Tara Brach - Blessings of a Forgiving Heart

Episode Date: August 11, 2010

2010-08-11 - The roots of peace and war are within these very hearts. In the moments that we release blame, we reconnect with the compassionate presence that heals ourselves and others as well. This talk includes a meditation that guides us in awakening our capacity to forgive. Please donate at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

So tonight, this is a two-week series we're doing. Last week, I spoke on self-forgiveness. And so tonight's a cultivating forgiveness for others. And it's really how to stop the war that creates so much separation and pain and loss in our lives. And as we often do, I'll be inviting you to choose somewhere where you have some sense of separation, closing your heart somewhere to somebody. and will be doing a practice towards the end that will address that. But just to say that the roots of war and the possibility of peace

are really in these very hearts right here. So whether you're here tonight listening, there are people around the globe now that listen to the podcast, this very growing community that's part of an even larger community of people that are really intentionally waking up. their hearts and minds and this practice of forgiving, of seeing where we've pushed others out of our heart and intending to soften and open is really about the most profound thing we can do to plant the seeds of peace. And it includes action, activity, but it has to be within our own

hearts too. So there's an anonymous saying, who is it that's unhappy, the one who finds fault. And we kind of know it that when we're in fault finding mode, we're just not in that good a mood, right? Isn't it true? And what happens is that, you know, either we're in the mode of this self as a victim or this self is in some way superior and putting out our judgments. But it's not one of those states of heart and mind that we're really savoring our lives. And if we're at the end of our life looking back, we know that we'd say what mattered was loving well and really being here for our life. We wouldn't be cherishing the moments that we really nailed somebody with blame. So it's one of these things of remembering what matters. And I am drawn to reflecting on this

regularly in my own life. I have a whole practice with when I start noticing judgment and also in teaching because I see it so much as part of our daily trance when I say our daily trance that we're not mindful of the fact that we've locked into in some way putting either ourselves down or someone else down. So it happens with those that are closest to us that we lock into some sense of resentment that that person is letting us down, not holding up their end, not treating us the way we want them to. And it might be a loving and good relationship on some levels, but there's just some tightening of blame, of resentment in that way. And then, of course, we can see how we do it very reflexively to the broader world, those in political power. There's

so much animosity between religious groups. There's so much holding to the sense of I've got the right view and so much of a put down towards others. And it might be that we think of ourselves as progressive and liberal and the put down is towards those that are considered to be conservative or right wing. And I'm not trying to throw out assumptions that everybody's the same, but that's just as much a closing of the heart. So there's from a slight kind of contemptuousness to a very major aggression, those that disagree. The Buddha said that those that hold strong opinions go around bothering one another. I think it's perfect. For those that have been with me a lot, you'll remember this story, I think, captures it a bit about a Taoist master

who sits naked in his mountain cabin meditating. And there's this group of Confucianists that trek up the mountain to go to his hut because they want to lecture him on the rules of proper conduct. You know, he's a renegade. And they see him sitting naked before them and they're shocked and saying, what are you doing sitting in your hut without any clothes on? And he said, or without any pants on. And the sage replies, this entire universe is my hut. This little hut is my pants. What are you fellows doing in my pants? So there's this at-war quality that's either subtle or dramatic. And I feel like it's an integral part of waking up for all of us in a daily way to just honestly look and say,

how am I creating separation? You know, separation from myself and separation from anyone we're with. I mean, I created separation today. I was on the phone with AAA junk removal service, and the woman I was talking to wasn't cooperating with my idea of what I wanted, and I found myself getting, she was just going along with her list of rules, but I was getting more and more irritated, and I hung up and said, why did I, why did I have to do that? I left her feeling bad and me feeling bad. Can we just watch how we do that? So the inquiry really is to look at.

look into what does it mean to forgive? And just as by way of definition, I think of forgiveness as letting go of our stories of aversive judgment and blame that armor our hearts. We hold on to a story of you're wrong or I'm wrong and that hardens our hearts. Create separation. And if we let go, then we have to open to the vulnerability underneath. So forgiving takes courage. We're going to come back to that again and again. Committing ourselves to not pushing other people out of our hearts takes courage. Now, I want to say, and I'll probably repeat this a number of times, that forgiving does not mean giving up wise discrimination. If you're talking to your partner and you want to say, well, when you do this, our child gets frightened or gets shamed.

You can do that, but you let go of that added layer of saying, and you're bad and wrong for doing that to our child. Do you get the difference? Wise discrimination notices this causes this, but we don't add the hatred, the blame. So to begin with, it's really important to recognize that our anger when it comes up has an intelligence to it. We were designed to feel angry.

it's part of what we're given to survive and that it lets us know when we're endangered and when something's obstructing our needs and like all animals it mobilizes us to do what we need to do to take care of ourselves so this isn't saying we shouldn't get angry in recent human history most threats are mental so most of our anger is not towards an invading tribe or a large cat you know

it's more towards those that insults or reject us or stop us from getting our needs met and so then one way that anger comes up is then it energizes us to figure out a way to take care of our needs fine where it gets us into trouble is that we get hooked on the angry thoughts the blaming thoughts that you're wrong

and our biochemistry locks into anger and blame our thoughts get small and tight and spin around in resentment, and our behaviors become either aggressive or passive aggressive. So anger can be have a wholesome force, or it can be one that keeps us caught. I sometimes think about our dog, Hakuna, this is very huge standard poodle.

And when we lived in Bethesda, he hated the neighborhood Akita's. There are two Akitas, and we used to criss-cross with them on walks. And if I saw, you know, they threatened his alpha-status. I mean, that was, you know, they just threatened him, and he was really angry at them. When I would see the Akita's approaching, I would have to wrap the leash around a tree. This is 90 pounds of standard poodle that lunges, and I'm not that big.

So I'd have to wrap around a tree and let them pass. And Hakuna would lunge and bark, and there'd be huge aggression. They'd pass. I'd unwrap. We'd keep walking, and then he'd start cheerfully trotting and sniffing and enjoying his way. It wasn't like he was continuing to say, you know, like the nerve. They think they own the hood, you know. That stupid curled tail and that fancy coat.

I'm going to show them next time and then start planning his revenge. It's not like that, you know. That's what humans do. And that's where suffering happens, you know. It's not just anger arising and telling us respond. It's we get hooked. We get hooked. We fixate and we get hooked

And then we have to get back We have to get back It's very deeply wired in us Story someone sent me Jake was dying His wife sat at the bedside He looked up and said weekly I have something I must confess

There's no need to His wife replied No he insisted I want to die in peace I slept with your sister Your best friend her best friend and your mother. I know she replied, now just rest and let the poison work. So I talk about it lightly, but getting back is a big deal. I mean, we really do it. We might get

back in real overt, aggressive ways, but often it's more of a kind of a subtle getting back where we just close off. We withdraw. We're not responsive. When we feel injured, we lock in as I'm describing, and it's not just in a personal way. We see it between countries and ethnic groups in the world. And I remember really well after 9-11, and a lot of people were very afraid of an ongoing vicious spiral of retaliation and global violence, because this is exactly what we're talking about, right?

You see the link here. And there was a wonderful Cherokee legend that started circulating around, the web. And in it an old grandfather was speaking to his grandson about what caused violence and cruelty on the earth. And he said, in each human heart, there are two wolves battling one another. One is fearful and angry and the other's understanding and kind. The young boy looked intently into his grandfather's eyes and asked, which one will win? His grandfather smiled and quietly said, whichever one we choose to feed.

So that really is what our exploration will be about tonight, that anger isn't a problem if we listen to it, but feeding the angry wolf with an ongoing story of your bad, or the angry wolf that focuses inward, I'm bad, is a false refuge. We've talked about false refuge. it gives us a temporary sense of control, and it actually gives a biochemistry that we get addicted to,

a kind of a surge of power. But it's not real. It's got an emptiness underneath because it comes from a place of feeling actually very insecure, and it reinforces our insecurity. So as I mentioned last week, sometimes that angry wolf we aim inward and sometimes outward, I saw these two T-shirts,

and one T-shirts had a picture of a picture, of a pregnant woman and she looked very pained and upset and she said, I should have danced all night, you know. So we direct pain like that. And then the other T-shirt had another pregnant woman and she's, you know, shaking her fist and saying, a man did this to me, Oprah. So we blame outward. And what I found is one of the biggest wake-ups that many people have, it was when they start realizing that they're always going around feeling mistreated. That it's not just with that person, it's also with this person and this person and this person, always feeling let down or betrayed or dismissed, are not taking care of, but there is, it's a wake up. We get it. We've locked into an identity

of victim. Another wake up is feeling always superior like others just aren't really making it, making the line that we've set of achievement are good personhood. So forgiveness is not like this ethical injunction, thou shalt forgive. We really do it for the freedom of our hearts. We're doing it for the freedom of our hearts. And the good news is when our hearts are free, there's something that ripples out that's really precious in this world. So maybe a first reflection will do, just to invite you to take a moment to let your attention go inward.

And this will be just a kind of a warm-up to let yourself be aware of some situation where you've carried some resentment towards another person. In some way you feel annoyed or irritated. you feel some blame, and remind yourself of how come. Let the situation be in mind what's provoked you, what really bothers you, what it means if that person behave that way about you or about how they relate to you. And as you contact feeling resentful, just notice what it's like, investigate it a little. What's it like in your body? You might exaggerate the resentment a bit to try.

try to get a really get a sense of it. What's your body doing? Maybe you're aware of what you're telling yourself about that person or about the world or about yourself. What's your heart like when you're resentful? What's the feeling of your heart like when you're annoyed, when you're blaming? What's your sense of yourself of who you are, of the kind of person you are? I mean, do you like yourself?

This is the beginning of just becoming more mindful of non-forgiving, of when we've created separation. That when we're armored with judgment and blame, our hearts are somewhat contracted, tight, maybe numb. And our sense of who we are is contracted. We're an injured or righteous or defended self. So you can open your eyes if you'd like. In the Buddhist tradition, what this is pointing. to has to do with our sense of identity, that when we're living inside stories of other has

hurt me, has betrayed me, I'm a victim, or I'm superior, whatever it is, any story that creates separation actually shrinks our sense of who we are. We become smaller. We become disconnected from wholeness and from our whole heart, from wholeheartedness. We forget who we are. So it's described as a trance. When we're blaming, we're in a trance. Again, it doesn't mean with wise discrimination that there aren't things that are important to pay attention to. It just means we're in a trance. We've forgotten really who we are. We're living from a smaller place. Charlotte Joko Beck, who's a Zen teacher, puts it this way. She says, our failure to know joy is directly linked to our inability to forgive. Let me say that again. Our failure to know joy is directly linked to our

inability to forgive. And in Buddhism, the bodhisattva path that's described as the path of an awakening being really is the path of very intentionally including everyone in our hearts, waking up from the trance that separates us and not turning against the life that's inside us or the life that's around us. And as I mentioned, it takes courage because in the moment that you stop the war, you have to open up to what you were avoiding. So again, let's just do another little bit of investigating together, okay? Just close your eyes again. Continuing to reflect on that instance of where you are feeling resentment or blame or if there's another circumstance you'd rather pay attention to you can go to that one it takes some moments to sense the story that's involved what that person did

how it made you feel or what they keep on doing and just the feeling of what's wrong or what could go wrong because of this person or what has gone wrong how this person's made you feel. So again, just contacting the feeling of resentment and the story of what's wrong with this person. The question I'd like to ask you is, what would you have to feel? What unpleasant experience underneath would you have to feel

if you put aside totally, you're blaming thoughts, the thoughts that you are wrong, you are bad, what would you be stuck having to feel? If you totally put down the blaming thoughts, what would that open you to that's difficult? You can keep on reflecting for yourself. And by the way, this is an inquiry that I invite you to do over and over again. I try to remember to bring it up whenever I'm teaching about this because it is so powerful. What would you have to feel if you put down the story of you are wrong or you are bad?

So opening your eyes, let's just hear a little bit of what's in the room. Just say one word of what you'd have to feel. Just raise your hand. It's kind of like pop-worm. We'll just hear a bunch of words around the room. What would you have to feel? You'd have to feel your own fear and vulnerability. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, yes, in the back there. What's that? You'd have to feel trust. Now, if you let go of feeling of the story of your bad, would you feel trust? No. So you'd end up feeling first contacting that you don't feel trust. Exactly right.

you. Yeah, again in the back. Acceptance. Now, if you let go of the story of your bad, would you feel acceptance? You would accept them? What I find is that that's eventually the gift, but if we could feel acceptance right away, we would drop all blame and just enjoy it. So let's keep checking in. Other people, I saw a few hands over here. Yeah, in the back. Unwineness. Separate. Unwanted. Yeah, unwanted. Yeah. Well, I think I would feel freedom, but as you're saying, no. Keep checking for yourself. If you dropped your story of something is wrong with you, what would you be stuck having to feel? Yeah.

Hurt. Yep. Sorrow. The risk of not knowing what's going to show up, it's kind of out of control then, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. That something's wrong with me then. If it's not wrong with you, then. If it's not wrong with you, it's wrong with me. Yeah, in the back there? What's that? Faith. Same question I'm going to ask.

As soon as you let go of the story, something's wrong with you, do you feel faith? You'd love to. So sometimes when you're naming these, like, faith, acceptance, these are things we would need to feel in order to let go, right? Yeah. I'm sorry? Manipulated, okay, victimized, yeah? Failure. Failure.

Yeah. you'd feel that you'd have to feel whatever comes up. Is that what you said? Yeah. Rejected. Right. Humiliated. Humiliated.

Separation. So let me just stop there. One of the reasons I wanted you to do this, and there's different languages for it, but the first person that spoke said, kind of used a big word, which is vulnerability, that as soon as we let go of the notion, something, wrong with you, it gets very vulnerable. We have to face hurt and fear and rejection and not knowing what's going to happen. Now, some people named positive states. That's definitely what it can emerge into. Acceptance, faith. But if we could feel those positive states right away, we wouldn't be holding onto our blame. We hold onto our blame to protect us from the vulnerability underneath. And that's, I'm just putting that out there. Find out for yourself if that seems true to you, okay?

Just find out for yourself and we'll keep going a bit. What I've noticed in working with people that not forgiving is painful, but it's protecting us from an even more raw kind of pain. And so there's this armoring. It's like a scab that we have, but we just keep scabbed when we walk around with our resentments. So some people say, well, putting aside my resentment or my anger is actually dangerous. It sends the message, all right, well, if you're not wrong, then I'm wrong. Or even worse, it puts down my defenses and then I won't even be able to take care of myself. I'll get hurt again. If I forgive you, you'll never learn.

And how many of you have had that sense that if I drop, My grievance, I'll have no way of teaching you how to change. Do you know what I'm? Yeah. Okay. I know John Bradshaw has a cartoon with a safari-type guy strung up to tree branches, and lions are circling around assessing the situation. They're saying to each other, he says his name is Bradshaw, that he understands that as cubs we were brought up in single-parent prides and are acting from deprivation and shame,

I say we eat them. So you can be compassionate and others might still bite. And I bring this up because again, I want to say that beginning to be mindful of our habits of blaming and putting down this evaluation of your bad does not mean we throw out intelligent discrimination in our boundaries. Okay? you can forgive in other words you can not close off your heart and yet absolutely resolved to never let

something happen again you can resolve to forgive but divorce somebody you can just decide to forgive but never see somebody again you know you can forgive and try to vote somebody into office or out of office or whatever you want to do in the world to improve this world, forgiveness. It's been described as you have a fist holding a hot coal in your heart. Okay. So let's look at the process of forgiving now. Let's look at it more closely and I'll do it by way of story. And I'm choosing a story that is an area that's really hard to forgive, which is a woman that came to me some years ago when she found out that her husband had not just had one affair but many and had been lying about it over a period of a number of years. And the depths of betrayal were hard to even put words on, that he was beyond

a lying bastard, the level of contempt and hatred she felt, how could he do this to the kids and to me? And then basically she said, how am I supposed to forgive him, Tara? And my response was to not even try at this point because that's not how the process goes. You don't feel injury and then try to forgive somebody just like that. It leads to what I sometimes call premature transcendence. It's kind of a false forgiveness where we're not really facing what's going on inside us. So we started with her being with her own experience and finding out what she was really really what was going on inside. And she opened to the rage and I basically said let it be as big as it wants to be. And this is important with anger or rage. You can let go of the storyline. In other

words, you don't have to keep feeding on what a, you know, incredibly horrific bastard he is, but instead open to the feelings of the anger, the heat and the pressure and the explosiveness. And so the work with her was to let it be as big as it was. And she'd say, okay, it's filling my body. And I'd say, well, let it be bigger if it wants to be bigger. And she says, it's filling the whole room. And then it was filling Bethesda and then the East Coast. And then her anger was totally through the hemisphere and then the planet.

And I said, now what? She goes, well, it's spreading out through the whole galaxy. You know, it skipped solar system. It just galaxy, you know, and outward and outward. And then finally she said, well, It's settling some. And then I said, so now what are you noticing? And she said, well, underneath the anger is fear that something's wrong with me.

So you let fear be as much as it is and you find out what's underneath it. There's always some sense of threat or endangerment or hurt. So for her, something's really wrong with me. I'll never be loved. I'm not desirable. And then underneath that was a real shame about. who she was and a loneliness. So for many months, we didn't even begin to talk about forgiving him. It was completely about how do you feel that deep sense of shame and loneliness and hurt and rejection

and hold yourself with kindness. And without getting into it too much, we've many, many times together talked about how you bring a presence to what's right here, sometimes putting your hand on your heart and offering in kindness to what's there over and over and over again. And in that process, there's a shift in identity. Sometimes it's gradual, sometimes it's really intense. But there's a shift in identity. And what happens is you go from being the one who's ashamed to that space of compassion that's holding your inner life. You shift from the victim, the hurting one, to a field of awareness.

You start coming home to your true identity. So this happened for her, and it took many, many months that she over and over again offered compassion to herself, and she had friends also holding her. That was absolutely critical. And that enlarging of identity

allowed her to begin to look through the eyes, of compassion and wisdom at her husband. And what she saw there was a man who was afraid of aging and feeling his own sense of loneliness and not appreciated and was trying kind of a desperation to hold on to life. And she could see that and feel compassion towards him. And she divorced him.

She divorced him. And that was okay. It was like she couldn't trust him in a certain way to continue and deepen the relationship. They lost that ground, but she still cared about them. And they were able to co-parent their children without that toxicity that comes from holding on to blame that says you're bad. She wasn't bad, he wasn't bad.

That doesn't mean she approved or condoned what he did. She just understood enough to care. in our ongoing relationships where we have blame it's never a one-shot it's not like you feel the blame towards your partner or your teenage son or your parent or whatever and get and feel the wound inside you and then offer you know it doesn't happen one-shot because the behaviors keep on repeating themselves so you keep on getting retrigured isn't that so it's not a one-shot it's actually an ongoing process of again and again pausing and remembering what really matters and opening to yourself and opening to another and from increasing presence seeing if you can negotiate and navigate

together sometimes it doesn't work sometimes relationships don't but that intention is not to lock into separation and your bad that that kind of stance it takes a deep intentionality because the story hooks us. If you watch your own mind, you'll see the story just hooks us. We get hooked again and again. So there's a kind of commitment that in the most basic way says, well, I'm just, I don't want to push anyone out of my heart. Now this weekend I was teaching and the question came up, well, why would I want to make that commitment? I mean, what if somebody has really wounded me? Why should I include that person in my heart?

So I want to just speak to that a little bit because from what you might say, a small self-perspective, you know, when we've been wounded, why should we make the effort to open our hearts and include somebody and care about them? From a small self-prospective, and it's hard to sense why we'd bother. And yet, when we start,

touching into the preciousness of unconditional loving, what I call taking refuge in love. When we start discovering that loving presence really is who we are and we really want to live from that, then we start finding that any defendedness, any animosity, anywhere that we fixated on blame, tightens our hearts so we contract away from our wholeness. and we choose to not push anyone out of our heart because we really want to be all that we are. We want to live from a wholeheartedness, from a truly awake heart. Still, we might think, well, I can understand for small violations. But what about the real big ones, mass murderers or people that abuse children and so on?

And the truth is, anyone that causes suffering is suffering. That's at least my experience. I'll just put that out there. Certainly invite you to investigate. But you have to look really close because you have to put aside your ideas about the person and really look. Anyone that causes suffering is suffering

and our hatred and our punishing does not help. Our aversion gives us a sense of power or distance or control at best. There's a wonderful story that I heard about the coup and matobu who have a ritual and I try to share it whenever I can because anytime I remind myself of it, it's helpful. And this is a ritual. Somebody's murdered. The family mourns for a year and then the killer's taken. Their hands are tied. They're brought out into a deep river and dropped in and then the family has to decide whether they're going to let the person drown or swim out and save them. And the coup believe that if the family let the killer drown, if they seek

revenge, they'll have justice, but they'll never be able to heal the wounds of loss. They believe that if they save them, in other words, if they admit that life isn't always just, and if they accept the reality of loss, in other words, face that rawness, that very act can begin to heal their sorrow. And this is how they put it. They say, vengeance is a lazy form of grief. Vengeance is a lazy form of grief. It's also a lazy form of fear. It's a false refuge. It's the shadow side of what keeps this world spinning in its wars, a sense of getting back. I heard a story that I wanted to share with you tonight that points to what's possible in some deep way. It was told by a man who worked with juvenile offenders in Washington, D.C., and most of the youths were gang members who committed homicide.

And one 14-year-old had shot and killed an innocent teen to prove himself to his gang, and during the trial, the victim's mother sat impassively silent until the end. when the youth was convicted of the killing. And after the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly, stared directly at him and said, I'm going to kill you. Then the youth was taken away to serve several years in juvenile facility. After six months, the mother of the slain child went to jail and visited his killer. Now, he'd been living on the streets, and she was the only visitor he'd had. So for a time they talked And when she left She left him money for cigarettes

And started visiting him more regularly With food and small gifts And she basically asked him What was doing, what he was doing Was on his mind and just listened At the end of the three-year sentence Near the end, she asked him What he'd be doing when he got out

And he was confused and uncertain So she offered to set him up with a job At a friend's company Then she inquired about where he would live And since he had no family to return to, she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home. For eight months, he lived there, ate her food, worked at the job. Then one evening, she called him into the living room to talk. She sat down opposite him and took time for a long pause. Then she started. Do you remember

in the courtroom when I said I was going to kill you? I sure do. He replied, well, I did, she went on. I did not want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. That's why I started to visit you and bring you things, to talk, to listen, to get you job, to let you live here. That's how I said about changing you. And that old boy, he's gone. So now I want to ask you, since my son is gone, and that killer is gone, if you'll stay here. I've got room and I'd like to adopt you if you let me.

and she became the mother of her son's killer, the mother that he never had. No, I don't share that because we should be living with some ideal of how we could handle the worst things. Like, I have no idea if somebody killed my son. I have no idea how I would handle it. I can't anticipate. But it points to the possibility. of human spirit to see past what I call as the veil. Even the most horrific conditioning that a person's living inside of an acting out of is still conditioning. There is a human heart and spirit within us all. And sometimes always our forgiveness on some level helps to reduce the spirals of violence, brings a healing energy. Sometimes in a very direct way,

It can call out the goodness. It's a life process, this forgiveness. It, for many of us, especially when there's deep wounding and often it requires therapeutic support. Because as we say, okay, I'm going to put down the story of blame, we open to a really deep sense of trauma. So it really needs support. And there's many stages of grief and rage, of sorrow, of fear. Jack Cornfield says, forgiveness. is a deep process repeated over and over in our heart,

which honors the grief and betrayal, and in its own time, ripens into the freedom to truly forgive. So it's not always possible right now, as we will end tonight with a brief reflection on forgiveness, and just to know as you do it that you can't just will forgiveness, but you can be willing. You can intend to forgive. you can intend to release the armor that keeps you from your own full loving presence.

And that intention, if you really hold it in sincerity, is the most beautiful contribution we can make to moving towards peace on this planet. It's as I began with the two wolves. It's actually a very daily practical practice, this intention. It's very daily. It means every time you become aware of judging, and we're not talking about the really big rage, we're talking about just the little ways we get resentful, that something new goes, oh, let me pause, let me sense what's underneath, let me be with what's right here, and the intention is to let go of the story, and the intention is to open to more presence.

Let's practice a little bit tonight. And if you're uncomfortable physically, take 30 seconds to move your body around, if you need to stretch or move a little, and then come seated in a way that you can deepen your attention. As you come into stillness, let your attention go inward. You can feel the aliveness in your body and just feel the state of your heart in this moment. You might let the breath collect you, center you. In the classic Buddhist forgiveness practice, we begin by asking for forgiveness. So the invitation is to sense where you might have caused injury to another person.

And we all have. Each one of us has in our need, our fear, our hurt, knowingly or unknowingly hurt others. So you might just choose somewhere where you know someone has been injured. and let yourself take a moment to contact the realness of, oh, this person's been hurt. Might be way back in the past, might be something current, just to let your heart feel that.

There's a healthy kind of remorse that can come up that's just acknowledging the reality of hurt. And out of that, we can, in sincerity, you can mentally whisper the person's name right now, now and to say, I see the pain I've caused you. Please forgive me. I ask your forgiveness now. What matters is not what would happen with that other person in response as much as your own sincerity and just asking, please forgive me, please forgive me. That kind of humility and care. the sense where you might be turning against yourself in some way,

perhaps for hurting this other person or for something else. So just to briefly do what I've called a forgiveness scan and see if you're down on yourself for something. And again, with that intention that's sincere, just to offer forgiveness. You might just say the words, forgiven, forgiven. Let me not push my own being out of my heart. If you're down on yourself or something large,

it's helpful to see behind your behaviors, the ones you're rejecting, the fear, the need, the hurt that might have compelled you. Just have more understanding as if you're looking through the eyes of a really caring friend, a forgiving friend, sensing whatever's going on right now. If it's difficult, just offering the words forgiven,

forgiven or if those words don't work for you in some way accepting with kindness what's here so you're making peace with your own heart you're reconciling with your own heart then we widen the attention to where someone else has caused us injury and again this is true for each of us none of us have gone unscathed we've each experienced whether it's deep tromely abuse, betrayal, are ways that we felt neglected, not understood, not loved well. To sense where this is so for you, where you might be caring, resentment or blame, and take some moments to let yourself feel the hurt where the grievance is coming from, underneath the story of what's wrong with the other person, just the pure real.

wound. And if it helps you to put your hand on your heart, it can for many people help to connect with what's real, to offer presence as the woman in the story did with her loneliness, with her shame, with her fear, just to sense what's underneath that anger or resentment and hold presence with it. You might as you have your hand on your heart are just energetically without touching yourself, just begin to send whatever energy of presence and kindness will help to offer healing to that place in you. Sometimes it helps us send a message inward that you're here, you're paying attention. Or as Tickna-Han says, this is the message, darling, I care about this suffering.

So you're relating to the wound, not from it. You're becoming that space of presence and kindness that can hold this life. And if it's a very deep and difficult wound, you might sense help. It might sense some spiritual figure or somebody that you know is filled with compassion or love, helping to hold this place, as if with your hand touching your heart, their energy is coming through your hand too, saying I care about this suffering. Over again, becoming right here in this moment offering care inward. And if it's difficult to let that just be your intention to offer care inwardly, some way saying, yes, it's okay,

I'm here. As you rest in the space of care and presence, you can begin looking through the eyes of compassion at the other and see if it's possible to look behind the veil of their behaviors, the ways things get twerked and people act out, to see where that person's fears and hurts are, where that person's suffering. Just sensing the intention to not push the other out of your heart. You can send the classic words of forgiveness, I see and feel the pain you've caused me, And I forgive you now, or simply it's my intention to forgive you. Just gently letting go of any story of the other.

Sense where you are right now in this process. And if there's any judgments about how you've even been doing this meditation, forgiven, forgiven. Just give your heart permission to unfold in its natural way. Breathing, feeling you're alive. feeling your sincere intention to awaken, trusting this awakening. We'll close with the words of Rumi. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact the Insight Meditation Community of Washington to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www.imcw.org.