To Forgive

Rather than letting your thoughts wander, rather than giving free rein to your madness, please bring your mind back to the body. Come back to the normal condition where thoughts glide without clinging to the mirror. Some people tell me: “Is that all? Is there nothing else to do?” Yes, that’s all. There is nothing else to do. But whether you really want it or not is another matter.

Often, without being aware of it, we persist in being mistaken. Our inner demon wants to persist in being mistaken. As a human being, we can be certain than some time, we’ll go through the painful experience of treason, conflict, wickedness. Faced with this, we should keep a free mind, a mind that doesn’t hang on to anything. Buddha’s teaching is aimed at this, but we persist in being angry, in feeling rancour. This harm done to us, we would like to send it back to the person who has done it, and we keep it in our heart. But it’s like keeping glowing ambers to throw them to someone; in the end, we get burnt. So, we must let go and give up before getting burnt. Buddha said:

“He hit me, he stole from me, he hurt me…”
Give up these thoughts. Live in love.

So, when we can’t give up this inner anger, this hate, when we can’t abandon guilt, when we can’t give up self-hatred, we have to think. We have to remember what Buddha said:

Hate has never stopped thanks to hate.

But it is the same for sadness, arrogance… To hold such feelings in our heart is to ill-treat ourselves, to harm ourselves. Buddha said:

Remember who you really are. Know that a big and mild heart lives inside of you.

Meaning a vast and unlimited consciousness. To think is to understand that in the end, we are harming ourselves, no one else. By persisting in being angry, in being greedy. So the first thing is to see that too often in the way we live we are driven by bad feelings. Then, we have to forgive ourselves, give up flagellation, guilt, self-hatred. Be able to forgive. It says in the Bhagavad Gita:

If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.

If we can forgive ourselves for errors, for the ill-treatment we have inflicted to ourselves and to others, then we will be able to forgive others. Forgiveness is first of all a liberation, it is to be able to let go of this weight that crushes our heart.

Think about it. It doesn’t mean that we are closing our eyes, quite the reverse.

Don’t hang on to your hate, your fear, your sadness. It’s yourself you are hurting, but you are also hurting the others. If you make the other bear your anger, you prevent the other also to advance, to be liberated. And most of all, you exclude the other from your heart. You become mean, pathethic.

The normal condition is that everything passes, forever; everything glides in the empty sky. If it is not the case, it means that you are closing your heart willingly. You keep your anger, your hate, to make the other pay one of these days. You persist in the wrong direction. See it and stop complaining.

If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.

To forgive ourselves, to forgive others. This is how we come back to the normal condition, to the true love, with an open heart.

Taiun JP Faure, January 2023