can serve the common good. Hospitality goes farther still: it welcomes the stranger before difference has been made safe or familiar. In the Bodhisattva path, every stranger has been bound to us in the vast web of interdependent life; welcoming them is a recognition of kinship.

To bless a persecutor does not excuse abuse, forgive injustice cheaply, or forbid us from protecting those in danger. It refuses, however, to surrender the persecutor to hatred. The Bodhisattva understands that harmful action grows from ignorance and affliction, and therefore wishes even the wrongdoer freedom from the causes that make wrongdoing possible. A blessing can accompany firm resistance: may you awaken, may your cruelty cease, and may no one else be harmed.

Compassion means entering another person's joy or sorrow without making it our own story. Envy can make another's happiness feel like our loss, while discomfort can make us retreat from another's grief. The Buddhist practices of sympathetic joy and compassion train us in the opposite response: to delight in goodness wherever it appears and to remain tenderly present wherever pain is found. In both laughter and tears, love says, “You are not alone.”

Harmony does not require sameness; it requires that pride no longer determine whose voice matters. The Bodhisattva therefore practices humility, remembering that every person can be a teacher and that apparent status reveals nothing of a person's true worth. To associate with the lowly is not to stoop down from a superior height, but to abandon the imagined height altogether. Then we can listen without presuming that our partial understanding is the whole truth.

Retaliation promises to restore moral balance, yet it usually passes suffering from one person to another and calls the transmission justice. In Buddhist language, anger conditions action, action bears consequences, and the cycle continues. Refusing to repay evil for evil interrupts that cycle. Taking thought for what is noble also asks us to act transparently, so that our response can serve reconciliation and the common good rather than private revenge.

Paul's careful words—“if it is possible” and “so far as it depends on you”—keep peace from becoming a demand that victims submit to harm. We cannot control another person's choices, nor can every conflict be resolved by goodwill alone. We can take responsibility for the causes we ourselves contribute: our speech, our motives, our willingness to listen, and our refusal to dehumanize. The Bodhisattva seeks peace without clinging to an appearance of harmony that conceals injustice.

To leave vengeance to God is to relinquish the claim that our wounded self is qualified to measure and inflict another person's due. Paul directs the energy of injury into concrete mercy: feed the enemy and give the enemy drink. The “burning coals” need not signify a more ingenious punishment; associated by some interpreters with an ancient sign of repentance, they can suggest the conscience awakened by undeserved kindness. The Bodhisattva likewise answers hostility in a way that gives the offender an opportunity to awaken, while taking wise measures to prevent further harm.

Evil overcomes us not only when it injures us, but when it recruits us into its manner of acting. Goodness overcomes evil by refusing that recruitment. This is not weakness or passive optimism; it is the disciplined courage to respond from wisdom and compassion rather than from the poisons of hatred, greed, and delusion. Each such response weakens an old pattern and plants the conditions from which a different future may grow.

Paul's many imperatives finally disclose a single practice: let love govern the whole of life. Let it purify our motives, animate our service, open our homes, share the feelings of our neighbors, humble our opinions, and interrupt the spiral of vengeance. This is also the work of the Bodhisattva, who seeks awakening not as a private refuge, but in order that no being shall be abandoned.