Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 431. Happy February 29th - Happy Leap Day! Today I want to talk about forgiveness. Which for me can actually be a bit of a leap.
Pema Chodron says, in The Places That Scare You, that forgiveness is part of the Boddhisatva path. It makes sense to me. Forgiveness seems like such a necessary practice. But for me at least, not always easy. I forgot to change the title of today’s email, so it was still, Working with our enemies. It was supposed to be, Can we ever truly forgive, but maybe they’re not so different.
The interesting thing about forgiveness is that it’s so multi-dimensional. We can ask someone for forgiveness. We can offer forgiveness to someone. We can forgive ourselves.
Starting with asking for forgiveness, there are a few people I’d like to ask forgiveness of and haven’t. I feel sorry for something I said or did and I know I caused harm. There is a sense in the body, that I’m familiar with and maybe you are, too. It arises just before I say or do something that’s about to hurt. It’s a kind of dread – a sense that I shouldn’t open my mouth, or shouldn’t move forward with whatever I was thinking of doing. The Pali word for this kind of dread – Pali being the language of the ancient mindfulness texts – is Hiri.
When mindfulness is operating, and strong, I notice I’m about to speak or act and that my words or actions will, or may, cause harm, and then right away I notice Hiri, dread. I feel it in my chest, a kind of fearfulness that I’m about to cause harm, that’s strong enough to deter me.
The deterrence arises from two concerns. One concern is that I’ll cause harm. The other is that I’ll be ashamed when I do.
When mindfulness isn’t operating or isn’t strong, or when denial or some afflictive emotion like anger or revenge or jealousy is strong and mindfulness is weak, the words are out of my mouth or I’ve taken action before I realize it. When that happens, shame arises. The Pali word for this kind of shame is Ottappa. Hiri and Ottappa are more accurately called moral shame and moral dread: a sense that I’m about to do, or have just done, something immoral, unethical.
If mindfulness isn’t strong and I blow past Hiri and say or do the harmful thing, then as a result of that same condition – weak mindfulness - I may or may not notice Ottappa, moral dread. Or I may notice it but quickly turn away or deny it. If I do notice it, I can apologize but it’s impossible to un-ring the bell. I need to acknowledge this and not sweep under the rug the knowledge that I’ve hurt someone. This is when I need to ask for forgiveness.
I’ve noticed that this can be tricky, though. Shame may be so strong, or so habitual, that even if the thing I’ve said or done has caused only a small amount of harm, and even if I don’t turn away, I sometimes have an impulse to not apologize because it feels like such an acknowledgement of having cause harm that I’m afraid it will generate even more shame.
For me this is the first place to consider self-forgiveness and self-compassion. To consider self-forgiveness, I have to examine my intentions. What were my intentions when I said or did the hurtful thing? Was I not paying attention and there were no intentions? In that case I can forgive myself for causing harm, because I’m human, and have some compassion for myself, as long as I do apologize. And, I also know I need to redouble my practice of paying attention, so it’s more there for me on the fly, as a portable practice.
Or was I paying attention and didn’t know I was causing harm? In that case it might be easier to forgive myself and it’s also probably easier to ask for forgiveness.
But what if I guessed I might cause harm and took the risk anyway, or knew I would cause harm and did it anyway?
If I guessed, and was gamboling with someone else’s feelings, or with not getting caught, or at least not getting called out, that’s a personal ethical breach. Once I see that, and know I should have checked in with them first, rather than leaving it to chance. I can still forgive myself but self-compassion is probably the more powerful tool. And I need it because I’ve really messed up bigtime, and I might not be forgiven when I ask – which I definitely need to do, and fess up. And I’ll need to live with that. The world is not always a forgiving place, and in another person’s eyes – the person whom I wronged – forgiveness may not even be appropriate.
If I knew I was about to cause harm and did it anyway, I need to spend some significant time on the cushion, investigating aversion in this mind and heart, and dedicating myself to being diligent about rooting it out. With kindness, sure, and with self-compassion, but mostly with diligence. Practice as if there’s a snake in my lap, right? And I probably also need to speak with a teacher.
How is this resonating for you?
All of this begs the question of why forgiveness is so important. For me, it’s because carrying around shame when I’ve caused harm, or resentment in the case of feeling injured by someone else, feels terrible to me. It feels like the ancient simile of carrying around hot coals and expecting the other person to get burned.
But what about people who have caused me great harm? There have been some of those in my life. There’s been some bigger stuff. I wish I could report that I’ve found ways to forgive them, but I haven’t. I hope to, someday, because I can feel those burning coals.
I do know that to do that, I’ll need to get underneath the pain. I’ll need to look, courageously and with grace, at whatever the deeper wound is. And then I’ll have to stay with it for as long as it takes for it to heal – all of this, infused by self-compassion. Because in the cases of deep injury, trauma, intergenerational trauma, what else can we do but simply turn towards it and be with it with an abundance of self-compassion? And of course work with a therapist or other professional – please do that, by all means. But the mindfulness instruction is that even if we are committed, wisely, to never seeing or being anywhere near the person again, to learn how, somehow, to be with the wound, the pain, with the deepest self-compassion we can muster. For a day? For a decade? For our whole life? I don’t know, but with the loving intention to one day, feel safe enough to open the heart, and forgive.
Let’s sit.
