I’m glad that you are all here with us tonight. Our topic is how to forgive and let go. 

Family dynamics

In interpersonal relationships, there is often a lot of disharmony, conflict, and harm that are difficult to deal with because we are constantly guided by our own interests, goals, and wishes. Therefore, a certain level of conflict and disharmony is almost inevitable. We all have experienced being hurt many times in the past, and while we are very sensitive to the way other people treat us, we are way less sensitive to the way we treat other people. That is the problem of our egocentricity, our self-centeredness.

We are most sensible toward the people who are nearest to us, our family members. In every family, there are some discordances and resentments, disharmonies and conflicts. This is quite natural, even when we perceive our family as a safe place. With the people closest to us, we should feel the safest and most harmonious. That is how we imagine family. But it is not always like that.

Our family situations are difficult to deal with. Many people blame their parents for everything bad that happened in their lives. How come we resent most of those who are closest to us, who gave us life? Sometimes that resentment is in place because parents make mistakes that have long-term effects, but that is another topic. 

Family disharmony and discord pours into our closer and wider societies, and into the world. We are witnessing a heavy, tense war in Europe as a consequence of disharmony caused by ignorance and lack of understanding. Greed, hatred, and all other negative emotions that overwhelm people.

The practice of forgiveness in Buddhism

Let’s come back to our personal level. We can carry the burden of resentment and anger all our lives – toward parents, family members, or other people that we come in contact with. Such a burden is heavy and it conditions both our present and our future. How to heal from being poisoned with traumas of the past? How to forgive and relinquish resentment?

Forgiveness is very important for establishing peace between conflicted sides. As an essential concept in Christianity, it is deeply ingrained in our culture. We need to understand that there are different concepts of forgiveness. The Christian forgiveness is theistic.

In Buddhism, there is no supreme being that is forgiving us or punishing us. In Buddhism, there is the law of karma. The nature of our actions is what makes the difference and determines the consequences. Buddhism places the human being in the central position that comes with responsibility and trust in the human potential for liberation. We are the only ones that can save ourselves and change our lives and our karma. We cannot count on Buddha to release our sins and save us. This is how we need to understand forgiveness in Buddhism.

In Buddhism forgiveness is unconditional. It doesn’t depend on the other side repenting and asking us for forgiveness. We forgive independently of what the other side does or does not do and this brings a deep inner transformation. We can go so far as to say that we should feel grateful to people who hurt us because they gave us the possibility to liberate ourselves from being hurt and being a victim.

Understanding the perpetrator

There are two reasons for this approach. It is difficult to forgive someone who hurt us and made us suffer unless we become aware of the causes and conditions that led to it. Unless we understand the state and the circumstances the perpetrator was in when he hurt us. So the first reason is that perpetrators, when they hurt others, are themselves in a state of ignorance. It is very important to understand that.

In Buddhism, people are not considered evil at their core. People who harmed us will not always harm us and harming is not their true nature. We need to understand their psychological situation and the causes and conditions that caused them to harm us. That act of harming should not be equated with the person. We need to understand the context. 

Letting go

And the second reason? It might seem that people that harmed us are not punished for it. And unless we punish them ourselves they will stay unpunished. This is incorrect thinking. Whenever someone harms someone else physically, emotionally, or psychologically, that leaves karmic seeds. Sooner or later the seeds will ripen and the person who did wrong will be punished for it through the force of karma.

The moment someone harms a sentient being, he is already punished for it. You cannot be in a good mental state while harming someone. You need to be in a really, really bad mental state, full of resentment, hatred and who knows what else, and act from that state. The return for it will not just happen much later, it is present in the moment of inducing violence. Considering this can give rise to compassion toward those who hurt us. And when we can feel compassion, we are free. We feel compassion toward that other person who is in a state of inner conflict and is harming himself and others. 

Those are the two main reasons to keep in mind when we forgive others for the bad things they inflicted on us. Forgiveness is not only the action of compassion toward those who hurt us, but a moment of inner transformation through letting go of the layers of the past. When we practice forgiveness, we do it in a very purposeful manner, to change our relationship to the past. We cannot change the past itself, but we can change our relationship with it.

Inner transformation through forgiveness

I mentioned that resentment, bitterness, and anger color the way we see ourselves and the world. Conditioned by our past burdens, we can’t make ourselves or others happy. So it is very important to change the relationship with our past, to liberate ourselves from the past, to untangle the knots that condition our present moment and prevent us from being free. 

Forgiving others for all the wrongdoing does not work without considering our wrongdoings, becoming aware of each and every one, repenting, and promising not to do them anymore. By forgiving ourselves and others, we are letting go of past attachments and turning our attention toward the present moment.

Releasing this heavy burden is a precondition for cultivating the mind present in the moment and understanding the bigger picture of ourselves and the world we are in. Therefore, it is of immeasurable value for our practice. The virtues of forgiving, repenting, and gratitude liberate us from the negative effects of the past, as well as from the self-centeredness that prevents us from admitting our own mistakes. We tend to hide them even from ourselves. Others are always wrong and guilty, not us. If only they supported us and loved us, our lives would be different. 

We need to understand that our happiness does not depend on others, they are not the source of our happiness. Therefore, when we see what others did to us, we need to forgive them because we know we have also hurt a lot of people in our lives. We are not free from hurting others. Understanding that helps us to forgive others as well.

Cultivating gratitude

The third thing is gratitude. Gratitude is a virtue, a positive emotion that is not characteristic of self-centeredness. All the bad things that happened we attribute to others and all the good things we attribute to ourselves. Therefore to feel gratitude and to develop this field of gratitude is extremely important. It is easy to feel gratitude toward people who are helping us, that we are in a good relationship, and that are always here when we need them. To feel gratitude toward people who hurt us is a much more difficult task and from the perspective of the practice of immeasurable worth. It is important to say here that forgiving people for what they did is not a sign of weakness. It might be understood in that way, as a sign of weakness, but I would say that the case is exactly the opposite. You need to have much more strength to forgive than to act in revenge. Because that mechanism generates anger and hatred in us we can think of reacting in the same way or can freeze and retreat in ourselves. What happens is that we cannot let go of that impression that we are hurt, that we are victims. We are thinking about it all the time and that’s why it is so problematic. 

In Chan, it is often said that some people can be like stone when they experience something. The experience they had is as carved in stone, lasting and overwhelming. Other people are like sand, experiences are as written in sand. They stay for some time but then the wind comes and they are erased. The third type of mind is like water: something happened but as if it didn’t, it does not leave traces, it is as written on water. 

Being resolute

That is the ideal we are striving toward: mental stability that nothing can throw off balance. Forgiveness, repentance, and gratitude are all forms of practice. In the context of Chan it is performed as a form of meditation, sometimes as a ritual, and often as a combination of both ritual and meditation. Certain ceremonies can be performed as ceremonies of repentance and ceremonies of gratitude. What is important to mention here is that repentance and forgiveness are forms of inner detox, a way to clean our mind from what is unnecessary and excessive, of what conditions us in the way we experience ourselves and the world. There is a very important practice completely aligned with what I have mentioned. It is the practice of developing loving-kindness and love toward all sentient beings. In Sanskrit, it is called Maitri.

The goal of all these practices is to make peace with ourselves and the world. To make peace with ourselves and the world is the precondition for freedom. That is the order when we talk about forgiving and letting go. I didn’t mention letting go separately because the act of forgiving is the act of letting go, as well. Letting go is the foundation of meditation practice in Chan – letting go of physical tension, of wandering thoughts in meditation, and of all actions that lead deeper into suffering. All action that is not useful needs to be relinquished. I would like to stop here. 

Conclusion and reflection

The topic of forgiveness is a multilayered topic. Let me stop here. And now questions! 

If you don’t have questions I will forgive you! 🙂

I hope you will forgive me if I don’t know how to answer your questions. 

I think there are no questions.

It is important to make a decision. The decision is to forgive everyone who hurt you in your whole life. To start the process of forgiveness. Sometimes it takes time. It depends from person to person, how deeply hurt we are. But we need to bring forth the resolution that we will forgive, that we will stop living with the burden and bitterness that is enslaving us and that comes from our past. 

So please, let this talk be an inspiration to do so, otherwise it does not make much sense to talk about forgiveness if we don’t actually apply it in our lives.

Public talk by Chan Master Žarko Andričević given in March 2024. 

Translated in English by Helga Juretić