Forgiveness

[Calamity Jane]

some excellent points and reflections...I enjoyed reading all your insightful musings...but really, it does seem so futile (and 'anal-probing' odd, I agree db) to "collect info" in this way on a topic so hugely huge and varied.

so really, what are we left with, then simply to

kick out the jams, motherfucker!

(maybe loco is really Zentar come to see if we're worthy of his teachings)

[Tricky]

funny, some of this issue is paralleling minor aspects of my life...but I do imagine it does with some others as well.

http://ratnaghosa.fwbo.net/kshantithree.html

Edited November 26, 2006 by Guest

[Esau.]

I'm curious to why people relate hate to not forgiving. You don't have to hate someone to not forgive them, nor does it have to be extra baggage you carry. If you can forgive, do so, if you can't, lose that person from your life, move on don't think about anymore. Easy as pie.

Marc0, put it in persepective as far as I'm concerned.

it depends on what is being forgiven. \

simple as that.

:thumbup:

Just imagine a dog. A dog takes a big ol' crap on your most precious and expensive couch/chair/carpet.

If you aren't there for the event, and scold the dog, the dog will not know why you are flipping out on him/her. You would then be angry and feeling hateful. But if you forgive the dog and realize that it's a dog that just did what a dog might do, you can release that anger and get a new sofa.

Is that from the common sense of dog onwership 101 course? LOL - Pretty obvious stuff really, if not, the person would probally be better off with a pet rock. Not sure why that analogy, unless of course, you view people as dogs.

[StoneMtn]

(I started writing the below, before reading dirtybird's comments, but I too am curious...)

Freud?

I was thinking, maybe, Gilles Deleuze and his concept of "ressentiment", or possibly any of the existentialists. Buddhists have already been mentioned, but Taoist philosophy would also be appropriate to consider. You could even look at Kant's "categorical imperative", or Schopenhauer's idea of world-will, I suppose.

Why Freud, though?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

The only way I can see Freud coming in is in terms of repression - which I still think is a good lens to look at the problem of forgiveness through.

SM, I've never read much of him - does Deleuze's idea of ressentiment have much to do with Nietzsche's?

[StoneMtn]

It's entirely Nietzsche. He is an extremely controversial Nietzschean, who was absolutely brilliant and may be the only person to read Nietzsche correctly (or maybe not).

A bit of a freak, too. Pictures of him show fingernails that curl all over the place, and must be two feet long (so I speculate he usually dictated his books, as I don't picture him typing too much.)

Unfortunately, he jumped out a window in the mid-'90s, I think in Paris, and is no longer with us.

[allison]

I know Deleuze wrote a book about Nietzsche-but other than that I don't know anything about his own theories.

The mention of Nietzsche sort of clarified a feeling I had about forgiveness-as did Alabama mans last comment.

Why do we feel like we have to forgive?Why does not doing it make us a "bad" or unenlightened person?Is this not just a societal absorption of Christian ideals gone wrong? Nietzsche wrote alot about overthrowing "God" and the latent impact of religion upon our lives(perhaps thats put badly)-is forgiveness an action or emotion we are trying to mirror because its godly-and thus being human we can not ever truly attain?

From the Buddhist perspective forgiveness would come from a recognition of all emotional drama as being part of the "delusional" world-the world of passionas and emotions that are supposed to be forsaken or overcome for transendance.Which is all very nice but I personally need some passion and drama,blood and wine in my spirituality.Some earthly glorification of human flesh and existence in all its messy,fornicating,eating,shitting,loving and listening majesty.

And if I am attached to the passions of living-where forgiveness comes into great play based on myriad variables-does this make me of a lower consciousness?Can there not be both?

Does the choice have to be reject and overcome your earthly attachments and forgiveness is possible OR be attached to your earthly paradise and forgiveness becomes qualified and conditional?

[StoneMtn]

I actually do think that you have to have a bit of a Buddhist "detachment" from the corporeal to forgive people who do truly horrible things, especially when those people knew they were doing horrible things.

I also think Nietzsche had some good points about overcoming Judaeo-Christian dogma about such things, but also wrote interesting comments on the idea of "turning the other cheek" and such other ideas, which I do not believe he viewed too kindly. (As I alluded to, though, I really don't think anyone can say they truly understand Nietzsche anyway, and I actually don't think he was prescribing a code of conduct to anyone. I think he was just commenting on the human condition without advising us how to go about doing anything, but that's another story.)

Anyway, back to my first point, there, although I do think you need to have a certain amount of detachment to forgive people who do bad things, I also do not necessarily agree with doing so. That is actually why I've always called myself a 'very bad Buddhist', if I've ever been one at all (which I really don't know).

[allison]

I don't know how a lawyer would be a Buddhist.

Thats partly tongue in cheek but also partly serious.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I don't know if passion is supposed to be absent from the Buddhist world; my sense is that it all hinges on moderation and self-awareness, that you're neither governed by your passions nor unconsciously repress them. And then, too, there are all sorts of Buddhisms as well; what you get in popular forms like Pure Land sounds to me all about attachment in the same way as evangelical Christianity does.

Re. Freud again - funny, I'd just pulled Jessica Benjamin's Bonds of Love off the shelf, as I hadn't looked at it in a while (great book), and she begins with a quote from Civilization and Its Discontents:

Men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most want to defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?

Where Freud goes with this is to say that repression ends up being necessary in order to prevent the "war of all against all;" Benjamin's idea is that we do have means at our disposal to get past that - in a nutshell, maturing to a fuller understanding of what love is, separating it off from the domination we're subjected to by, e.g., our parents, who are to be both loved and obeyed - a relationship that often enough goes on to colour subsequent relationships. That's where she sees violence entering in - patterns of domination that lie just beneath the surface of consciousness, and where there's not enough awareness of what's going on to allow authentic forgiveness.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I don't know how a lawyer would be a Buddhist.

- by beginning every closing argument with observations on the universal nature of suffering, but that there is a way beyond it, which is to pay his client what he was asking for.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Guest
sic

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

À propos:

Ono urges day of healing on anniversary of Lennon's death

Last Updated: Sunday, November 26, 2006 | 10:27 AM ET

CBC Arts

Yoko Ono has placed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling upon the world to mark the anniversary of her husband John Lennon’s death as a day of healing for those who have suffered violence or war.

"Know that the physical and mental abuse you have endured will have a lingering effect on our society.… Know that your loss is our loss.… Know that the burden is ours," wrote the 73-year-old artist. "Forgive us."

Ono thanked the people who have given her comfort through the years since Lennon was gunned down on Dec. 8, 1980, by Mark David Chapman. Chapman remains in a New York prison, with his fourth request for parole recently turned down.

He has said that he saw himself as a "nobody" and wanted to get attention by shooting Lennon.

"I don't know if I am ready yet to forgive the one who pulled the trigger," notes Ono. "But healing is what is urgently needed now in the world."

The letter urges readers to apologize to those who have suffered through violence and to take responsibility for failing to intercede on behalf of victims around the world.

"Ask for forgiveness from those who suffered the insufferable," she writes.

"Let's wish strongly that one day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves, and by healing ourselves, we healed the world."

Ono and Lennon, who married in 1969, were known for their protests for peace, demonstrating against the Vietnam War and staging several "bed-ins" including one in Montreal in May 1969. Give Peace A Chance, recorded that year, became an anti-war song while Imagine (1971) has become an international song for peace.

A multi-media artist, Ono is also contributing works this year to an international exhibit called "Liberation" launched Sunday in four museums in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Ono will display four works, including the film Bed In and the War is Over campaign.

Ono signed the message, which appeared on the back page of the "Week in Review" section, "With deepest love, Yoko Ono Lennon, New York City 2006," and added a sketch of Lennon and herself with son Sean holding a balloon.

With files from the Associated Press

[Biggest Fan]

Bouche- your first comment nailed it.

Moving forward is about resolving issues from the past. The old saying goes 'anger destoys the vessel that contains it'.

[Sarahbelle]

I feel like when you dont' forgive someone, it's you that looses in the end, not them!

It's so very hard to let go of someone who has hurt you but eventually it's bound to happen (unless U are out for blood... My name is Inigo Montioa. You Kill my Father. Prepare to DIE.)

Just because of time. I know I've been hurt by a lot of people but after a while it kinda goes away.

[nattyMatty]

forgive and forget, Or

forget and forgive

Love or hate,

hated or loved,

Or regret.

To forgive is to accept the past that is unchangeable. If one can't forgive the unchangeable past, then can one forget about the past that is unchangeable.

The first cut is the deepest. Baby I know.