Learning Forgiveness; Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

Noah Levine, Against The Stream Meditation Center

Read Part ONE and TWO of Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries here.

LEARNING FORGIVENESS

Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

A huge part of the revolutionary path of awakening is forgiveness.

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour—unceasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”

— Henry Nouwen, a famous Christian mystic

Forgiveness is the journey and practice of intentionally cleaning up the stuff of the past that is sticky, that we have been holding on to, that has caused us emotional suffering. Traditionally this is done through the practice of repeating phrases of forgiveness toward oneself, toward those who have harmed us, and toward those whom we have harmed. In other words, training the mind to let go, to meet past pains with understanding and acceptance.

I feel that for most it is necessary to take forgiveness a step further. After doing that inner work of letting go, we must also take direct relational action. The process of releasing the heart- mind’s grasp on past pains and betrayals almost always includes taking responsibility and offering forgiveness, and very often includes communication with those whom we have harmed, as well as those who have harmed us. This direct communication is the relational aspect of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a process that continues throughout our life. We can’t just say the phrases or do the meditation a couple times and be done with it. We can’t just decide to forgive and magically let go of all the past pains and resentments. But it has to begin somewhere, and it begins with the understanding that all harm caused comes out of suffering and ignorance. There is no such thing as wise abuse or enlightened harm. This is the core truth of harm: it always comes from confusion. Anger, violence, and all forms of abuse and betrayal are always motivated by an ignorant or confused intention. When the mind is unconfused, it cannot intentionally cause harm. The awakened mind acts with only wisdom and compassion.

That understanding of harm has crucial implications for us as we practice forgiveness, in that it forces us to distinguish between the confused, suffering actors and the actions themselves. This is perhaps the most essential perspective in forgiveness: the separation of actor from action. Whether the harm that requires forgiveness was an unskillful act that we carried out, hurting someone else, or an unskillful act on the part of another that we felt victimized by, we must see that the act and the actor are not the same thing. Most of the time the anger and resentment we hold is directed against the actor; in our minds we don’t separate the abuser from the abuse. But this is exactly what we must do. We must come to the understanding that confusion comes and goes. An action from a confused and suffering being in the past doesn’t represent who that being is forever; it is only an expression of that being’s suffering. And if we cling to resentment over past hurts, we simply increase our own suffering. By holding on to our anger and resentments, we make our own lives more difficult than need be.

This in no way means that we should subject ourselves or others to further abuse. Part of the forgiveness and healing process is to create healthy boundaries. We may forgive someone but choose never to interact with that person again. We must not confuse letting go of past injuries with feeling an obligation to let the injurers back into our life. The freedom of forgiveness often includes a firm boundary and loving distance from those who have harmed us. We may likewise need to keep a loving distance from those whom we have harmed, to keep them from further harm. To that extent, this practice of letting go of the past and making amends for our behavior is more internal work than relational. As my father likes to say, “We can let them back into our heart without ever letting them back into our house.”

Forgiveness is not a selfish pursuit of personal happiness. It alleviates suffering in the world. As each one of us frees ourself from clinging to resentments that cause suffering, we relieve our friends, family, and community of the burden of our unhappiness. This is not a philosophical proposal; it is a verified and practical truth. Through our suffering and lack of forgiveness, we tend to do all kinds of unskillful things that hurt others. We close ourselves off from love out of fear of further pains or betrayals.

I have witnessed the power of forgiveness most fully in my work with prisoners. While working at San Quentin State Prison as a counselor and meditation teacher, over and over I witnessed deep healings of men who had committed violent crimes. As these inmates approached the inner pains of their past and acknowledged that their own suffering had been spilling out onto others, they were able to start a process of internal forgiveness and compassion that eventually led to personal commitments to nonviolence—commitments that in turn made the communities to which they returned safer places.

Some actions may not be forgivable, but all actors are. For the actor, the person whose own suffering has spilled onto other people, there is always the possibility of compassion. There is always potential for mercy toward the suffering and confused person that hurts another.

Early on in my own meditation practice, I clearly saw that I had been in a lot of pain for a long time and that my pain had affected others in incredibly unskillful ways. Then I began to see that the people toward whom I had been holding resentment had also been in pain and that they had spilled their pain onto me.

This allowed me to begin to separate the person from the action and truly see the confused being behind the hurt. This was the hardest part: not associating the people with their actions, but seeing them as confused human beings trying their best and failing miserably, just as I had. I found trying to take that attitude toward everyone in my life incredibly challenging. It took years of trying and failing to come to a real sense of this understanding.

That’s a common experience, because forgiveness can’t be forced. Having held on to anger and resentment for so long, we have allowed that reaction to become our habit. And habits take time and intentional action to break. In forgiveness we are retraining our mind and heart to respond in a new and more useful way. By separating the actor from the action, we are getting to the root of the suffering, both caused and experienced. This is a counterintuitive process. Our biological instinct is to respond to all forms of pain with aversion, anger, hatred, and resentment. This is the basic survival instinct of the human animal. It works quite well to protect us from external harm, yet it seems to create an even more harmful inner experience. The process of forgiveness is the process of freeing oneself from internal suffering.

At a recent meditation class, a student said that she felt her forgiveness was a gift that some people hadn’t earned

Against The Stream Meditation Center, Venice, California.

This is a common feeling among many of us who have felt injured by others. Yet does our lack of forgiveness really punish them, or does it just make our hearts hard and our lives unpleasant? Is forgiveness a gift to others or to oneself?

When it comes to forgiving ourselves, we are more obviously both the giver and the recipient of the gift. We are stuck with ourselves for a lifetime, so we might as well find the best way of understanding and accepting the pains of the past. It is in our best interest, and the most beneficial thing we can do for others as well, to find a way to meet ourselves with compassion rather than resentment. Though this sounds simple and straightforward, forgiving oneself is often the most difficult and most important work of a lifetime.

It helps if we investigate our mind’s tendency to judge and criticize ourselves, paying special attention to any feelings of unworthiness or self-hatred. If we can bring a friendly awareness to our mind’s fears and resentments, we may discover that our minds are actually just trying to protect us from further harm. The barrage of fears and insecurities may be a psychological defense system, an attempt to avoid future harm—a confused attempt, of course, because resentment and anger toward oneself never lead to happiness. But if we can understand and accept that we have been confused, we may find it easier to begin to meet ourselves with mercy and forgiveness, responding to the judging mind with the kind of gentle patience and understanding that we would show a sick and confused friend.

As I began the long process of forgiveness, I found it much easier to forgive myself as a confused child than to approach my adult pain. Recognizing that, I placed a picture of myself as a child on the altar where I meditate. Every day when practicing meditation, I sent forgiveness to that kid who became the man who had experienced and caused great harm. Gradually, I became friendly with the child in the photograph. I began to care about him and all the confusion he experienced. Eventually, I was able to forgive him—the younger version of me— for allowing his confusion to hurt me and so many others. From that place of understanding and mercy, I was then able to touch myself as an adult with the same forgiveness.

My experience with forgiveness is that it, like everything else, is impermanent. While some resentments seem to vanish forever, others come and go. The most important thing to remember is that we must live in the present, and if in the present moment we are still holding on to old wounds and betrayals, it is in this moment that forgiveness is called for.

There was a time when I thought I was totally done with forgiveness. I had done years of forgiveness meditation, had made amends for the harm I caused, and had come to a genuine sense of love and understanding for myself and others. Then, as my mind became quieter and my heart more open, more subtle levels of resentment began to show themselves. In deep meditation experiences I saw that I was still holding on to some old feelings of betrayal; the core parental issues were still there. So once again forgiveness was called for in that moment.

The experience of forgiveness may be temporary; more may be revealed. If and when that happens we have the tools to forgive again and again. Just as Henry Nouwen reminded us at the beginning of this discussion, we need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour—unceasingly.