This
is the third chapter of my booklet Kshanti, originally given as part
of a series of talks at the London Buddhist Centre in 1997
According to the Oxford
Universal Dictionary, forgiveness means ‘to give up, cease to
harbour resentment’. If we give up resentment against someone, then
we no longer have the desire to retaliate or seek revenge. In short,
we have forgiven them.
It
is not easy to forgive, especially if someone has really caused us
harm intentionally. It is not even easy to forgive when we feel
offended even though no offence was meant. To forgive is to let go of
feeling hurt, to give up our grudges. To forgive means to extend
goodwill to those that we feel are opposed to us, those who have
offended us, those who have hurt us, those who don't like us, even
those we regard as enemies. Forgiveness is truly an act of
self-transformation. When we forgive we transform a negative mental
state of resentment and anger into a positive mental state of
goodwill.
To
forgive does not necessarily mean to forget. We cannot simply choose
to forget. If someone has really acted unskilfully towards us, it may
be imprudent to forget anyway. For example, if someone has shown
themselves to be incapable of keeping a confidence, then it would be
best to remember that and not share confidences with them, until such
time as you felt they had changed. However if you've just had a row
or misunderstanding with someone, it is probably best to drop it,
forget about the details of who said what and just get on with
improving the relationship. When I say that to forgive is not to
forget, I mean that we can forgive without forgetting, not that we
must try to remember every offence and hurt even after we've forgiven
someone.
Now
perhaps it's obvious why we should forgive people. Nevertheless I
would like to go into this. Why forgive? Why not hold on to
resentment? Why not retaliate, take revenge, teach them a lesson, get
our own back? Why not? It is the course of action that is recommended
to us often. It is how the world of nation states functions. To
maintain peaceful relations between countries, the threat of
retaliation is made very clear. It is how we are told God functions.
If you offend him, he will take revenge - unto the third generation
according to the Old Testament. (1)It is how many of us survived at
school, invoking big brothers or big sisters as a promise of terrible
revenge if any harm should befall us. There are whole societies where
it would be considered highly dishonourable not to take revenge; the
vendetta culture.
So
the taking of revenge, retaliation for offence received or imagined,
is well thought of in the world. The doctrine of revenge has many
champions. But I am encouraging forgiveness. Is this naivety? Why
forgive?
Well,
the first reason is that if you want to be happy there is no real
option. We may imagine that we can be happy and fulfilled in
isolation from others, regardless of how they are or how we feel
about them. But this is delusion. In reality we are intimately
connected with all other living beings and in particular with all
other human beings and our well-being depends upon their well-being,
or at least our well-being depends upon our sincere wish for their
well-being. According to the Insight of the Buddha, if we hurt others
we hurt ourselves. If others harm us they thereby harm themselves. If
we help others we help ourselves. This intimate interconnection of
our destinies is due to the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is
not in Reality split into myriad bits even though it manifests
through a vast multiplicity of forms. Consciousness is non-dual. To
quote Sangharakshita in ‘Wisdom Beyond Words’:
“For
an illustration of this idea we may turn to the Gandavyuha Sutra, in
which the reality of things is compared to the intersecting of beams
of light. If you have rays of light of all different colours,
flashing in all directions, crossing and crisscrossing, what you
find, obviously, is that one beam of light does not obstruct any of
the others. They all shine through one another. They are not lost or
merged in one great light - they all maintain what you might call
their separate individualities - but they offer no obstruction to
penetration by other individualities. They are all mutually
interpenetrating. In reality things can be perceived neither as being
chopped up into mutually exclusive bits, not as being absorbed into a
unity. When we see into reality we see all things as interfusing and
interpenetrating one another. There is both individuality and unity -
neither obstructing the other - at the same time.” (2)
In
the Surangama Sutra there is a dialogue between Ananda and the Buddha
about the nature of Reality. To quote The Survey of Buddhism:
‘First
he makes Ananda admit that the mind cannot be regarded as being
located inside the body, or outside it, or in between: it is not a
spatially conditioned phenomenon. Next, he shows him the difference
between the true mind and the false mind, the former being Absolute
Mind itself, the latter the discriminative faculty. Finally, he
declares that, like the hallucinations seen by a person with
defective vision, the seemingly objective universe perceived by the
discriminative faculty does not exist, and the sole reality is
Absolute Mind. The effect which the Buddha's exposition produces is
described by the compiler of the sutra in the following words:
“Ananda
and all the great congregation ... perceived that each one's mind was
coextensive with the universe, seeing clearly the empty character of
the universe as plainly as a leaf or trifling thing in the hand, and
that all things in the universe are all alike, merely the excellently
bright and primeval mind of Bodhi, and that this mind is universally
diffused, and comprehends all things within itself."’ (3)
It
is necessary and beneficial to practise forgiveness because it brings
us back into alignment with the true nature of things. It brings us
into alignment with the way things really are and therefore it also
helps us to move closer to Reality. By practising forgiveness and
understanding the significance of forgiveness we create the
conditions which will help us to gain Insight into the Reality of the
universe and the true nature of consciousness.
As
well as this more existential reason for forgiving others and giving
up resentment, there are other more mundane reasons. It is a sign of
immaturity to harbour resentment and seek retaliation. It is childish
behaviour and an indication that emotional maturity has not been
attained. So one way of helping ourselves to grow up and become more
mature is to practise forgiveness. A childish emotionality wants to
be loved unconditionally all the time and never to be disliked or
disapproved of. A childish emotionality is likely to take offence
very easily, to feel hurt and upset when others don't behave in the
adoring manner of some imaginary parent. A childish emotionality will
hold onto resentment and want to get its own back. Feeling hurt or
upset seems sufficient justification for retaliation in this case.
When we are more emotionally mature it is easier to accept that we
won't be universally adored and liked or even approved of and
therefore with a bit of effort and imagination it becomes more
possible to give up resentment. By giving up resentment and working
at the practice of forgiveness we develop more emotional maturity.
Forgiveness is a giving up of self-centredness and a movement towards
being other-regarding. Although we may have been hurt of offended by
someone it is still self-centred to hold onto feelings of bitterness
and indignation. It is also foolish because it doesn't help ourselves
or anybody else. As Shantideva says:
“One's
mind finds no peace, neither enjoys pleasure or delight, nor goes to
sleep, nor feels secure while the dart of hatred is stuck in the
heart.
Those
whom one honours with wealth and respect, and also one's dependents,
even they long to destroy the master who is disfigured by hatred.
Even
friends shrink from him. He gives, but is not honoured. In short,
there is no sense in which someone prone to anger is well off.
The
person who realises that hatred is an enemy, since it creates such
sufferings as these, and who persistently strikes it down, it happy
in this world and the next.” (4)
Perhaps
we have looked sufficiently at why we should forgive. What about who
to forgive? Well fairly obviously we should forgive those who have
harmed us. These fall into two categories. Those who have caused us
harm and acknowledge that they've caused us harm, and those who don't
acknowledge or accept that they've caused us harm, perhaps those who
don't even realise that we think they've caused us harm. It is
actually not very common for someone to have a real enemy who is
deliberately out to get them and cause them harm. According to
Shantideva again, it is good fortune to have a real enemy because
then there is the opportunity to practise patience and forgiveness.
He says:
"No-one
ever prevents us from doing good. And even if they do so in some
particular manner, that is still an occasion for practising Kshanti,
and that is the greatest of all virtues! So what is there to lose?
If
due to my own failings I am not patient with my enemy then it is only
I who is preventing myself from cultivating a great source of merit.
Since my enemy is the occasion for patience, how can I say that he
prevents it?
A
beggar is not an obstacle to generosity ... therefore because I am
able to practise patience with my enemy, and he is the occasion of
forgiveness he is worthy of being given the very first fruits of my
patience, he is worthy of veneration just like the sacred Dharma
because he is the cause of patience." (5)
So
perhaps the first person to forgive is a real enemy, someone who
wants to harm us. Then there are those who harm us inadvertently,
through insensitivity or because of their own fears. This is probably
more common within the Sangha. We get upset because someone
criticises us a bit strongly or because they fail to praise us when
we think praise is due. When this happens the only solution is
forgiveness. We are responsible for our mental state, and we can
choose to let go of it and be forgiving. Until we do there is only
suffering for us. To hold onto resentment and anger, to seek
retribution is to be in a painful mental state, so even for our own
sake we ought to let go, forgive and move towards that expansive
state which is characterised by metta.
Often
people hold onto grudges against ex-lovers for a long time. Sexual
love can turn to hatred and bitterness very quickly. When we are
rejected by a lover, when they go off with someone else, that is a
time when we can sink into a hell of resentment and self-pity and
feel justified. We feel the world will only be put to rights when the
other person admits their cruelty and apologises and even punishes
themselves somehow. Of course, even if that were to happen, it would
not satisfy us. The way out of that state of jealousy and bitterness
lies with us and only with us. It is we who have developed the
attachment, it is we who have invested the energy, it is we who are
in the throes of a hellish mental state and it is we who have to do
something about it. Recognising this is a first step. After that it
may take a long time for us to forgive, especially as the other
person doesn't see that they have done anything particularly wrong.
They've simply ended a relationship and gone and started another one
as far as they're concerned. But however long it takes and however
difficult it may seem, eventually we have to let go of our bitterness
and resentment, and forgive. From my own experience on one occasion
several years ago it took me four years to finally let go of
resentful feelings after the ending of a sexual relationship.
So
this area of sexual relationship is one where we have to make a
strong effort to practise forgiveness. And it is an area in which it
is difficult to be forgiving because it is an arena of amazing
irrationality and obsession. By the way, I'm not suggesting that it's
okay for people to end their relationships abruptly and go off with
someone else. I think the ending of a sexual relationship requires
sensitivity and ideally there should be a good gap of time between
ending one relationship and starting another, at least six months.
Sangharakshita recommends courtship.
So
we need to forgive enemies and ex-lovers. Many of us also have to
forgive our parents. This is often the case even when our parents
have not caused us any harm. The parent/child relationship is such
that all sorts of expectations are built up and often disappointed.
As we mature into adulthood we need to understand that our parents
are not just our parents, but individuals in their own right who have
been subject to all sorts of conditioning factors and who have been
imperfect parents because all parents are imperfect. My father died
when I was nineteen. I didn't get on well with him as a child or a
teenager, and it was about ten years after his death that I finally
realised that he had done his best as a father under the limitations
of his own strong conditioning and lack of education. It was a relief
to let go of the resentment I had held towards him. And I think it
was an essential part of my spiritual development too. I suspect that
what I say about children forgiving parents applies to parents
forgiving children too.
Following
on from the theme of forgiveness within families is the theme of
forgiving our ancestors more generally. Sometimes people blame
previous generations for the faults of the world and vilify them. In
England I have heard people being very critical of their ancestors
who colonised large parts of the world, or in Germany the wartime
generations are looked upon as aberrations sometimes. We too are
somebody's ancestors, and may be judged as wanting. However our
ancestors were individuals just as we are and were often more at the
mercy of circumstances even than we are. It may be possible to
identify great movements in social, political and international
affairs when we look back, but it is not so easy when we are in the
middle of it. Even looking back is quite often more a matter of
interpretation than factual exposition. I think we should give our
ancestors the benefit of the doubt and forgive them their
short-sightedness,their cowardice and even their evil actions. If we
don't we may be simply making excuses for ourselves and our own
cowardice and short-sightedness. Rather than blame past generations
for the state of the world, let us turn our minds to creating a
better world for future generations by learning what we can from our
ancestors, including learning from their mistakes. In this respect
the South African Truth and Reconciliation committee is to be
applauded. After the demise of apartheid it was recognised that to
seek justice would not be enough and thet forgiveness was a greater
virtue. to heal old wounds and to provide a foundation for the peace
of future generations, reconciliation and forgiveness were
indispensable.(6)
Having
forgiven our enemies, our ex-lovers, our parents and our ancestors,
perhaps it only remains for us to forgive ourselves. Some people give
themselves a hard time. The reason they give themselves a hard time
seems to be because they are not perfect. Where did they get the idea
that they should be perfect? Well, it's perhaps not to absurd as it
sounds. People who have genuine spiritual aspirations are often very
idealistic. This means that they have high standards. In fact their
standards are at the level of their highest ideals. This is as it
should be. However a confusion sometimes occurs, so that we expect
the real day to day situation to measure up to the ideal, and we are
inevitably disappointed. We need to forgive ourselves for not living
up to our ideals all the time, while at the same time striving to
live up to our ideals. Ideals are something to reach for, something
to look up to, not something to beat ourselves with. We should also
of course forgive others for not living up to their ideals, and even
more so we should forgive others for not living up to our ideals.
Whoever
we are forgiving and for whatever reason it is of course essential
that our forgiveness is genuine and heartfelt. If someone apologises
to us we should forgive them verbally and mean it. We should very
much want to let go of resentful feelings, so that when we say "I
forgive you", we are saying that we want to put our relationship
on a different footing, we want to relate on the basis of metta.
Sometimes
it is not possible or not appropriate to forgive someone verbally. It
is not appropriate if they don't see that they have committed any
fault and it is not possible if the person is dead, as was the case
with my father. In both the examples I gave from my own life, the
case of my father and of an ex-lover, the reconciliation and
forgiving took the form of me writing a letter that was never meant
to be delivered. In each case I wrote a letter saying everything I
wanted to say and in the course of writing I gained a new perspective
which enabled me to move on and let go of any bitterness I felt. That
proved to be sufficient. Since the whole experience of feeling
offended and indignant was taking place in my own mind, it was
sufficient for the reconciliation and forgiving to take place in my
own mind too. This was at the end of a whole process of becoming more
conscious and gaining a bigger perspective. If you find yourself in a
similar situation it may not work immediately, you may have to
approach it several times and chip away at your own stubbornness, so
to speak. Perhaps writing doesn't appeal to you and you are more at
ease with meditation You could forgive someone in the context of your
meditation practice, especially in the metta bhavana practice.
Sitting in meditation you work to bring about a change of heart in
the depths of your being and allow yourself to be affected to such an
extent that you let go of bad feeling and begin to love those you
previously hated or resented. There is also a general forgiveness
that can be given. In Sukhavati community, where I live,we do this
whenever anyone leaves the community. In the context of a ritual, the
person leaving stands up and facing each person in turn says "I
forgive you for any harm you may have caused me, and I ask you to
forgive me for any harm I may have caused you". The other person
replies, "I forgive you", and then the exchange is repeated
the other way around. This is quite a moving ritual and does create a
genuine atmosphere of goodwill and friendliness.
These
are all different ways to forgive then. Whatever way you forgive
someone it should above all be sincere, heartfelt, and done with
sensitivity and good grace. The purpose of forgiveness is to rid
oneself of unskilful emotions, not to make the other person feel
guilty. It is a relief to be able to forgive, to let go of the messy
baggage of obsessive resentment and feel free to love again with a
lighter heart. We should be forgiving people all the time. The more
prone we are to feeling offended or upset, the more frequently we
should be forgiving others.
The
best time to forgive is as soon as possible. Our tendency when we
feel offended or hurt is to go over and over in our minds what
happened and by giving attention to it in that way we cultivate our
feelings of being hard done by; we develop more ill will and cause
ourselves more pain. So it is best to try to let go as quickly as
possible and not hold on to grudges. And certainly not develop
further grudges. We could just become one big walking, talking
grudge, which would not be a very happy state to be in.
So
far I've been talking about forgiving others or forgiving ourselves.
There is of course the other side of forgiveness - being forgiven by
others. It is conceivable that we may hurt of offend people from time
to time. It is conceivable that we may even be unskilful, even
grossly unskilful, from time to time. This brings us to the topic of
apology, which is closely related to forgiveness. Difficult as it is
to forgive, sometimes we experience even greater difficulty with
apology.
An
apology is an expression of regret at hurting or giving offence to
someone, through our faults and weaknesses and unskilfulness. To
apologise means to admit that we have done wrong. Often this means to
admit that we are not quite the person that we like to portray to the
world, not quite as wonderful as we would like everyone to think.
Therefore to apologise can be quite humiliating. It can hurt our
pride and that is why we can find it so difficult. This sort of pride
of course has nothing to do with a positive love for
oneself,self-metta.In fact it is the opposite. It is a compensation
for feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. When we feel genuine
self-metta it is not such a problem what others might think of us, we
are aware of our own worth. Being aware of our own worth, it is
easier to admit our faults and to apologise. There is no false
edifice to collapse. By apologising for causing hurt or offence we
get to know ourselves better. We see more clearly how we regard
ourselves and we have an opportunity to give up pride. To give up
pride is to give up a limiting self-view and therefore to create the
conditions for spiritual growth. By apologising for our unskilfulness
we actually create the conditions to experience metta both towards
ourselves and towards someone else. By apologising we open the doors
of our heart that have been kept locked by our false pride and in
opening the doors of our heart we enter into the realm of love, the
realm of spiritual friendship, the realm of the Sangha. The same
applies to forgiveness of course. When we forgive we open out to the
possibilities of love and spiritual fellowship.
When
we apologise we should ask to be forgiven. In this way we give the
other person the opportunity to let go of their feelings of hurt and
enter into communication again. If we don't apologise we isolate
ourselves behind the barrier of our pride. If we don't forgive we
isolate ourselves behind the barrier of our resentment. We need to
renounce both pride and resentment in order to keep open channels of
communication and love. The reconciliation brought about by apology
and forgiveness goes even further than that according to Ratnaguna:
"When
we hurt or offend other members of the Sangha - our friends - or if
we refuse to forgive them, we isolate ourself. However, when we
realise that we have hurt someone, or when someone apologises to us,
we have a great opportunity. We have the opportunity to give up our
sense of self and to feel, in a very intense way, our
non-separateness. And this is why, although it can be painful, the
experience of apology and forgiveness can also be very beautiful -
and liberating. Reconciliation is an affirmation of love. It is also
an affirmation of the way things are. It is an intimation of the
enlightened state. Reconciliation can lead to Insight." (7)
Reconciliation
through forgiveness is of great value. It helps t alleviate
destructiveness and gives rise to an atmospere pregnant with
possibilities. It is truly creative.
In
the previous chapter we saw that patience created a gap in our
experience, between feeling and the response to feeling. This
corresponds to the point on the outer rim of the Wheel of Life
between feeling and craving. This is the point where we have an
opportunity to abandon the cyclic round of negative mental states
that are represented in the Wheel of Life and to begin to develop
positive mental states. This gap is the point where we can move from
operating in a 'reactive' manner to operating in a 'creative' manner,
we can move from the 'reactive' mind to the 'creative' mind. I will
say something about these terms 'reactive' mind and 'creative' mind.
They are terms coined by Sangharakshita to give another way of
speaking about the mundane and the spiritual. We don't have two
minds, a reactive mind and a creative mind. It is rather that we have
the capacity to function in two different ways, our minds can respond
reactively or creative. We can respond reactively or creatively.
I
will just outline some of the characteristics of the reactive mind
and the creative mind as stated by Sangharakshita.
The
reactive mind is predictable, even mechanical, it always responds in
the same way. The reactive mind relies on an external stimulus. It is
a penny-in-the-slot sort of mind. It is repetitive, habitual and
unaware. The reactive mind may try to be different, but in doing so
is still tethered to the object it is trying to be different from.
And Sangharakshita says:
"Not
only our behaviour but even much of our 'thinking' conforms to this
pattern. Whether in the field of politics, or literature, or
religion, or whether in the affairs of everyday life, the opinions we
so firmly hold and so confidently profess are very rarely the outcome
of conscious reflection, of our individual effort to arrive at the
truth. Only too often have they been fed into us from external
sources, from books, newspapers, and conversations, and we have
accepted, or rather received them, in a passive and unreflecting
manner. When the appropriate stimulus occurs we automatically
reproduce whatever has been fed into our system, and it is this
purely mechanical reaction that passes for expression of opinion.
Truly original thought on any subject is, indeed, extremely rare."
(8)
The
creative mind on the other hand is active on its own account, not
dependent on an outside stimulus. The creative mind is optimistic,
spontaneous, free, original and characterised by ceaseless
productivity. The creative mind is often seen in the arts, although
not everything that is called art is a product of the creative mind.
“Outside
the sphere of the fine arts," Sangharakshita says, "the
creative mind finds expression in productive personal relations, as
when through our own emotional positiveness others become more
emotionally positive, or as when through the intensity of their
mutual awareness two or more people reach out towards, and together
experience, a dimension of being greater and more inclusive than
their separate individualities. In these and similar cases the
creative mind is productive in the sense of contributing to the
increase, in the world, of the sum total of positive emotion, of
higher states of being and consciousness.” (9)
It
is because of its contribution to productive personal relations that
forgiveness can be said to be creative. When through the exercise of
patience we create a gap in our experience between the feeling of
being hurt or offended and our usual automatic response to feeling
hurt or offended, then the opportunity arises for a creative
response. Forgiveness is the creative response in this instance.
Forgiveness and apology lead to a clear conscience and the happiness
that comes from a clear conscience.
Creativity
in human relations is not very common. On the world stage war,
violence and aggression of all kinds have been the fruitless methods
of dealing with difficulties for millennia. A more fruitful way
forward would be to place to place our human identity above our
identity with any particular group, place or belief. Out of this
tolerance could grow.
Notes:
- The Bible, Deuteronomy, 5.9
- Sangharakshita,Wisdom Beyond Words, Windhorse 1993, p.78
- Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism, Windhorse 1993, p.388
- Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara, translators K. Crosby & A. Skilton, OUP 1996, p.50
- ibid, p. 59/60
- Dharma Life magazine, No. 9, Windhorse 1998, p.30
- Ratnaguna, unpublished paper
- Sangharakshita, Buddha Mind, Windhorse 2001, p.41
- ibid, p.45
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