Forgiveness - Thay Phap Nhat

Martin Günther / pixelio.de

Do you want to run away from the past? Do you want to get rid of the image of the person who has hurt you?

Sometimes you even want to punish or revenge the people who make you suffer. You feel like you are not able to forgive their words or behaviors, and your heart hurts every time you think of them. Or maybe you thought you had forgiven the person, you thought your wound was healed, but after some time when you face the person again, the pain is back, somehow it is still there. You still haven't forgiven. The pain the person caused you is still affecting your present, or even future. So how can we obtain the real forgiveness and let go the hurtful past?

The real forgiveness is to recognize the sufferings of the people who caused you pain, recognize that all what they have done to you comes from some deep reasons conditioned by the unhealthy environment of which they created, or inherited from their parents and grandparents. They probably didn't want to do those things to us, they didn't mean to hurt us. They said those mean words, or did those hurtful things, because they are the victims of what they say and do. When we are able to see this, forgiveness and loving kindness will naturally come into our heart. This forgiveness and loving kindness will be the nectar of compassion healing the wounds. In order to see those things, we need time to practice looking deeply.

First, we need to be aware that our body and our soul are like flows, always moving and changing. These changes are influenced by the environment we live in or the surroundings. If we live in a healthy environment where people are loving and helping each other, the loving kindness and compassion qualities will be integrated into ourselves and they become a part of our live. On the contrary, if we live in an environment of many conflicts, discrimination, criticism or blame, we certainly get influenced by those energies. Our soul will be withered; our body will be exhausted each day from receiving a lot of unhealthy energies.

We can clearly see that when comparing a child who lives in a happy family and a child from a family where conflicts or fights often occur. The child from the harmonious family with loving parents, will take in those flourishing energies. For this child, life is full of joy and family is a true home. With the other way around, living in such family hearing parents arguing all the time is a torture. When children grow up, their souls and behaviors will be carrying the marks carved by adults. If they are marks of harmony and compassion, the children will behave to people in a harmonious and sympathetic way. If the marks are violence, hatred, then the children will grow up behaving with violence and hatred. They are victims of their living environment.

And who are those children? They are ourselves, they are our children, our grand children. They are the ones who make us suffer. When we have this understanding, forgiveness and compassion will naturally appear in our heart. We will be able to forgive the ones who have hurt us. It’s just a natural thing happening when insight occurs. We will not intend to punish or criticize anymore. And we want everyone around us to have a harmonious and loving life, as we know that what we think, say or do will leave a mark in our and people’s heart.

Everyone makes mistakes
Falls down and stands up again
Thus let us learn how to forgive
For ourselves and for all people