Forgiveness & Mindfulness

There were two questions yesterday that require long answers.

The first had to do with forgiveness. Remember that we define forgiveness in the Buddhist context as the desire not to take revenge. In English, we have the expression, “to carry a grudge.” I like the expression because it gives a strong sense that the person carrying it is the one who’s being weighed down. So when you’re giving forgiveness, you’re basically saying, “I’m going to put down that baggage.”

Now, this doesn’t mean that you don’t judge the person. As the Buddha said, the beginning sign of wisdom is that you use good judgment in deciding who’s beneficial for you to associate with and who’s not. If you decide that you don’t want to be with someone or continue that relationship, you’re not making a final judgment on the value of that person. You’re basically judging, “Do I want to continue having a relationship?” and that’s all. You have the right to say Yes or No.

Now, there is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. If you decide that you do want to continue having a relationship with the person, you need to sit down and have a reconciliation so that the friendship can resume on a solid footing. The Buddha set down several standards for judging a good reconciliation.

One is that each side shows respect for the other side. If the person who has been wronged shows disrespect for the person who did the wrong, the second person won’t see any reason to continue the relationship.

Another standard is that the person who has been wronged should be able to speak freely about what he or she feels is wrong about the other person’s behavior. And the other person has to freely admit that he or she did something wrong. It’s in this way that you can establish the fact that you have values in common. Only when you have values in common can you can trust the other person and continue with the relationship.

Now, if the person who did wrong doesn’t admit doing wrong, then there cannot be a reconciliation, but you can still forgive that person. In fact, you should, for your own sake. You don’t want to be weighed down by carrying a grudge around.

As for people that you have to live with, you may decide that you can forgive them, but you can’t have a real reconciliation. Here’s where you don’t bear a grudge, but you do have to be wise in deciding how open and frank and close you want to be to the other person, and of how much of your feelings you can safely share with the other person. You don’t want to share too much. You need to establish boundaries. When the relationship ends, as it inevitably will, you just leave it at that. There’s no need to try to continue it.

You have to remember the Buddha’s teachings on rebirth: Think about how huge the cosmos is and how long it’s been going on. You look around you and you won’t see anybody who hasn’t been your father or your mother or your child in a previous lifetime. So, it’s the nature of relationships to end. And it’s perfectly fine to decide, “Whatever bad kamma I have with this person, I’ll live through it, but then after that, I don’t want to have anything more to do with this person.” You may have to put up with a lot in the meantime, but don’t make that a reason for creating any more bad kamma with that person.

Meanwhile, you extend lots of goodwill for everybody: yourself, the other person, all living beings. This is one of the reasons why when we translate mettā, I prefer translating it as goodwill and not as loving-kindness, because the Buddha’s not asking you to love other beings, but you can wish them well.

Ajaan Fuang tells the story of a time when a snake came into his room. Every time he entered the room, the snake would slip behind a chest of drawers. So he told himself, “This is a good test for my goodwill.” For three days he put up with having a snake in his room. Every time he meditated: lots of goodwill for the snake—until the third night. That’s when he told himself, “Enough is enough.” So in his mind he said to the snake, “It’s not that I have ill will for you, but we’re different species, and it’s very easy for us to have misunderstandings. There are plenty of nice places for snakes out in the woods. May you go there and be happy.” So he left the door open, and the snake left.

It wasn’t the case that he loved the snake, but he did have goodwill for it. He wished it well. So it’s perfectly all right to have goodwill for someone else but to wish to live separately. In fact, there’s a passage in the Canon where a snake falls on a monk, bites him, and kills him. The snake was in a tree, and the monk was sitting meditating under the tree. The monks took this news to the Buddha, and the Buddha said, “Obviously, this monk never spread goodwill to snakes.” So the Buddha taught a chant for the monks to recite for spreading goodwill to snakes and all other living beings. At the end of it, it says, “I have goodwill for all beings, those with no feet, those with two feet, those with four, those with many. Now, may they go away.” Think about it: If Ajaan Fuang had tried to show affection for the snake by petting it, the snake would have bitten him out of fear.

There are plenty of relationships like that among human beings. So, in cases like that, for the happiness of both sides, it’s best to live apart.

That’s the first topic.

The second topic has to do with breath meditation. The question was actually a complaint. I’ve talked about the fact that, as you follow the Buddha’s instructions, you’re basically focusing on all four tetrads at once. One of you complained, “That’s too much.” But it’s not, really. I’ll explain why.

You start by focusing on the breath and trying to breathe comfortably. As long as the mind stays with the comfortable breath, you’re fine. Now, even without thinking about three frames of reference, you’ve got the first three tetrads right there: You’ve got the breath, the comfortable feeling coming from the breath, and the state of the mind focused on the comfortable feeling and the breath: body, feelings, mind.

Then role of the fourth frame of reference is basically to guard those other three in doing their work: You use skillful mental qualities to put aside any thought that would distract you from the breath. So all four frames of reference are working together even though you’re thinking of only one.

Now, if you have trouble keeping the mind with the breath, that’s when you ask yourself, “What’s the problem?” Then you can look at the problem from the perspective of the four frames of reference.

First, the body: “Is the problem with the breath?” Try breathing in different ways.

Second, feeling: “Is the problem with how the breath feels?” In other words, is the feeling not really comfortable? Is it not that absorbing, not that interesting, not that satisfying? The feeling can be neutral, “okay,” and as a result, you get bored with it. You’re not satisfied with it. So you ask yourself, “What could I do to make this sensation more comfortable and satisfying?”

You can ask yourself, “What would the body really like right now? What would the mind like?” Then allow your imagination to expand as to what would feel satisfying and what you can do to make the feeling of the breath more satisfying.

Or the problem may be with uncomfortable bodily feelings that you bring to the meditation. Can you focus your attention and breath in such a way that those feelings can grow lighter, or at least not weigh so heavily on the mind?

The third possibility is: “Is the problem with the mind?” In other words, is the mind too sleepy? Does it have too much energy? Or are you just going through the motions without really having any enthusiasm for this? If any of those is the problem, what can you do if the mind is too energetic? What can you do to calm it down? Try to get the mind in the right state to get back to the breath with a sense of joy in being here.

The fourth potential problem is that there are extraneous thoughts and concerns that are invading your mind. For example, you’ve just had an argument with someone before you sat down to meditate. There are thoughts of anger still ricocheting around in the air. So you have to figure out, “How can I let go of that thought?” Figure out whatever way you can remind yourself of the drawbacks of allowing that thought to stay in your mind.

This is where the different contemplations are useful. You can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. You can think about the Buddha’s view of the universe as a whole in the second watch on the night of his awakening: all those beings dying and being reborn in line with their skillful and unskillful kamma. That larger perspective can help make the issue you have with that other person seem very small. This is one of the reasons why we start meditation with thoughts of goodwill for the entire universe.

In fact, you can think about the Buddha’s whole series of knowledges on the night of his awakening. Remember the first knowledge was remembering his previous lifetimes. You think you have lots of stories in your mind when you sit down to meditate: The Buddha had eons and eons of stories going through his head. But he didn’t get entangled in them.

And he didn’t go straight from the first knowledge to the third. He went through the second knowledge first, which was seeing all the beings of the entire universe dying and being reborn. That knowledge put his own lifetimes into perspective. It enabled him to let go of all of his histories, and to appreciate the principle of kamma: the power of intentions acting in the here and now. That’s when he was ready to focus on the present moment in the third knowledge.

That’s one of the ways in which you use that fourth frame of reference, contemplating things that are disturbing the mind, seeing them simply as unskillful mental qualities, and then using skillful mental qualities to gain dispassion for them.

It’s in this way that your basic practice is to focus on one frame of reference, the breath. That’s for when you have no problems settling down. When you do have problems settling down, though, you can go through all four tetrads and figure out what the problem is and then how to solve it.

It’s like going into the kitchen: You have lots of tools and utensils to use to cook in your kitchen, right? But you don’t carry all of them in your hands all at once. You put them down on the counter, you pick them up when you need them, and you put them down when you don’t.

That’s how you practice four in one.