This morning I want to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation and the precept of not harboring ill will but maintaining equanimity, dwelling in equanimity So many of our problems come from hanging onto or clinging to self-righteousness or angry stubbornness. And when we think about forgiveness, we often think, but if I forgive somebody, that means that I absolve them, but I don't feel that way.

[01:21]

That means that everything is okay now, but I don't feel that way. So I think we have to look at what is the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation because they're two different things. Forgiveness is singular in the sense that one person forgives another without the other person having to do anything. In other words, I forgive you for whatever regardless of your response. But reconciliation is between two people at least. Two or more. And that takes, that's a relationship. So one can forgive without reconciliation. It's hard to have reconciliation without forgiveness.

[02:28]

But forgiveness comes first. and then reconciliation is then possible. So in the case of forgiveness, it's not conditional. It's not like I forgive you as long as you blah blah blah. It's not conditional. It could be conditional, but it's not real if it's dependent on conditions. So, in the realm of forgiveness, what is forgiveness? Forgive. It actually means to let go of your attachment

[03:30]

when we have anger over something that hurts us in some way then we become attached to our pain and then we also become attached to the source of our pain so when we become attached to the source of our pain we become handcuffed or chained to that which we are directing our unforgiving anger. So as long as we can't let go of that, we have a bond. We're bonded to the source of our anger. Forgiveness is to free ourself. And in freeing the other person, we free ourself.

[04:37]

So that we're no longer bound by our anger. Anger has many facets. It can be constructive or destructive. The precept doesn't say, get rid of anger. Totally. Because anger has two sides. It says, don't harbor ill will. The person of the way does not harbor ill will. Harboring means to be bound by that which we harbor. If I have a cup of tea in my hand, then that cup of tea determines my posture.

[05:40]

Whatever I hold determines who I am and where I am and what I'm doing at that moment. When we hold nothing, we're perfectly free. I was talking to someone the other day, which As a matter of fact, this morning. And I wrote something on the back of this rock suit, which was something like, we are totally liberated already. We are actually totally liberated already, but we keep binding ourself. We unliberate ourself moment after moment. We unfree ourself moment after moment. So what does it mean to liberate ourself and to liberate all sentient beings?

[06:51]

It means to not unliberate ourself. not tie ourselves up all the time. Our natural state is liberation, but we confound it and create big problems for ourselves and others. You hit me, so I hit you. And then you hit me over here, so I hit you over there. And you hit me this hard, so I'll hit you that hard. We're bound to the person that we hate. And it just keeps growing. And anger also can become a mode. Modus. It can become a kind of temperamental mode. Because it's releasing.

[07:59]

It releases our energy. You know, reactive. Whenever there's a big problem, we react with anger. And that anger releases our energy and it's hard to bring it back. Hard to bring it back because the anger latches onto an object. And when it latches onto the object, it's like a dog with a bone. You just chew on it, and chew on it, and chew on it. So, in order to create freedom in the world, we have to know how to deal with anger. And we have to be able to deal with anger and to deal with the object of our anger, which is something or somebody.

[09:02]

we have to be able to forgive. But reconciliation is another matter. Reconciliation comes through the desire to become whole again. Because as soon as we have the split between you and me, our wholeness is compromised. And when our wholeness is compromised, we live in partiality. As children, we play games. Boys, typically, play competitive games. It's the nature of boys to play competitive games.

[10:09]

And in the game, you really try your hardest to defeat the other person. But at the end of the game, you shake hands. This is called sport. In sport, it's called unsportsmanlike to not shake hands. even though sports are getting more and more serious. Sometimes they don't shake hands, sometimes they hit each other at the end of the game. But sportsmanship means you play the game, but you know it's a game. And you maybe get angry or whatever, but at the end you shake hands. But we take our games too seriously. much too seriously. And anyway, so in order to have reconciliation it's necessary to

[11:34]

come back to zero. To come back to zero means to let go of all the animosities that build up and having the desire to start again from zero, to begin again from zero. The life of a Zen practitioner should be, ideally, from moment to moment, you begin your life from zero. You don't depend, you don't live your life depending on what you've accumulated or what you've developed as a standing point. Moment by moment, you let go and start from zero. So you're constantly in the mode of forgiveness and reconciliation.

[12:42]

Even though sometimes very hard because even a Zen student builds up or hangs on to resentments and anger and ill will. But that's the practice. The practice is letting go of self-centeredness. It's interesting, you know, Suzuki Roshi used to say something like, the bodhisattva, how come the bodhisattva always has the same temperament? Whenever you see this person, they always have the same temperament. It doesn't change. No matter what's going on around them or with them. Always the same. Because they're not holding something. Not holding anything. We say not to hold anything in the bottom of the heart.

[13:57]

It's like There's no bottom in which things rest. It's just like, out. It's, you know, it's like when you eat, you defecate. You take a shit, you take a pee. But if you hold that in, you get very angry. So the system has to constantly be cleaned. That's the secret to good health, both mental and physical. Take it in and you let it out. And you filter it so that the nutrients can do their work. So reconciliation means that you have to be willing to dump everything, to dump all the resentments, to not hang on to anything, and then you can start again.

[15:28]

So the people that you fight with, or that cause you a lot of trouble, actually are your benefactors. You know, sometimes we get really angry at our parents, or our bosses, or our companions, or those people who we feel are oppressing us, but they're actually helping us. I have a hard time with people who sometimes say, well, my parents caused me to be this way. Maybe so. Yes. But that doesn't mean that you don't have the opportunity to work with yourself. It's like you're shifting responsibility from yourself to somebody else. thing you can do is to forgive your parents unconditionally, no matter how bad you think they were to you.

[16:49]

Then you have the opportunity to separate, and then you have the opportunity to have some reconciliation. Maybe you won't, but at least you have separated you're no longer chained to your animosity, and you have the freedom to do what you want. So, I want to look at anger a little bit. Dogen, in his When he makes the comment on the precepts, on the precept of anger, he says, neither withdrawn nor set forth, neither withdrawn nor set forth, neither real nor unreal. Here are the oceans of illuminated clouds, the ocean of magnificent clouds.

[17:58]

And if we look at the precept, it says, not to harbor ill will, but to dwell in equanimity. Equanimity means not going to one side or another. It's the balance point, to always be at the balance point and not let the teeter-totter tip one way or the other. This is anger. This is not anger. So it looks like, Dogen says, for an evil person, I want to explain what I mean by evil. My interpretation of evil means someone who takes delight in the suffering of others. or someone who benefits by creating suffering for others.

[19:06]

There are other definitions, but for this purpose, this is my definition. Someone who delights or feels okay with the suffering of others. or is callous or not even callous but actually delights in that. That's where they find their happiness. So the anger of that person and the non-anger of that person are both evil. Because the anger of that person comes up when their delight is thwarted. And the non-anger comes up when they don't pay any attention to the suffering of others. They don't care. So they don't get angry. But for the person who is, I don't want to say good, but I have to.

[20:11]

Good is a loaded word. I don't believe that I'm good, particularly. But for someone who is working for the good, Anger should come up when there is injustice or when there is a real need for it. Non-anger should come up when there's things that are, there's nothing to be angry about. You take delight in people's success. or the fact that there is no evil in this particular case. So, in the one sense, both anger and non-anger are unwholesome. And in the other sense, both anger and non-anger are wholesome. So Dogen says, neither withdrawn nor set forth.

[21:19]

Withdrawn is like non-anger, and set forth is anger. And neither one nor the other means that when anger is necessary, you should express anger. When it's not necessary, you should withdraw from anger, but you should not harbor anger or ill will or be attached to it. This is the equanimity. So equanimity means that on one side of the scale there's anger, on the other side of the scale there's withdrawing from anger. But we're to stay in the middle, at the balance point, so that when anger is necessary it tips this way, when it's not necessary it tips this way. So we don't try to get rid of anger, but anger is a great force for good and absolutely necessary.

[22:32]

But righteous anger is not the same as self-righteous anger. Righteous anger means that when you see the suffering of others caused by evil, you express it as anger and then the anger helps you to do something it motivates you to do something but self-righteous anger is the anger that blames others for your suffering. You can never take responsibility for your own problems or your own suffering, but you always attribute it to others and you get angry.

[23:37]

That others are causing me to be angry. Whatever happens to us, happens. And then whatever our responses or our reactions are belong to us. So if someone shouts at me, I have a whole litany or collection of things, of responses. I can ignore it. I can get angry. I can get spiteful. I can get happy. There are a lot of different ways I can respond to something, but responding with anger, blaming people, blaming others for my anger is delusional. So the world is half run by delusion. Maybe more than half. Mostly

[24:41]

angry responses, and we don't see our own actions as a cause for what happens to us. We always see it as coming from outside. So this is self-righteousness. I am right, you know, to feel this way. Yes and no. It's okay to feel this way, but if you start assigning blame for your feelings, then it's a problem. That's very hard. It's the hardest thing because we have this covetousness of I. We covet I, me, and mine. So equanimity is another term for great patience.

[25:57]

And great patience is at the bottom of equanimity or bodhisattva practice. And it means to be able to accept whatever comes that's not what we like. But instead of reacting, to take it in and know how to respond. So we take in insult or things that come to us from others that we don't like and filter that. and then come up with an appropriate response. And since non-harming is our practice, vengeance or justice becomes our goal rather than vengeance.

[27:13]

At this time in our life, there's this problem. Some people say, we want justice rather than vengeance. And in the case of the death penalty, what is justice without vengeance? That's a big question. And in relationship to our so-called war problems, what is justice without vengeance? How do we let go of our reactionary responses? and in order to have an appropriate true response that is actually helpful and not so harmful to ourself or others.

[28:22]

I've talked about this before. When you take the Middle Eastern problem between the Arabs and Israelites, you can see this self-destructive no forgiveness and no reconciliation. And the deeper it gets, the harder it is to forgive. And if you allow yourself to experience what other people feel, what those people feel, you can see how hard it is. So, you know, there are problems in the world that have gone so far that it's hard to bring them back. So it behooves us to act responsibly and responsibly

[29:40]

Before something gets out of hand. This really has to be at the bottom of our practice. To not start new conflicts. You had parents who were not so encouraging the act of forgiveness and would separate them from them enough to allow them to move on, is what it sounded like to me.

[30:45]

And you acknowledged that there was a problem and there's a forgiveness on that student's part. And I think about the other side where, like, I feel in my case that I have very encouraging parents and that a lot of the way I am that's healthy, I contribute to the guidance that they gave me. And I wonder about, should it? Is it a different instruction for a more positive experience with parenting? or because I feel it would be selfish of me to not acknowledge that karmic gem of being parented well to help me move through life with a little more happiness and love. So, you know, one side is you forgive your parents.

[31:47]

When I said separate, I just meant separate the attachment, not separate your relationship. Attachment to your own animosity. That's what the separation means, separation from your own animosity, so that that's no longer a barrier. But also you can say, Suzuki Roshi says this in one of his lectures, he said, you should go to your parents and say, excuse me for having caused you so much trouble and interfering with your life. Yeah. I was wondering about closure. Sometimes you have, you know, having difficulties and you want to resolve something and you want to have closure.

[32:53]

One person does, wants it, some person doesn't. Yeah. Acknowledge it. Yes. So that stuff is still there. That's right. So then you just have to, you know, that's part of your suffering. and you just have to accept it. We can't reconcile everything. We reconcile what we can, but for you to do the forgiveness at least frees you from the attachment. Well, on the subject of forgiveness, it seems as though there's also a step, and I wonder if you could comment on that. You can't just jump to forgiveness, that sometimes you have to acknowledge first with compassion for yourself.

[34:01]

You have to be able to say, have the feeling that if the other person can't hear you, at least you can hear yourself and the universe can hear you. happened and this was very painful so that you're not blaming yourself because just as we can think it's all everybody else's fault and really it's our responsibility, we can do the opposite too sometimes and blame ourselves for what isn't really our fault and it's good to be able to first say this is what happened. So you have to forgive both yourself and the other person. so that you're not caught in self-blaming. So forgiveness for the other person also means forgiveness for yourself. You can't really do that otherwise. You have to let go of your attachment to your own, acknowledging your problems and your faults and what you've caused, but forgiving yourself.

[35:02]

That's really important. And the anger that comes up, you can't let go of the anger until until it's spoken. Yeah, I think so. About a year ago, a business that I had started with somebody ended pretty badly. And to this day, I still harbor a lot of ill will towards my partner for how things went. And I understand intellectually that I should forgive him. But just me having the thought, I forgive him, seems to do nothing. So I was wondering if you could describe the process of willing to let go. I mean, it seems just having the thought doesn't make any difference. There's an old saying, time heals wounds. So, Akin Roshi gives this example of

[36:02]

being really angry at somebody you know for something and being very you know just his mother I think you know and going on and on about it you know during Zazen and everything and then the next morning waking up and washing his face and thinking about it he just laughed you know suddenly the whole thing was gone but in time time and distance from it helps you to let go of your attachment. So... So there's no active... Well, you can work on it, you know? You can work on it. And as long as you're conscious of the fact that you'd like to do that, that helps too, because things work in our subconscious. We can't always do something consciously, directly. But if we put it into our subconscious, just keep it in our mind, it works over time in our subconscious and then boom, kind of like a koan.

[37:09]

You hear a koan and then you remember one phrase or one line and it sticks somehow in your mind and then over a period of time it comes up and you think about it and then suddenly boom, because things work in our subconscious and we have to have faith in our subconscious that it's actually working on something when our conscious mind is not, all the time. Jerry. Once you have gone through the forgiveness, And so as a continuation of the issue of reconciliation, if you've opened to reconciliation in terms of either a gesture or whatever, you know, kind of let all of your stuff open in some way, signal that you're ready.

[38:13]

If the other doesn't respond, is that, I mean, can you still be clear? Can you still be clean? I mean, you talked about cleaning yourself out, you know, kind of getting rid of the, negative energy or the suffering. Is that still clear or do you still... It's still clear, yeah. You know, you can be very clear even though the other person is not. But there's still something missing, but that's just something you have to bear. Yeah. Nina? Two questions. One related to this person's question. Demanding of yourself to be forgiving, couldn't that get in the way of actually being able to let go? That's one question. Let's deal with that. You can't demand anything.

[39:16]

You can only open your heart. You can't open your heart on demand. I'm sorry. What's the other question? The other has to do with, let's see, you talked about self-righteous anger and righteous anger. And righteous anger as being on behalf of others who have been dealt with unjustly. but couldn't that also include oneself? Of course. Self has been dealt with unjustly. Yes, as long as it's not egotistical. Can you explain the state of mind it might take to feel forgiveness and or compassion for truly evil people like Hitler? Yeah, like who?

[40:19]

Hitler. The state of mind that it takes to forgive that person is to understand all the causes that supported or went into developing that person. And then we see that it's not just that person, it's the myriad energies and synergies and states of mind of the time and the place. what's been being transmitted through so many other people in so many circumstances plus the person's upbringing and where they're caught.

[41:25]

You have to realize that people who want power and want wealth to the exclusion of anything else are very frightened people, insecure. Why else would you need power if you were secure? If you're secure, you don't need anything. So, the more power a person needs, the more wealth they need, the more insecure they are. You need all this stuff in order to feel secure, and yet you don't, of course. So, it's pitiable. And so, even though you your reaction is to hate these people. Your response is to feel, your compassionate response is to feel pity for them. So, you know, it's mixed feelings.

[42:29]

And this is actually how we really have to be able to There can't be reconciliation without looking for all those causes. And then we see there's just this pitiable person being driven by these causes. Yes and no, because when you come down to it there is no person but at the same time there is a person. So you know we say no self but it's the no self of a self. there's no such thing as a self and there's no such thing as a non-self so the person and the deeds are the person and the deeds can't be separated what that person is doing at that moment is expressing these deeds and that's who that person is at that moment so it's true though

[44:03]

that it's just deeds, it's just things that are happening which are harmful. But at the same time, there's some responsibility of a person. So, right, that's where we come to the point of between vengeance and justice. So we fall into vengeance because we want to attack the person and we want them to feel what we felt. But the justice says, let's just look at the reality of the situation without getting emotionally entangled so that we can really see the truth of the situation because emotional entanglement tends to blind us. Well, I think it's important to understand that forgiving doesn't mean excusing. It's not the same thing. I think oftentimes people sort of fall into a mushy relativism, or else they're afraid they'll fall into a mushy relativism if they forgive.

[45:13]

But I think they're really on two different planes. You can make moral distinctions. in the world of duality and you can make evaluations that certain things and certain kinds of conduct are harmful and are to be discouraged and in fact not tolerated and one ought to take a stand against them. But then the notion of forgiveness is a Buddha mind kind of thing that goes beyond that. And it's important to understand that distinction that when you say the kind of things that you just said, you know, there are myriad causes and conditions and this is a person and so forth and so on. You're doing that as a way of not harboring your own ill will and seeing something, seeing the Buddha mind in the other person and all of that. But it doesn't detract from the fact that in the conditioned world, what they did was evil.

[46:18]

That's an important distinction, very important distinction. Now, it doesn't mean that it's okay that they did that, just because to forgive does not mean to condone. That's very important. Alan? I wanted to move a bit. looking at why one wants to or feels compelled to hold this painful stage or this judgmental stage.

[47:26]

I think that's sort of complementary to the outward portion. Well, I think wanting to harbor ill will gives justification to our anger and makes us feel like if we don't harbor the ill will then we're betraying our feelings. So I have anger. I have anger for the government, for all the stuff that's going on, and Mr. Enron.

[48:29]

I don't want to get into that. And individuals. But I'm angry, but I'm not harboring ill will. I'm simply angry. And I'm not angry at how it affects me exactly, but I'm angry at many things. I'm angry at how stupid people are when they vote. But I don't have ill will toward them. And I kind of harbor ill will. No, I harbor anger, but I don't harbor ill will. I think that there's some difference. Politics is necessarily partisan.

[49:43]

And when you talk about non-partisan politics, that's not possible. I mean, not in our day and age. So, how does that, how does that reconciliation take place? How does forgiveness take place, you know? Very difficult. There are many problems in this world that just can't be solved easily. Yes? I feel like there's a degree to which not forgiving someone is sort of self-protective, or people see it as self-protective. They've been betrayed and they don't want it to happen again, so they won't forgive. I see, like my mother for instance, is incredibly forgiving and incredibly open-minded. It's something I always admired about her, but it's something that other people see as gullibility or just ignorance about the ways that people really are.

[50:46]

And over the years, the fact that she is open-minded gives people a chance who other people would just cast off and say, there's no way that anything could come up for you. Over and over again, she's been betrayed. She's been shown, like these people have, have shown her that, you know, you shouldn't give people a chance. You should just, you know, assume that whatever, you know, people have done in the past will be repeated again. She's becoming very hated and I don't know how to, and I see that happening with other people too. And myself, like, when we try to be forgiving, a lot of times we get hurt again and it's hard to protect yourself without without harming anyone? Well, that's the difference between forgiving and saying, oh, it's OK. So I think that maybe she slips over into it. It's OK. Everything's OK now. It doesn't mean everything's OK now. It simply means that, in a strict sense, you're no longer attached to your anger.

[51:53]

That doesn't mean that everything's okay between us now. It simply means, you know, I'm not harboring something against you. You're free of, you know, go away. Or whatever. It's really time to stop. Who? Melody did? Hi, Melody. Okay. No, please. I wanted to tell about the mother of one of my clients on death row. I work with murderers on death row. I have occasion to meet a few times the mother of the beautiful young woman my client had murdered. And she tells her story of forgiveness. It's very amazing, really. hated him so much she didn't have any contact with him but she talks about it that she was torn up inside just into pieces and burning up inside with hatred for him.

[53:10]

Her husband somehow could go on sooner with his life and so they divorced. And her hatred went on, she said, for eight years. And she's a Christian, and she just said she was at a retreat, a Christian retreat, when somehow in prayer she says that she put it down. And it seemed like a story of grace, really, something. And so she wrote a letter to him, just telling him that she gave him. Because she realized that it wouldn't be real unless she conveyed it to him. And then later, it turns out he is a Christian also, and wrote back to her. And she visits him in the visiting room. I've seen them a few times there together.

[54:13]

But it was very clear that there was something about it that was her salvation. It was something about her own opportunity to live that was the most important. Yeah. So the thing also about your mother is that sometimes people think you're foolish. So you have to be able to accept that too, that you do something foolish. And it's okay. People who do good things are often considered foolish.

[54:57]

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