Why do Beings Live in Hate?
In the Sakka-pañha Sutta, Sakka approaches the Buddha with a question that is remarkably current. Sakka is troubled by conflict. He notices that beings wish to live peacefully, free from hatred or violence, yet time and again they become involved in quarrels, rivalry, and war. He asks the Buddha directly:
“Why is it that beings who wish to live in peace end up living in hostility, hatred, and conflict?”
The Buddha’s initial reply is stark and uncompromising. He says that conflict arises from envy and miserliness.
This is not presented as a moral condemnation but as a causal observation. Envy resents others' good fortune; miserliness clings to what one has and refuses to share. Together, they corrupt relationships and foster conditions for violence.
Sakka, however, does not stop there. He presses the Buddha further, asking what causes envy and miserliness themselves. What follows is one of the Canon’s most elegant causal chains, a psychological anatomy of conflict that progresses steadily inward.
The Buddha explains that:-
Envy and miserliness stem from liking and disliking, from preference and aversion.
These, in turn, stem from desire, the impulse that draws the mind towards what it wants and pushes it away from what it fears.
Desire itself is rooted in thinking and proliferation: the mind’s tendency to elaborate stories about “me,” “mine,” “them,” and “what should be.”
This proliferation is based on perception formed through contact, the moment when sense experience is interpreted through a self-centred perspective.
In other words, conflict does not start with weapons or policies. It begins with perception: the moment experience is structured around possession, comparison, and identity.
The Buddha then describes the path away from conflict, which mirrors the path into it but in reverse.
By cultivating restraint, ethical conduct, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom, the practitioner gradually loosens the grip of craving and conceptual proliferation. When the sense of “mine” softens, miserliness diminishes. When comparison falls away, envy evaporates. With their dissolution, the foundation for conflict erodes.
What makes this sutta especially striking is its audience. The Buddha is not addressing a monk or ascetic, but a powerful ruler. The implication is clear: conflict cannot be resolved through power alone.
Even kings, presidents, and elites remain governed by envy and miserliness unless the mind itself undergoes transformation.
Rory Singer
You can also read this post on our Substack journal, Unfolding.