So here is a little bit about the architecture of forgiveness as we sort of wend our way
towards the practice of forgiveness. First, some basic understandings: forgiveness does
not mean that we condone what happened in the past. It’s not forgive and forget. In
fact, forgiveness might also include quite understandably the resolve to never let this
happen again. ‘I will do everything in my power to protect myself or protect others
to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.’ And forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have
to speak to, or relate to a person who betrayed you, necessarily. It’s not about them. It
doesn’t condone it. It can stand up for justice and say ‘no more.’ And it’s
not sentimental, or quick. You can’t paper things over and smile and say ‘I forgive.’
It is a deep process of the heart. And in the process you need to honor the betrayal
of yourself, or others and the grief, the anger, the hurt, the fear, and it can take
a long time. Sometimes when you do forgiveness process you realize that you’re never going
to forgive that person. And never takes a while. You’ll see.
Or forgiving yourself - which in some cases can be equally long and difficult. This great
forgiveness’s of things that we have done, or the small ones - a kind of epidemic of
self-hatred and criticism in this country that I see all the time - are people who come
to meditate. This is from Florida Scott Maxwell, the author. She writes: “No matter
how old a mother is, she watches her middle aged children for signs of improvement.”
And there are some ways in which we’ve internalized this and we spend our life judging ourselves.
And some of us are such hard judges that they wouldn’t hire you in a civilized society,
if there is such a thing. You’d have to go work for Idi Amin in Uganda and they’d
say ‘put her on the bench. She knows how to judge.’
So it’s not sentimental. It’s actually a deep work of the heart that purifies and
releases and somehow permits us to love and to be free and sometimes it’s a kind of
tearing of the closeness of the heart. The Lakota Sioux, they write: “The grief”
- which is a part of forgiveness, because it’s all about the loss that things didn’t
work out the way that you wanted. Somebody said that forgiveness means giving up all
hope of a better past. It’s done, it’s the way that it was. For the Lakota Sioux,
grief was valued. It “brought a person closer to the Gods. For when a person had suffered
loss and were grieving, they were considered the
most wahcan” - the most holy. “And their prayers were believed to be especially powerful,
and others would ask them to pray on their behalf.”
So sometimes it’s the things that make us vulnerable that tear the heart open, that
bring us back most fully to what matters – to love, to life. Our vulnerability becomes a
place that our hearts depend on for staying alive and open, even when we are hurt. Does
this make sense to you? That we need to respect this.
So forgiveness is not sentimental, it’s not quick, it can take a long time, it’s
not a papering over, and it’s not condoning. It’s also not for anybody else. It’s like
the two ex-prisoners of war – one who says to the other “Have you forgiven your captors
yet?” And the second says “No never.” And the first one then looks and says “Well
they still have you in prison, don’t they?”
I remember sitting with the Dalai Lama and some Tibetan nuns who had gotten out of seven/eight/nine
years of imprisonment and torture, together in a group - a meeting that I was running
of ex prisoners from all across the USA who’d been using meditation, contemplative practices,
mindfulness, compassion, and so forth to change their lives. In the room there were these
guys who had just gotten out who had spent 25 years in Texas State Prison and 18 years
in Ohio in a maximum security. And they were sitting with the Dalai Lama and these little
nuns who were in prison in their teenage years for saying their prayers out loud. And the
nuns said, when asked, “Were you ever afraid?” And they said “Yes, we were terribly afraid.
And what we were afraid of was that we would end up hating our guards. That we would lose
our compassion. That is the thing that we most feared.”
And they sat there, these sweet young nuns, and I remember this one guy who had been in
prison for 18 years in Ohio saying “I’ve seen some brave folks in my day, and I ain’t
never seen anything like you young ladies.” It was really amazing.