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Good morning everyone. This might be the last time that we have this forgiveness study group and I feel as if I should apologize because there is so much that we haven't said. I only hope that we can all continue learning about how to forgive and how to accept forgiveness as we go on from here.
We said that forgiving means letting go of anger, resentment and blame that we carry with us long after someone has offended us. It's something that we need to do for ourselves and not something that we need to do for them. Forgiving may have more to do with the offence that with the offender. I suggested that we can't really ask for forgiveness, but we can seek it. And the way that we can seek it is to recognize our responsibility for causing pain and suffering and committing ourselves to the path that seeks to relieve pain and suffering and to benefit all beings. Being forgiven means that we are able to feel some relief because someone whom we have offended has jumped free of the suffering that resulted from our action. The question for today is, how does all this work when we ourselves are both the offender and the offended? How can we forgive ourselves?
We are often told that we should love and care for other people as much as we love and care for ourselves. Considering how judgmental and unforgiving we are with ourselves, no wonder the world is such a mess! Maybe we should reverse that advice. We should show as much consideration for ourselves as we do for others.
It's not that difficult for us to see the value in treating others with compassion and understanding. There is some encouragement to do this in our culture. And yet, so often we feel that we should not extend this same compassion and understanding to ourselves. We have learned that it is selfish and bad to do so.
I think it's just as selfish to think that we should be treated worse than others as it is to think we should be treated better. In both cases we place ourselves as something separate from and opposed to everything else. When we vow to benefit all beings, we shouldn't forget that this includes us!
Why is it so difficult to forgive ourselves? I think it's partly because deep down we are aware of the insubstantiality of all our excuses. We may deny responsibility for our offence, but at some level we still blame ourselves and feel ashamed and unworthy. We try to hide this from everyone. Most of all we try to hide this from ourselves, but that has consequences. So the first step is to begin uncovering all that we have been denying, all of those things about ourselves that we fear might be true. You probably already know for yourself what some of these things are.
I used to worship my older brother. When I was 7 and he was 12 our family lived on a very small farm. There was a cottage there which we rented to a young Chinese man named Jim who was studying at a nearby college. Once my brother began making lots of racist comments about Chinese people in general and Jim in particular. My parents never talked that way, and they told him that his comments were unacceptable. But I was more impressed by him and the energy of his comments than by their denial. It didn't matter that Jim was always nice to me and that I liked him.
Once when Jim was away, I went into his home and messed up all his things. I hid things and dumped his trash out on the floor and other such things. In my 7 year old brain I never considered that there might be consequences. Of course my parents found out. I had to apologize to Jim and clean up the mess that I made. I had never seen my father so angry. He told me that he wouldn't spank me, which would have been the ultimate punishment for me in those days. He said that he was so angry that he feared if he spanked me his anger might erupt into a beating. I still remember those words as the worst punishment I ever received from him. He also made it clear that he felt my brother was equally responsible even though he hadn't participated in the vandalism, because my father knew that his racist comments had precipitated the whole incident.
It's been over 50 years, and I am still ashamed of what I did as that boy. But I have forgiven him. I know that I am no longer that 7 year old boy. I understand how much he wanted to win his brother's approval and how little he knew of right and wrong. I know that in his immature mind he was just looking for love and acceptance.
This is an example of one way that we can begin to forgive ourselves. We can recognize that we are no longer the person who committed that offence. This is true even if the offence was committed yesterday or even 5 minutes ago. We are not that person. Then we recognize the suffering of that person that resulted in the offence. We let it go of the offence and we vow to do our best not to repeat it. We may have to do that many times.
In my example, I offended against Jim, and he forgave me. I offended against my father, and he forgave me. But when I speak of forgiving myself, who was offended? Who was the offender? It's not so easy for me to answer that. I suffered because I had caused suffering in others. I suffered because I knew that to be un-virtuous, non-compassionate and dis-harmonious. My offence was against virtue, compassion and harmony. My offence was against the three treasures: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
And so my self-forgiveness needed to come by way of the three treasures. In some way I needed to realize or accept that in the realm of the three treasures there's no possibility of resentment, no place for anger and blame to stick.
I did a search for self-forgiveness on an internet site dedicated to answering questions about the bible. The answer that came back said that there is not one mention of forgiving oneself in the bible. There is no such concept in the bible. The true issue, according to this organization, is not that we need to forgive ourselves for our offences. The true issue is that we need to accept that God forgives us.
Whether we say it's God or the three treasures or the great mystery, self forgiveness comes from somewhere much greater than our narrow view of who we are and what we have done. And self forgiveness can't be found by thinking about it or analyzing it. It comes from somewhere beyond our thinking, beyond our feeling, beyond our small selves. I believe that this is where all forgiveness comes from, that we accept forgiveness for ourselves and offer it to others through our mysterious connection with the all. To me this is what is meant in the Lord's Prayer “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We find forgiveness for ourselves and for others when we connect with the great mystery. If we cannot find it for others we can't find it for ourselves either. So the Lord's Prayer reminds us that we can find forgiveness for ourselves in the same place that we find it for others. That's the only place that it is. But it's not just there on the surface. It takes time and practise. It takes opening our hearts, exposing our shames, and giving up our strong habit of believing we are unworthy.
To do this we need to go beyond our analysis and intellectual understanding. We need to go beyond our thinking minds. We definitely need to go beyond today's talk. I'd like to tell you a story from a dharma talk given by Daigan Lueck, a teacher from SF Zen Center.
Daigan talked about how much anger he had when he came to Zen practise, and how his anger continued in his practise. He was angry with everyone and everything. He knew that his anger was eating him up, but knowing that didn't help him to release it. He said that in total desperation, feeling that he could not draw another breath, he went to his teacher and said, “What can I do?”
And his teacher said, “I have a practise for you, and I guarantee you that it will work.” He said, “Every day in your home you should do prostrations. Do 108 prostrations every day. You don't have to do them all at once, just do 108 prostrations in the course of each day. And with each prostration say, 'I forgive you.'”
Daigan said, “OK, but who am I forgiving?” and his teacher said, “You'll find out.”
So Daigan followed this practise, day after day, doing 108 prostrations and saying “I forgive you” 108 times. And then one day in the middle of doing this, he broke down in tears. He said that he finally realized who it was that he had to forgive. He said, “I don't have to tell you who that was. Everybody knows who that was.”
There's still so much more to say about forgiveness. Please continue the conversation.
Thank you for your practise.
© 2007, Burai Rick Spencer