It surprises me a little that I have such a tendancy toward a lack of forgiveness. It's not that I hold a grudge, exactly, or behave uncharitably toward those I believe have wronged me in some way. In fact, in any conscious sense I do forgive them entirely, even when they are not contrite or continue the same unpleasant behavior.
No, this failure in my capacity to forgive takes the form of my inability (or unwillingness) to trust. Once you have proved yourself untrustworthy, selfish, or unkind, I tend toward shutting you out of my heart. As I said, my conscious desire is to treat that person as I would anyone else, to entirely eradicate from memory all perceived slights and misdeeds. But there is a part of me--and I fear it may be the most important part--that seeks to shut them out. Oh, I know the various sources of this distrust: feelings of abandonment from half a hundred incidents of my childhood and young adulthood, but I don't believe that uncovering those old wounds is terribly helpful or healing, no matter what modern psychology may have to say about that. Where I am is here and what I need is a way to move forward in love and trust.
This impulse also seems somewhat arbitrary. To take a rather petty example, I find it very difficult to enjoy films with Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, or Russell Crowe in them because I am aware of what jerks these guys can be in their personal lives. Yet I feel free to admire the work of Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Pablo Picasso and the like, even though I know that in their personal lives they were not very nice men. Is the difference that the one group are still alive and perpetrating their brand of neurosis? Or is it something else? Why have I managed to forgive these men but not the others? I know it's not just that they are dead, because I have a real animus for Jack Kerouac due to the way he treated his family. Though he is an important author, I have read very little of his writing because I simply cannot forgive him.
This is based in a rather simplistic morality, though, isn't it? There's bad guys and good guys and I'm the one and judge of the other. Those who act badly are in all ways bad and those who act well are all ways good, and so on. We know this is nonsense, of course, because we look into our own souls and see that both the light and the darkness are thriving there. If we judge the darkness as bad and the light as good, then we are also passing judgment on our own darkness and condemning ourselves. But when we allow accepting awareness of the darkness of our hearts, what arises is compassion for all beings. They have their darkness and we have ours. It is also simplistic to respond by saying, "Well, yes, but their darkness is so much darker than mine. I have my foibles, but there is true evil in the world". Yet, what is true evil but the end result of a collective darkness, an allowing of a bigger darkness? Hitler (everyone's avatar of evil) would have been just one more insecure nut case if the German people had not been in a time of great distress that allowed them to grasp for any solution. One of the characteristics of evil is the sheer lack of ambiguity to its claims. True wisdom recognizes the play of forces that are neither purely good nor bad, but evil suggests there is a simple solution, usually to blame another. And simplicity of solution is so very comforting when one is in distress. Or, to put it another way: my little darkness supports the larger darknesses in ways I don't even understand; by putting that darkness (cynicism, for example) into the world I allow space for a much larger darkness to gain a foothold.
Far from encouraging a false cheerfulness, this idea leads us to nothing less than absolute honesty. When honesty recognizes our complicity in the dark side of things, the essential part of our nature that resonates with the darkness, we open our hearts to true forgiveness. Though another simplification, it seems to me there is some truth to the idea that what I most loathe in others is what I most fear in myself. I don't want to be unkind, angry, hateful, bigoted, violent, vengeful, intolerant, impatient, or unwise, yet I am all these things from time to time, at least in my heart. Forgiveness arises from this understanding, for from this understanding arises compassion.
Metta has been defined in several ways, including lovingkindness, but from Christina Feldman I have learned that perhaps the most useful way to define metta is as unconditional friendliness. Can I be unconditionally friendly toward all people? Well, no, but I can aspire to it. This is relatively easy to do toward my wife, my son, his wife, my family generally. But toward Russell Crowe? Mel Gibson? Himmler? Idi Amin? My first impulse is to say that if I allow them into my heart I might be contaminated by the contact. My second is to think that I will be allowing them to get away with something if I am friendly toward them in my heart. But we know that our hearts are too large to be overwhelmed by any one person; we have been working to "bigger" it haven't we? And to think we are punishing these perpetrators of bad acts by spurning them out of our hearts is a kind of magical thinking. Sorry, but they don't even know you exist and care even less, especially the dead ones. Not only is Jack Kerouac dead, but so is his wife. If his children are still alive it is their job and not mine to deal with the consequences of his neglect. Whereas it's true enough that I can vote with my dollars and choose not to support the depredations of mean people by eschewing their movies or their books, if I do so from a motive of rejection I achieve the opposite of what I intended by creating yet more darkness in the world.
And if I practice this pushing out of my heart on people I don't know, it can easily lead to the same behavior toward those in my life who behave in ways I find objectionable. There is a particular person at work I have a very difficult time forgiving and trusting. Her behavior is often unskillful, but rather than engaging her with compassion my impulse is to shut her out entirely. There are those inside my circle of trust, those about whom I have yet to decide (the vast majority) and those I have absolutely decided do not belong there. When put in that way, it sounds so...petty and mean-spirited. Yet I spend much of my life doing this very kind of dividing out, as do most of us. I believe that one of the most important things the Buddha accomplished is not shutting anyone out of his heart. All were welcome there and in his vast capacity to love, he embraced each one wholeheartedly. May I come ever closer to such an acceptance, even if I never manage to get very near it in actual fact. The closer I am, the better place the world will be.
No, this failure in my capacity to forgive takes the form of my inability (or unwillingness) to trust. Once you have proved yourself untrustworthy, selfish, or unkind, I tend toward shutting you out of my heart. As I said, my conscious desire is to treat that person as I would anyone else, to entirely eradicate from memory all perceived slights and misdeeds. But there is a part of me--and I fear it may be the most important part--that seeks to shut them out. Oh, I know the various sources of this distrust: feelings of abandonment from half a hundred incidents of my childhood and young adulthood, but I don't believe that uncovering those old wounds is terribly helpful or healing, no matter what modern psychology may have to say about that. Where I am is here and what I need is a way to move forward in love and trust.
This impulse also seems somewhat arbitrary. To take a rather petty example, I find it very difficult to enjoy films with Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, or Russell Crowe in them because I am aware of what jerks these guys can be in their personal lives. Yet I feel free to admire the work of Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Pablo Picasso and the like, even though I know that in their personal lives they were not very nice men. Is the difference that the one group are still alive and perpetrating their brand of neurosis? Or is it something else? Why have I managed to forgive these men but not the others? I know it's not just that they are dead, because I have a real animus for Jack Kerouac due to the way he treated his family. Though he is an important author, I have read very little of his writing because I simply cannot forgive him.
This is based in a rather simplistic morality, though, isn't it? There's bad guys and good guys and I'm the one and judge of the other. Those who act badly are in all ways bad and those who act well are all ways good, and so on. We know this is nonsense, of course, because we look into our own souls and see that both the light and the darkness are thriving there. If we judge the darkness as bad and the light as good, then we are also passing judgment on our own darkness and condemning ourselves. But when we allow accepting awareness of the darkness of our hearts, what arises is compassion for all beings. They have their darkness and we have ours. It is also simplistic to respond by saying, "Well, yes, but their darkness is so much darker than mine. I have my foibles, but there is true evil in the world". Yet, what is true evil but the end result of a collective darkness, an allowing of a bigger darkness? Hitler (everyone's avatar of evil) would have been just one more insecure nut case if the German people had not been in a time of great distress that allowed them to grasp for any solution. One of the characteristics of evil is the sheer lack of ambiguity to its claims. True wisdom recognizes the play of forces that are neither purely good nor bad, but evil suggests there is a simple solution, usually to blame another. And simplicity of solution is so very comforting when one is in distress. Or, to put it another way: my little darkness supports the larger darknesses in ways I don't even understand; by putting that darkness (cynicism, for example) into the world I allow space for a much larger darkness to gain a foothold.
Far from encouraging a false cheerfulness, this idea leads us to nothing less than absolute honesty. When honesty recognizes our complicity in the dark side of things, the essential part of our nature that resonates with the darkness, we open our hearts to true forgiveness. Though another simplification, it seems to me there is some truth to the idea that what I most loathe in others is what I most fear in myself. I don't want to be unkind, angry, hateful, bigoted, violent, vengeful, intolerant, impatient, or unwise, yet I am all these things from time to time, at least in my heart. Forgiveness arises from this understanding, for from this understanding arises compassion.
Metta has been defined in several ways, including lovingkindness, but from Christina Feldman I have learned that perhaps the most useful way to define metta is as unconditional friendliness. Can I be unconditionally friendly toward all people? Well, no, but I can aspire to it. This is relatively easy to do toward my wife, my son, his wife, my family generally. But toward Russell Crowe? Mel Gibson? Himmler? Idi Amin? My first impulse is to say that if I allow them into my heart I might be contaminated by the contact. My second is to think that I will be allowing them to get away with something if I am friendly toward them in my heart. But we know that our hearts are too large to be overwhelmed by any one person; we have been working to "bigger" it haven't we? And to think we are punishing these perpetrators of bad acts by spurning them out of our hearts is a kind of magical thinking. Sorry, but they don't even know you exist and care even less, especially the dead ones. Not only is Jack Kerouac dead, but so is his wife. If his children are still alive it is their job and not mine to deal with the consequences of his neglect. Whereas it's true enough that I can vote with my dollars and choose not to support the depredations of mean people by eschewing their movies or their books, if I do so from a motive of rejection I achieve the opposite of what I intended by creating yet more darkness in the world.
And if I practice this pushing out of my heart on people I don't know, it can easily lead to the same behavior toward those in my life who behave in ways I find objectionable. There is a particular person at work I have a very difficult time forgiving and trusting. Her behavior is often unskillful, but rather than engaging her with compassion my impulse is to shut her out entirely. There are those inside my circle of trust, those about whom I have yet to decide (the vast majority) and those I have absolutely decided do not belong there. When put in that way, it sounds so...petty and mean-spirited. Yet I spend much of my life doing this very kind of dividing out, as do most of us. I believe that one of the most important things the Buddha accomplished is not shutting anyone out of his heart. All were welcome there and in his vast capacity to love, he embraced each one wholeheartedly. May I come ever closer to such an acceptance, even if I never manage to get very near it in actual fact. The closer I am, the better place the world will be.
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