Jack Kornfield: The Ancient Heart of Forgiveness

I think as a way to welcome you I want to raise a kind of mysterious question which is what is this human capacity for forgiveness and what is the human capacity for dignity no matter what the circumstances of life one of the great messages if you get nothing else today is that the potential for the human heart to open for compassion connectedness vision wisdom the sense of the sacred love to grow in us is almost unbounded and it's not I use the word us quite deliberately it's not limited to any particular person it is there in us and there are ways to do it so let's talk about forgiveness for a while and I'll do some teachings and some storytelling maybe for 40 minutes or so and then we'll do 15 minutes of practice of training and forgiveness and then some questions the Buddhist texts begin in some of their opening lines with the phrase Oh nobly born they're speaking to you oh you who are the sons and daughters of the Buddha's of the awakened ones you who have this Buddha nature in your own heart remember who you are remember the mystery of human consciousness taking incarnation in this body that you've been given it is really mysterious how did you get in there seriously you know you woke up one day and you're a baby right this is wild it is in a little bit of fur or not very much in my case that certain patches of some places a hole at one end into which we regularly stuff dead plants and animals right and plug them down through the tube if you look in the mirror you'll notice that you've aged right right we welcome but the interesting thing is that you don't feel that old you know that moment and that's because it's only the body that's aged and in the moment that you're looking at the mirror and noticing that it's droopy or losing its fur or whatever it happens to be doing there's also a recognition that this body isn't really who you are it's a part of us and we and by that we live it and inhabit it but there's a knowing a consciousness that says hmm getting older isn't it and that part that knows that part that is defined in Buddhist psychology as the knowing Faculty of consciousness exists outside of time time is the creation or or is the is the milieu of the body which gets older in time but consciousness actually lives in the reality of the present and there's something so mysterious about knowing if you are seeing me or hearing these words or the capacity to see and know as if we're in a movie theater here we are in a theater and you're watching on the screen and it might be a romantic comedy or it might be an action movie or a war movie or a you know some kind of a caper or musical or whatever and at some point you're when you're really engaged in the movie you remember oh this is a movie you turn and you see the light from the projector and you know about all the little film squares that are that the lights shining through and you go oh here we are in the movie isn't this an amazing movie there is something similar in the relationship of consciousness itself to all the kinds of experiences joy and sorrow and sights and sound and praise and blame and gain and loss and some part of us knows this and if you don't know it now you'll know it just around the time when you die and you say to yourself wow that was a trip wasn't it life you'll see anyway so forgiveness begins to speak to the question of identity who we sense ourselves to be and what it means to find the capacity to release or let go or move on to be involved in the drama of our life and in some way not completely lost or beholden to it it speaks about a kind of inner freedom that is your birthright so when Viktor Frankl walked out of the concentration camps and wrote we who lived through the concentration camps can remember those who walk through the huts comforting others and giving away their last piece of bread they may have been few in number but their very existence points to the last and greatest of all human freedoms the freedom to choose your spirit no matter what the circumstance of life and so we all go through joys and sorrows and difficulties and pleasures and underneath this is the freedom to choose your spirit as a Nelson Mandela did after 27 years in Robben Island now forgiveness is in particular the capacity to let go to release the suffering the sorrows the burdens the pains and betrayals of the past and instead to choose this mystery of love and love is another thing nobody really understands and no amount of fMRI studies and this area of the brain lights up you know when you love it's like gravity the physicists don't understand gravity they have equations for it and and so forth and beautifully but nobody knows what gravity is it's just that force that pulls things back together back to the big flash at the beginning and love is the same Brian zoom calls it a lure cosmic allurement and maybe gravity in love or just different forms of the same energy of things feeling connected to one another no matter how distant they appear to be and so forgiveness shifts us from the small separate sense of ourselves to a capacity to renew to let go to move on to live in love as the bhagavad-gita says if you want to see the brave look to those who can return love for hatred if you want to see the heroic look to those who can forgive with forgiveness we're unwilling unwilling to attack or wish harm on anyone including ourselves and without forgiveness life would be unbearable it's hard to imagine a world without forgiveness because we would be chained to the suffering of the past and have only to repeat it over and over again there would be no release so you have the Northern Irish Protestants and Catholics saying well in 1537 your people have yellow banners and marched through our neighborhood and so we're not going to let you get away with that or the Bosnians and the Serbs and the Croats all that fueled by modern radio as you know and all this demagoguery or the Hutus and the Tutsis you know or in South Africa or Cambodia and if or the Palestinians and the Israelis if there's no forgiveness there is simply the the chain literal chain of suffering that repeats itself and conditioning from one generation to another and that's all that we have kind of blind conditioning so all of these countries and I'll add the USA in Langston Hughes's phrase let America be America the America she never was all of these people the Irish and the Rwandan sand the Bosnians and Serbs and the Cambodians and the Americans and the Palestinians and Israelis desperately for their sake for their children's sake need to find a path to reconciliation and it's not easy love and forgiveness is not for the faint-hearted wrote Meher Baba but somebody has to stand up and say it stops with me I will not pass on to my children this sorrow whether it's in Ireland or Israel or Rwanda somebody has to say I will accept the betrayal and the suffering I will bear it but I will not retaliate and I will not pass this on to another generation to endless generations of children and grandchildren and James Baldwin explains it this way he writes I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate and fear so stubbornly is that they sense that once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with their own pain you understand means that if you can't bear it yourself you put it on the truth Caesar the Hutus or the Protestants or the Catholics or the Muslims you know or the Latinos or the blacks or the Irish or whoever it is you project your own pain on another group or another person and endless ocean of suffering because we're not able to carry the measure of sorrows that's given to us as human beings we don't know how forgiveness then is an honorable practice I remember a woman coming in the midst of a terrible dove worse and unfortunately her ex-husband was a lawyer and a very good one so he wangled most of the money and a lot of the time of custody for children and she was just desperate and losing time with her children and all this money she struggled in all these ways first to protect herself but finally she came in to see me and she said you know I am simply not going to be thuis bequeath to my children a legacy of hate I will not do it I will figure a way through this and I will not hate him the bastard and I will not teach that to anyone else humor helps actually it does or the person who was betrayed by his brother when their father died and the brother took a lot more than money you know family things get that way don't they all we have to do is read Shakespeare if you've forgotten that and fine he said and it's not worth it it's not worth it to live day after day with hatred because for one thing you know that person who betrayed you they could be in Hawaii right now having a nice vacation and year they are hating them who's suffering Elie Wiesel Nobel laureate who writes suffering confers neither privileges nor rights it all depends on how you use it if you use it to increase the anguish of yourself or others you are degrading even betraying it and yet the day will come when we shall understand that suffering can also elevate human beings god help us to bear our suffering well and so I I speak these words to speak to your own experience all those hands went up about forgiving yourself or forgiving others or romance or divorce or or money or other forms of betrayal the passage from the Buddha which goes and I'll leave it in the masculine although often like make it multi gender look how he abused me she abused me beat me threw me down or robbed me continue to perpetuate such thoughts and you live in hatred look how he abused me or beat me or threw me down or robbed me betrayed me abandon such thoughts and live in love you too shall pass away knowing this how can you quarrel what is the life that you would choose to live so here's a little bit about the architecture forgiveness as we sort of wend our way toward doing 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 this doesn't happen again and forgiveness doesn't mean 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 you know and smile and say I forgive it is a deep process of the heart and in in the process you need to honor the betrayal of yourself or others the grief the anger the hurt the fear and it can take a long time sometimes when you do forgiveness practice you realize I'm never going to forgive that person you know and never is it takes a while basically you'll see or forgiving yourself which in some cases can be equally long and difficult this great forgiveness is of things that we've done or small ones and the kind of epidemic of self-hatred and criticism in this country that I see all the time or people who come to meditate this from Florida Scotland's Maxwell the author she writes no matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement right and there's some way in which we've internalized this and we spend our life judging ourselves and some of us are such harsh judges they wouldn't hire you in a civilized society there is such a thing you'd have to go work for Idi Amin and Uganda and they'd say yeah right put her on the bench you know she knows how to judge right 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 be free and sometimes it's a kind of tearing of the of the closeness of the heart the Lakota Sioux they write they say that the grief which is a part of the forgiveness because it's all the loss that things didn't work out the way you wanted somebody said forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past right it's done it's the way that it was but with it there's loss and there's grief for the Lakota Sioux grief was valued it brought a person closer to the gods for when a person had suffered great loss and was grieving they were considered the most walk on 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 the tear the heart open that actually bring us back most fully - what matters - love to life that our vulnerability becomes a place that our hearts depend on for staying alive and open even when we're hurt this is make sense to you that we you know we need to respect this so forgiveness isn't sentimental it's not quick it can take a long time it's not a papering over it's not condoning it's also not for anybody else it's like the 2x prisoners of war one who says to the other have you forgiven your captors yet and the second one says no never and the first one then looks and says well they still have you in prison then don't they and I remember sitting with the Dalai Lama and some Tibetan nuns who'd gotten out of 7 8 9 years of imprisonment and torture together with a group a meeting that I was running of ex-prisoners from prisons all across the USA who'd been using meditation contemplative practices mindfulness compassion and so forth to change their lives and when they got out this was a room here's these guys 25 years in Texas state prison 18 years in Ohio and a you know and a maximum-security just out and these people sitting with a dial on with these little nuns who were in prison when they were teenagers for saying their prayers out loud and the nuns somebody said were you ever afraid and they said oh yes we were terribly afraid and what we were afraid of is that we would end up hating our guards that we would lose our compassion that's the thing that we most feared and they sat there these sweet young nuns and I remember this one guy who'd been in prison for you know 18 years in Ohio saying I seen some brave folks in my day and I ain't never seen anything like you you young ladies it was really amazing forgiveness isn't for the other it's for us it says I will not put another human being out of my heart for the sake of our own dignity and our own art I was riding on the train on the way to my father's memorial funeral service from Washington to Philadelphia and I sat down next to an interesting fellow and african-american guy and we got into a conversation he asked me what I did I said oh I'm in theater sometimes I say I'm in sales it's a different thing but anyway it turned out he'd been in the State Department in India for a while exchange stories and but then he quit and when he got fed up with some of the ways that the US government was working in India at that time and he now worked for an inner city project in Washington DC and he worked with young young boys particularly those in jail and prison and those who had committed homicide he worked with gang kids too so he told me a story he said one young kid 14 years old trying to you know be tough and being a gang the way that he proved himself and that you did in that gang was to go out and shoot somebody like you know it's an initiation right like the young man of Africa used to go and shoot a lion but here we have these people initiating themselves and the gangs on the streets because nobody is tending them really that's a whole other story about initiation in our culture and he shot this kid that he didn't know and how he was apprehended brought into court trial and at the end of the trial convicted the judge said you know says that the jury comes back you are convicted of this murder of this innocent young man that you shot and just before he's taken away in handcuffs the mother of the boy who was shot stands up looks him in the eye and says I'm gonna kill you and sits down and then he's hauled off so after being in prison for a year or so that mother goes to him and he's kind of frightened and she's I just got to talk to you and so they have a little bit of conversation and she leaves him something say you got any money for anything cigarettes whatever she leaves him a little money and she starts to visit him and try and understand this guy who shot her son and she goes every few months and then over the course of three four years she starts visiting him more regularly talking to him and when he's about to get out at age 17 or 18 she says yeah what are you gonna do he's I've got no idea got no family and nothing don't know she said well I got a friend who's got a little factory maybe I can help you get a job so she arranges that with a parole officer says where you going to stay so I don't know where I'm gonna go said well I got a spare room you can stay with me so he comes stays in the spare room takes this job and after about six months she says you know I really need to talk to you come on in the living room and sits down sit down let's talk and she looks at him and says remember that day in the court when you were convicted of murdering my son for no reason at all to get into your gang and I stood up and I said I'm gonna kill you he said yes ma'am I'll never forget that day she looked back and she said well I have you see I didn't want a boy who could kill in cold blood like that to still continue to exist in this world and so I said about visiting you and giving you presents and bringing you things and taking care of you and now I let you come in my house and I got you a job and a place to live because I know I don't have anybody anymore I my son is gone he's the only person I was living with I said about changing you and you're not that same person anymore but I don't have anybody and I want to know if you'd stay here I I need a son and I want to know if I could adopt you and he said yes and she did so forgiveness isn't just for the other it's really for the beauty of your soul it's for your own capacity to fulfill your life and it's a practice or it's a training all the modern neuroscience that Fred Luskin is doing and Richie Davidson the studies of FMR eyes and things a lot of it is the validation of neuroplasticity that our nervous system is always flexible and changing even to the very end of life and one of the interesting things about forgiveness is that you find it in all these different traditions that are African indigenous practices of forgiveness a beautiful one in the bababa tribe I might describe there's of course the the Christian teachings of turning the other cheek and Jesus's teachings of forgiveness there's the mercy of Allah there's all the forgiveness in Islam and in Hinduism the thing that makes Buddhism and Buddhist psychology as Buddhism is more a science of mind than a religion although it functions as a religion for some people unique is that it offers practices and trainings it doesn't just say turn the other cheek or remember the mercy of Allah but it offers a thousand different trainings trainings and mindfulness and compassion in forgiveness in loving kindness in compassion for those who are different than you trainings in kindness for the body trainings in a Y speech and and compassion in words a thousand trainings and these systematic trainings are part of a lineage also that went through from Buddhist teachings of ahimsa through Gandhi to Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela that that underlie a lot of the exemplars in modern times of compassion and forgiveness and this uniqueness in Buddhist psychology that it understands the power of training also is the understanding of ancient understanding of neuroplasticity the teaching in three words is not always so listen to this not always so things are always changing and so you start with a mindful presence and when people will come and meditate what happens is you sit quietly and then you allow yourself to use the breath or body to come into the reality of the present and then with that you begin to notice what's there and sometimes you notice the unfinished business of the heart you're just sitting quietly you notice the tensions you carry in the body and those get released you notice the unfinished business of the heart this friend who died recently of cancer celebrates her meditation she says even though my days are short I have so much gratitude for the meditation practice not just the joy and ease it brought but every fearful fantasy and every bored and restless sitting and every pain and ache I sat through was a training for kindness and compassion for the muscle for bearing witness for the freeing of my spirit that carries me even as I face my death so you learn how to be present and then you work with the practice of forgiveness which we'll do and when I first taught what was taught it it was like do this a couple times a day for the next six months and let me know how it goes which is basically do this three hundred times and sometimes you do it and you hate that person yours I'll never forgive this I'm so pissed I feel so betrayed I'm never never and so what you learn and it is how much you're holding in the heart or sometimes you just weep and it feels like the ocean of Tears and unbearable and you do it over and over and over and gradually a trust comes that through like planting seeds and watering and tending the plants don't grow all of a sudden they're underground but after a while they come as the poet Pablo Neruda says you can pick all the flowers but you can't stop the spring and when you water the seeds of love and forgiveness then out of this it starts to change you now I could and probably should stop right here and go into the practice but I'm a since it's Berkeley and Decker said people want actionable items here I'm going to give you another list the Buddha was a list maker the Eightfold Path seven factors of enlightenment the 52 mental factors the Four Noble Truths I'm going to give you a list of 12 principles connected with the process of forgiveness kind of quickly in ten minutes and then we'll do our practice okay here are the principles first understanding what it is and what it's not and that was a little bit of what I elucidated earlier that it's not condoning and it's not a papering over you know and it's not for the other person and so forth so there's an education then the second is to sense the suffering in yourself of still holding on to this lack of forgiveness for yourself or another and start to feel that it's not compassionate that you have this great suffering it's not in your best interest to keep running the thoughts and feeling the feelings in doing the scenario so you actually sense the weight of not forgiving third you reflect on the benefits of a loving heart and there are literal trainings and reflections your dreams become sweeter you waken more easily and men and women will love you angels and Davis will love you if you lose things they'll be returned it says I don't know as you look go and love people will welcome you everywhere when you're forgiving and loving your thoughts become pleasant animals will sense this in love you and elephants will bow as you go by it's it's I don't know you can try it in the zoo right your babies are happy in the womb and as you grow up and you recite these things and you look at what are the benefits of a loving heart that's three number four you discover in in the sense of identity that it is not necessary to be loyal to your suffering this is a big one ladies and gentlemen that we're so loyal to our suffering what happened to me the trauma the betrayal I mean okay it happened it was horrible you know and you may need to do healing but is that what defines you live in joy says the Buddha this is his instruction live in joy and love even among those who hate live in joy and health even among the afflicted live in joy and peace even among the troubled these are instructions and then he tells you how to do it so you release I mean you look at the dial Amma who is the weight of the the oppression in Tibet and the loss of the culture and yet he's also a very happy joyful person he said they've taken so much they've destroyed temples burned our text disrobed our monks and nuns you know limited our culture and destroyed it in so many ways why should I also let them take my joy and peace of mind it's um well there's an astonishing poem that maybe I'll read just a couple of lines of if I can find it here where is it it's called a brief for the defense for those of you who are lawyers by Jack Gilbert and I actually don't see it here but the gist of the poem is somehow to say that if we do not allow our joy in some way we collaborate with those who denigrate others because those the in justices of the world and the people who are suffering they too want joy they don't want that they don't want the suffering and somehow we diminish their suffering if we don't also allow for our joy or Camus Albert Camus put it he spoke of joy as being a moral obligation he said there's so much suffering in the world yes but if that's all that there was to humanity it would be hopeless joy too is a moral obligation of humanity so we understand that being loyalty or suffering is not who you are not helpful that's four or five understanding that it's a process that you go through and you do forgiveness over and over and over again and finally you get to some place where forgiveness is possible a man wrote to the IRS I haven't been able to sleep knowing that I cheated on my taxes since I failed to fully disclose my earnings last year on my retort turn I've enclosed a bank check for $2,000 if I still can't sleep I'll send the rest that's how it works you know step by step right it's a training it's a process layer by layer that's how the psyche and the body work six you have to set your intention and there's a whole complex and profound teaching in Buddhist psychology about the power of both short-term and long-term intention but when you set your intention it sets the compass of your heart and your psyche in the direction and then you meet all the obstacles and you can by having that intention you can work those obstacles become workable because you know where you're going whether it's in a business or a relationship or a love affair or creative activity or in the work of the heart to set the intention is really important and powerful seven you then need to learn the inner and outer forms of forgiveness and we'll do an inner practice shortly of these three directions of forgiveness and the Buddhist world is full of outer forms of the practice of pivara na and certain kinds of confession and and making amends and so forth all these that are part of it that they're that not only do you need to know that that it is practice but you actually learn the practices and forms and there's ritual out powder forms and then inner practices eight inner technology requires that you start the easiest way for these kind of practices not for mindfulness training where you start where you are but with love and compassion and forgiveness the inner technology is you start with whatever opens your heart and then maybe it's your dog you know and maybe it's the Dalai Lama and maybe it's you know your child or the thing the person that that you most love and most easily can forgive and when that's open then you bring in neutral somebody that's a little more difficult and only when the hearts way open do you then say all right let me take something difficult and what happens is you take the thing that's difficult and your heart closes and shrivels and says I hate them I'm never going to figure them and then you sit there with the suffering of that there you are with your heart open and cushy and loving your dog and your child and your you know your partner and all those things and then your heart turns into this walnut it's really hard and you go off well I'm never going to love that person but this is too painful okay I'll forgive you just a little bit because the technology itself step by step begins to teach you what it means to live with an open heart so you start with what's easy that's eight nine you must be willing to grieve and grief has as Elizabeth kubler-ross spelled out bargaining I wish it didn't happen is there some other way why didn't a loss fear anger and the poet Rumi says don't reject your grief and loneliness let it season you like few ingredients can so there comes a kind of trust and I see it when I work with people over weeks and months and years the things that are difficult become digested and workable and transformed in us so you have to be willing to go through the process in some honorable way as I'm sure Nelson Mandela did he had all he describes it he was outraged and angry in hurt and grieving and all the things that anyone would feel 9 be willing to grieve and let go 10 forgiveness have includes all the dimensions of our life the foundations of mindfulness some of the trauma is held in the body and there's all kinds of trauma practice that you can do to release what's carried in the body Eduardo galeano says science says the body is a machine the church says the body is sin the marketplace says the body is good business the body says I am a fiesta and we get locked whether it's the church or science or things that we get all this stuff actually locked in our body and there's a very good science about about working with trauma that's a part of forgiveness for some of us and if you want to read Peter Levine's waking the tiger or the somatic experience is a very intelligent approach to bodily held trauma fight flight and freeze and how it gets released forgiveness is work of the body it's work of the emotions where you work with the unfinished business in the and you you know you start to feel that the capacity for your tears and your joy grows as you listen deeply and that you allow yourself to have all these feelings and in doing so the space of awareness that can hold them all becomes more and more trustworthy and it works in the mind you know the third foundation of mindfulness because you see all the stories and you're loyal to your stories but the fact is that most of your stories are reruns it's like you're stuck in a hotel room at 2:00 in the morning and the you know you can't change the channel and you're on one of those kind of shopping rerun channels and it's just blaring only it's your own mind right and ninety-eight percent of the thoughts you have today are the same thoughts you had yesterday you know they're very few new ones actually if you look closely so in the mind there are trainings in Buddhism for both the abandonment and the placement of thoughts skillful replacement of thoughts as Abraham Lincoln said I've always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice think of this and so you start to see the thought structure and discover you can change it and then the fourth is the relational aspect that we need help from one another and tree it's a collective process as well Annie Lamott my friend writes she says my mind is like a bad neighborhood I try not to go there alone you know and in somebody to come and practice together is you realize that you're not the only one raising your hand saying you need to forgive yourself turns out that almost everybody else in the room raises their hand too and that we Nelson Mandela and Hong Kong SUCI and the people sitting near you are all part of the if we speak of interpersonal neurobiology of the field of forgiveness the last two I'm going on is the shift of identity and this is a poem I will read from Juan Ramon Jimenez he writes yo no soy yo I am NOT I I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see whom at times I managed to visit and at other times I forget the one who remains silent when I talk the one who forgives sweet when I hate the one who takes a walk when I am indoors and the one who will remain standing when I die there is in us an undying capacity for love and freedom that is untouched by what happens to you and to come back to this to know this true nature original mind Buddha nature the shift of identity Oh nobly born is what is the invitation of the work of forgiveness and Buddhist teachings are full of these people mass murders like mill arepa and angulimala who go through a transformation and are forgiven so if they can be forgiven even you my dear friends might be a possibility and then the last is perspective and in the Buddhist tradition they talk about a hundred thousand maha culpas of practice of forgiveness a mountain as high as Mount Everest in every hundred years a bird comes along with a silk scarf in its beak and drags it across the top of the mountain wearing it away a tiny bit when that mountain is worn down that's one maha culpa hundred thousand of those of practicing forgiveness you'll get it down or as the Ojibwe say sometimes I go about pitying myself when all the while I'm being carried by great winds across the sky and we're in this drama of incarnation and life that is so much bigger than our little stories and when we can open this perspective all kinds of ways to do it in this vast way it's not just you who are hurt but it's the hurt of humanity it's not just you or betrayed it's the hurt of love of relationship everybody who loves is hurt in some way everybody who enters the marketplace gets betrayed you know it's the loss is not just your pain it's the pain of being alive and then you feel connected with everyone in this vastness so the last thing is a brief story and then we'll do our practice and time will be what it is will be a little bit late I trained and lived with maja gose Ananda who was the Ghandi of Cambodia a very dear friend good friend of the dalai lama's and others and he led peace marches through cambodia for 15 years through the mine fields he would walk people back to their villages who wanted a return chanting loving kindness and forgiveness the whole way through the jungles people would shoot at them and he would have hundreds of people behind him and be feeding a drama ringing a bell and singing the song of loving-kindness he said if we can chant loving-kindness 100 miles back to your village you will be safe and he did it over and over and over again amazing person nominated for the Nobel Prize three or four different times anyway I work with him in the refugee camp on the border of Cambodia in the early years of that genocide and this was a camp suckow cow he done this one had 50,000 people in this horrible hot dry rice plane surrounded by barbed wire UNHCR running this camp all these tiny little huts and it was the camp that had the most Khmer Rouge in it underground anyway my teacher NGO sananda asked could we build a Buddhist temple in the central square just a simple bamboo roof and platform and the UN said okay so we got materials together and built this temple and then invited everyone to come and the Khmer Rouge underground said if anybody goes to this temple when we get back in Cambodia which is only ten miles back across the border when we get out of here you will be shot so we didn't know if anybody would come he went around the camp and rang the bell that morning as you would the temple bell and twenty-five thousand people gathered fill this Square and Magos and I got Mo sananda got up on this little platform this monk most of the monks were killed 19 of the 20 people in his family were killed 95% of the monks in the country were executed all the intellectuals were killed he got up they hadn't seen a monk in ten years and he looked out at the sea and I wondered what he would say to the faces of people it was a grandmother and one grandchild who'd survived and uncle in his two nieces and that was all that was left temples burned schools villages people killed and the faces of trauma and shock and loss what do you say and he began to chant in Cambodian and Sanskrit this simple chant that's one of the first verses from the Buddhist teachings that goes hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed and he chanted it over and over hatred never ends by hatred but by love alone is healed over and over and over and slowly the voices began to pick up and chant with him and pretty soon twenty five thousand people were singing this and weeping because it had been ten years since I'd heard the darm of the truth the law the way hatred never ends by hatred and what I saw is that he spoke a truth that was even bigger than their sufferings even bigger than their sorrows this is the ancient and eternal law so put your papers down sit for a moment and let your eyes close gently and we'll do one of the forgiveness trainings in three directions so first with your eyes closed just bring your attention here to the reality of the present feel your body on this morning spring morning in May 2010 here you are in this auditorium Zellerbach let the shoulders drop the eyes and face be soft let the breath breathe easily and trust yourself seated on this earth you are seated on your own under your own tree of enlightenment your the Buddha seated here learning the great art of forgiveness and then the first of these three directions and don't worry this is also written out so you can practice this easily afterward there's a handout for you this here's the reflection follow along with your eyes closed there are many ways in which I have hurt and harmed others knowingly and unknowingly betrayed them abandon them cause them pain so many times I remember these now and feel the sorrows I still carry and let yourself remember the ways you've betrayed abandoned harmed others and feel what you still carry and in the many ways that I have hurt or harmed you betrayed others caused you suffering out of my own fear and confusion out of my own pain and anger and hurt and misunderstanding in this moment I ask your forgiveness I ask your forgiveness please forgive me may I be forgiven and as you remember and asked feel the movement of the heart that's willing to ask forgiveness and perhaps to receive it even as we do this practice the the tears and the regret all those things may come now include yourself in the second direction just as I have caused pain and hurt suffering to others so to I've hurt myself betrayed myself abandon my own deepest values and love just as I've heard or harmed others so to I've judged and betrayed myself so many ways I remember these now too and let yourself feel all the ways that you have caused suffering to yourself to your body and mind and heart as you caused sorrow to others I remember these now too and feel the sorrows you carry from this and now again breathing gently the same practice of forgiveness in the second direction just as I have hurt or betrayed or harmed others so I've done so to myself betrayed and harm myself cause myself suffering in body or mind so many ways out of my own confusion and fear out of my pain and frustration and hurt and in this moment I offer myself forgiveness I hold myself with mercy and tender forgiveness for my own humanity for all the ways that I may have hurt and messed up cause pain breathe gently just now I forgive myself I forgive myself and feel what it's like the image from the Buddha is a mother holding her most beloved only child to hold yourself with the tender compassion and forgiveness all these ways I hold myself with forgiveness and mercy I forgive myself and then finally the third direction there are many ways in which others have hurt and harmed me we have all been betrayed we've all had suffering and pain visited on us by others every one of us has been hurt I remember these now to the ways I've been abandoned betrayed hurt by others and feel the sorrows I still carry and let yourself feel and sense and in the many ways that others have hurt me betrayed abandoned me caused me pain I remember now to the extent that I'm ready and this is a process that can't be hurried to the extent that I'm ready I turn my heart in the direction of forgiveness to the extent that I am ready I forgive you I offer you forgiveness I release you I will not carry the pain of hating you in my heart to the extent that I'm ready I forgive you and that yourself feel either the lightning of the heart and the forgiveness or the understanding that you're not yet ready to forgive and so you know the work of the heart that is ahead of you and keeping in mind these three directions let yourself come back to this room and your eyes open

Channel: Greater Good Science Center

Views: 351,518

Keywords: forgiveness, meditation, mindfulness, Jack Kornfield, Buddhism, spirituality, religion, compassion

Id: yiRP-Q4mMtk

Length: 56min 56sec (3416 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/rbickel6]

This is 56 minutes long. Am I the only one who's heard of Jack Kornfield? This is the ultimate trigger voice for me.

[u/[deleted]]

lucy

[u/howgoyoufar]

Very good talk. Didn't trigger me but he is a wise guy, thanks for posting this