The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
The poem really isn’t about forgiveness, per se, but, OH!, those last two lines!
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Whatever we want to do with our one precious life, we can probably agree that we don’t want to carry around resentment and bitterness. And that means we need to learn how to forgive. We need to be able to forgive those who have hurt us in the past, and, perhaps more importantly, we need to be able to forgive ourselves.
Forgiveness is a natural extension of compassion, and therefore mindfulness. Forgiveness involves acceptance — though we may not condone the acts of others, or our own acts in the past, we must accept that they happened.
In many ways, forgiveness feels counterintuitive — revenge seems more natural. Sometimes, anger and resentment are easier. What would we have to feel if we couldn’t hide behind the anger and indignation?
We may not like the idea of forgiveness because it feels like “letting someone off the hook.” But what if we thought about it differently? What if we recognized that when we forgive, we’re letting ourselves off the hook? One of my mindfulness teachers says forgiveness means we’re no longer taking the poison of ill will. We’re no longer living with our heart closed off.
When we haven’t forgiven someone, or ourselves, we’re still trapped in the story. We’re ruminating, we’re reliving and rehashing the pain, and it often isn’t helping anything! That same wise teacher I just mentioned says “There’s got to be a time when we want to be FREE more than we want to be RIGHT.” It’s at that moment that we can stop taking the poison. We can transform our relationship to the past.
Practices for Forgiveness
So how do we forgive??? It can be so hard! Below you will find several suggestions for forgiveness. I also recommend you check out the work of Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg for forgiveness practices.
1. Take time to acknowledge the hurt. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. Bring mindful awareness to what caused the pain.
2. Recognize that accepting what has happened does not mean you are condoning the actions.
3. Understand that we are all doing the best we can, with the resources we have available to us. In yesterday’s lesson on nonviolent communication, we explored how all of our actions are done in order to serve a fundamental human need. People may use strategies that are unskillful and sometimes hurtful, but I choose to believe that we are all doing the best we can, with the resources we have available. Can we see the need underlying the strategy? Even when someone is deliberately hurtful, it’s usually more about their needs than it is about us. By seeing the universal human need behind someone’s actions, we can cultivate compassion, which fuels forgiveness.
4. Distinguish the act from the actor. We probably try to do this with our children already — we know that just because a child pushes her brother in a moment of frustration doesn’t mean she is “violent” or “mean.” Can you separate the hurtful act from the person who did it? The Buddha said unskillful acts come from ignorance — from a lack of awareness and a lack of understanding how we are all connected. What pain was this person in that made them do this?
If you have pets, you may know how when they are in pain and we try to help them, they might try to bite or attack us. They’re scared. Perhaps it helps to envision the person you are working to forgive as a frightened and wounded puppy (maybe a bulldog, but still hurt and terrified). I choose to believe that hurtful acts are rarely done out of intentional malice. I choose to see the little puppy. ?
You may also find the following links helpful:
Eight Steps to Forgiveness by Rick Hanson
Forgiveness Meditation with Jack Kornfield
WOW! We are at the end of week 6. Just one more week of content in Brilliant Mindful YOU, followed by our final implementation week. Next week we will be tying everything together and setting the stage for our Brilliant Mindful LIFE!