Hatred never ceases by hatred; hatred ceases only by love. This is the eternal law.

One of the most celebrated verses of the Dhammapada, and perhaps the most universally recognized. Verena verāni — hatred by hatred — never ceases (na sammanti). Violence that responds to violence resolves nothing; it adds more nodes to the net of conflict. Human history is the longest commentary on this verse.

Averena — by non-hatred, by the absence of enmity — is the only solvent. Not passivity, not naivety, but the radical attitude of not feeding the fire with more fuel. Mettā, loving-kindness in the Buddhist tradition, is not sentimentality: it is the understanding that the other who acts from hatred is suffering, and that responding from hatred only perpetuates that suffering in a chain.

Esa dhammo sanantano: this is the eternal law, the primordial dharma. Not a moral rule imposed from outside, but a description of how reality works. Just as the law of gravity does not ask to be believed in order to operate, this law operates regardless of our acceptance.

In yoga, this principle is called ahiṃsā — non-harming. The first of the yamas is not only not harming physically; it is the active cultivation of a mental attitude in which there is no space for hatred. Patañjali and the Buddha, in the same century, pointed in the same direction.