Forgiveness and gentleness go hand in hand. In fact, it’s hard to imagine gentleness forgiveness and hard to imagine true forgiveness without a gentleness component. The 2014 Winter Olympics was a show of physical and technical feats of amazing proportions but the most amazing thing about watching these Olympics for me was a small segment on Jessica Tatiana Long. You probably haven’t heard of Jessica but she holds the world record for Paralympic medals- a total of 18 medals, twelve of them gold!
The life of Jessica is not typical in any way. She was born in Siberia in 1992 to a 16-year-old girl who put her up for adoption when she learned her newborn daughter had a congenital limb deformity called fibula mimelia. It is a failure of the lower leg bones to develop leaving Tatiana without the ability to ever walk.
An American family (the Longs’) was interested in adopting a baby and saw Tatiana’s picture and immediately said “that’s our daughter” and brought Tatiana (now Jessica) to the US.
Jessica excelled in swimming and after multiple surgeries and prostheses proceeded to enter swimming competitions (without the prostheses, of course).
During the interview on NBC Jessica said “nothing keeps me from doing what I set out to do”. An amazing statement from a Siberian orphaned girl without the ability to walk! As I sat watching this piece I wondered to myself “What keeps me from doing what I set out to do?” What keeps us from opening our hearts? Or forgiving those who may have hurts us? Or what keeps us from forgiving ourselves for things we may have done in the past? Or even for forgiving life for being the way it is. Life has a way of delivering such unexpected and sometimes unwelcomed surprises to our doorstep!
But that’s only a part of Jessica’s story. She went to Sochi, Russia, not to compete in an Olympic event but to meet her birth mother! She went there to tell her that she loved her; that she wasn’t angry for putting her in an orphanage; and that she thought it must have taken great courage for a 16 year old girl to give up a baby that she couldn’t take care of and that she (Jessica) may have done the same thing if she were pregnant at age 16. She forgave her mother completely.
And so she travelled to Siberia and told her mother these things. Can you imagine the love, the presence, the courage, the gentleness and forgiveness that it must have taken? It’s hard to imagine but I watched it unfold.
Forgiveness is the supreme antidote to resentment. Resentment is anger carried forward in time. It is felt by many to be the single greatest obstacle to our Dharma practice. I will repeat this. It is felt to be the single biggest obstacle to our Dharma practice.
One way of approaching forgiveness is to regard it as forgiving the person and not the act that harmed us. In forgiving the person we recognize that when this person harmed us they were under the influence of confusion, anger, hatred, greed, lust, or other unskillful mind states. In the same way that when we have hurt others we were under these same influences.
Forgiveness is a courageous gift we give to ourselves as well as others. We free ourselves from carrying resentment and anger into the future. We also forgive our own confusion.
But forgiveness is seldom uncomplicated. In fact it can be quite complex because we’ve often been hurt (or have hurt others) by those who we have trusted and loved. So the pain is much deeper than we know.
Here is something to consider! Consider that perhaps we can’t forgive everything, but perhaps we can forgive as much as is possible right now. That’s good enough. Maybe we can’t be like a Jessica Long, a Bodhisattva of Forgiveness; maybe we’re not there yet! But maybe “for the time being” we can forgive as much as we can. And that’s all right too! Because “for the time being” is all the time there is!
Buddha gave a discourse on gentleness to a group of headmen (probably head servants of households) in which a headman named Canda asks “ Venerable sir…What is the reason why someone is reckoned as gentle?” And Buddha replies; “ Here headman, someone has abandoned lust (craving and grasping)….hatred (and resentment) … and delusion (confusion)…. And because he has abandoned these, others do not irritate him. Not being irritated by others one does not manifest irritation; and one is reckoned as gentle”
Perhaps Buddha is pointing to the fact that greed, hatred, and delusion are not compatible with gentleness and abandoning them is a defining characteristic of gentleness. He’s pointing to the fact that we don’t have to “get” anything to be gentle, we simple give up unskillful mind states and gentleness is what remains. It’s always been here. Ask yourself “Is there anything gentle and forgiving about greed, hatred, resentment or delusion”?
The following is a quote from “The Merchant of Venice”. It is spoken by Portia who comes to the rescue of Antonio who has foolishly signed a loan granting Shylock (a money lender) a “pound of flesh” if he defaults. After pondering an approach to use, Portia decides to appeal for forgiveness rather than some legal technicality. Shylock demands to know why he “must” be merciful and offer forgiveness. Portia responds that a compulsion to offer forgiveness is exactly contrary to the spirit of forgiveness- that forgiveness “is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven… and is twice blessed….”. Please consider this beautiful quote below:
“The quality of mercy (forgiveness) is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesses him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein does sit the dread and fear of kings;
But forgiveness is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power does then show like God’s,
When mercy seasons justice.” The Merchant of Venice, 4. 1
And finally here is a quote from Sogyal Rinpoche who describes the letting go that must occur in forgiveness practice:
“Slowly it dawns on us that all the heartache we have been through from the grasping at the ungraspable was, in the deepest sense, unnecessary. At the beginning this too may be painful to accept, because it seems so unfamiliar. But as we reflect, slowly our hearts and minds go through a gradual transformation. Letting go begins to feel more natural, and becomes easier and easier. It may take a long time for the extent of our foolishness to sink in, but the more we reflect, the more we develop the view of letting go. It is then that a complete shift takes place in our way of looking at everything!”
The “shift” that often occurs is the shift that asks the question” Who is it that holding onto this resentment anyway?” And “What exactly am I holding on to?” Ask yourself this question with regard to any resentment you may be carrying? See what comes up! And then ask yourself whether it’s really worth holding on to any longer.
So this week think of someone you haven’t forgiven and ask yourself “Why am I holding on to this resentment? And make a commitment to forgive ( totally or partially) even if it’s only “for the time being”!
May you be well, happy and peaceful. Floyd
