Forgiveness - It's Kind And Liberating

D S Anger.

So I'll just talk a little bit about anger first.

That's almost like a major subject all on its own.

And firstly,

Just from the point of view of its usability,

Anger is completely useless.

Nobody ever achieved anything of any value with anger.

But lots of people are hurt on the receiving end as well as on the giving end of anger.

It is completely useless.

And it's like really amazing.

It's like when people get angry,

That's when they want to try and solve problems.

Somebody gets angry at someone and raises their voice and then the other person goes,

Yeah,

Well,

What about that time error?

And now you want to start dredging up all this stuff and trying to address things.

And it's like it's so unproductive.

It is such a waste of time and it is utterly destructive of your sense of peacefulness,

Your sense of who you are and worth.

And you know,

There's just so many things that are attached to and connected to that.

In the yoga teachings,

They give really strong warnings and actually denunciations of.

.

.

When people become overwhelmed by emotion,

Any kind of emotion,

Whether it's fear or anger,

Jealousy,

Hate,

Lust,

And even the positive ones,

When we become swept away,

And that's a really good word,

Swept away.

It's like somebody walked up to a stream and they saw water moving.

They're thinking,

Oh,

This is not a big deal.

I can cross this.

And they step in and the current is so strong.

It's just like,

They're gone.

And that's what happens when we become overly,

When we become controlled by emotion.

So as a general principle,

One should never attempt to make decisions and to talk and say things in times of great emotion.

We only make our life and other people's lives worse.

If we want to deal with things in our life that we find to be unpleasant or unneeded or,

You know,

Disruptive,

Then we need to deal with them in a very thoughtful and a careful,

A measured way so that we can actually come to agreements and arrive at solutions.

And when we are just totally drawn into this whirlwind of great emotion,

We utterly lose the plot.

The single most important foundational principle of all yoga teaching is the understanding that I am an eternal spiritual being.

The body that I have on now and the mind that I am utilizing is not really me.

These are vehicles that I should be using.

And because they are not me,

I should be exercising control over them and utilizing them for some benefit,

For some higher purpose to become happy,

To become fulfilled.

When the opposite happens,

When I become overly influenced by my mind and whatever is going on up there or overly influenced by a condition of my physical body and something that it's going through,

At that time there is not even the possibility of this appreciation of who I actually am,

Being an eternal spiritual being.

So then I will begin to act and to say things on the basis of a very false platform.

And I will make decisions and I will begin to do things that are not going to be helpful in my life,

That are not going to bring me to the platform of enlightenment and not going to deliver me actual happiness.

So tonight,

So that's just kind of like anger and emotions in general.

Can we relate to this?

It's good.

I mean,

It sounds so simple,

But is it easy?

I mean,

It's like one of the hardest things to do.

And yet this is what the practice of mindfulness is all about.

When we experience that I'm losing the plot,

That I'm being overwhelmed by emotions and things,

I should begin this practice of going,

I'm not dealing with this now.

This is not a good time and a good way to try and deal with this.

I'm taking a time out.

I'm going for a walk.

I'm going to go do some breathing or chant some mantras.

You know,

I'm going to do something to get me back to a state of equilibrium.

And in that state,

We can begin to try to deal with things.

If we begin to try to do this in our life,

It actually brings enormous change.

It'll happen over time,

But almost immediately you will experience some relief of your unhappiness and things that are distracting or disturbing you.

You will actually begin this process of moving towards a more stable and happy life.

So in relation to the topic of anger and forgiveness,

We have this unfortunate tendency that if somebody has ever hurt me or caused me some suffering or something,

I have this tendency to want to hold on to that like it is some sacred treasure.

And I just won't let it go.

I'll keep it there.

And then every time I have a confrontation with the person that has caused me hurt,

I'm going to raise.

I won't deal with it when I'm on an even keel.

I'll wait until I'm losing the plot.

And then I'm just going to vomit out this anger from before that I've been carrying around.

And what we don't realize,

This is not about whether what somebody did to me is right or wrong.

We're not discussing that.

We're talking about the way in which I become affected and my life becomes affected by this situation.

So when somebody has caused me some pain,

I,

In holding on to this,

In not letting go of it,

I actually become imprisoned by that anger.

I become a slave of that.

I am always going to be controlled by it.

It's always going to be hovering in the background.

I can be carrying something around for 20 or 30 years and just actually have never let it go.

And because I'm carrying it around and because it's been with me so long,

I don't even notice it's there.

But it is.

And actually it is growing in size and the effect that it's having on my life actually becomes stronger over time and not less.

One of the requirements for a person who wants to become enlightened and to become free from all forms of oppression and things that cause us disturbance and pain in our life is to actually learn how to let go of that.

Letting go of it means coming to forgive someone.

That's just like,

Oh my God,

That's really?

I've got to forgive someone?

Well,

I mean,

Do you really think you're going to make somebody suffer by hanging on to the anger that you feel?

You don't cause problems for the other person.

You're just causing disturbance and problem in your own life.

And learning,

Learning and cultivating an attitude of forgiveness.

I don't want people to misunderstand that it means you just all the time lie down and let somebody walk all over you or somebody.

I'm not talking about that.

That's a whole different subject.

I'm talking about how we deal with things.

I don't know how many of you have assisted somebody who was dying.

It is a uniquely wonderful experience.

It's highly educational and it's really helpful for us in our life because at the end of the day that's me.

That's where I'm heading.

The only thing I can guarantee about my life is that I'm going to die.

Nothing else is sure.

That one is sure.

And being able to reach out and to hold someone's hand and to help them through this experience of death is very transformative.

And you'll find that with rare,

Rare exceptions almost everyone that lies upon their death bed and is conscious and aware.

One of the things that they will seek to do,

They will want anybody that they have hurt and done something to,

They will want to be forgiven.

People carry an enormous burden.

Like we do a weekly meditation class in the Paramarama prison and we deal with people that are murderers and people that have done horrific things and you get to talk to them about some of these things.

And people carry this guilt,

This burden of guilt and this heaviness of heart when they think about things that they have done.

So we ourselves,

If we have transgressed against somebody,

Will feel a very strong need at some point in our life or at the end of our life to be forgiven for things that we have done if we have unnecessarily hurt someone.

But there is a little catch.

There's a very famous prayer in the Christian world,

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us or forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

There is this real thing that people will face in their life where if I am unwilling to forgive others,

How can I seek to unburden myself from this forgiveness?

You know,

We are complicated beings.

We carry around so much stuff.

We become so affected by many things in our life.

And the process of yoga is the process of wanting to become distant from all of these things.

To regain our spiritual,

The reality of our spiritual being and to become unentangled from material life and all that crap that goes on and everything that's associated with it.

For a person to attempt to forgive someone for some hurt that has been,

You know,

They've caused them,

There will be two things that one experiences.

One is an immediate relief.

It is like when a person,

When you can forgive somebody for a transgression even if they are not asking for it,

But learning how to let that go,

It is a very liberating experience where people's heart becomes uplifted and everything changes,

Your life really begins to change.

But sometimes we question,

Well,

How can I forgive and why should I forgive?

In this world,

We are all very much controlled by what is called the law of karma.

As you sow,

So you shall reap.

So everything that you do,

You will be held accountable for and you will be made to pay.

And we're not talking about,

You know,

Down the road,

It can be in this lifetime,

It can be in some distant time,

It can be in a future lifetime,

But this is just the way things run and it is for this reason,

You know,

You may wonder why is it that people are born into different societies,

Different economic status,

The way the body looks,

The ability to learn,

The level of,

You know,

Fine intelligence,

Artistic ability,

Why is it all so uneven?

Why do people,

Some people get a whole bunch of good things and a whole people,

From the very beginning,

It's like they've been served a,

You know,

Something rather unpleasant.

This is all tied into this law of karma.

When we understand that by holding on to anger against somebody,

I cannot make their life worse,

I cannot increase their suffering,

You know,

People have this idea if I just hang on to it and I'm bitter enough maybe somehow that will make somebody else suffer.

No,

People are already going to suffer for whatever they do and holding on to the idea,

This thought of anger,

Is not going to cause them any more difficulty,

It only causes damage in our own life.

There is a really amazing verse in one of the great spiritual texts of India,

The Bhagwat Purana,

And it says that it is the duty of any person who is attempting to cultivate spiritual enlightenment to cultivate the quality of forgiveness which is illuminating like the sun.

Well that's a really amazing statement that when a person learns to let go and to actually forgive,

Their life can be filled with illumination.

What is this illumination?

This illumination is a deeper spiritual understanding of life and myself and my purpose.

It is a deeper understanding of,

You know,

Use the example before,

If you're walking down the street and somebody's got a dog in their yard and when you walk past the gate and the driveway the dog rushes out to the gate and starts barking at you,

What's the intelligent response,

Is it to get down on your hands and knees and bark back at the dog?

That's kind of like losing the plot,

Right?

The understanding that this is a dog is just,

It doesn't have the discrimination,

If it feels a sense of fear or wanting to protect,

It just behaves in this way and it cannot exercise control over these pulls,

It just reacts and behaves.

When people become overwhelmed by anger,

Envy,

Fear,

Lust,

Greed,

All different kinds of things,

The way in which we act towards each other is really unpleasant and harmful and we should feel pity,

Not anger at somebody who is trapped in this situation.

If somebody has no control over their mind or senses and is going to act in an incredibly aggressive way and cause harm to others,

Yeah,

It's rational and it's understandable that you're going to feel defensive and maybe feel some hurt,

But you must consider the reality from a spiritual perspective that this person is utterly enslaved by their mind and by their desires and is acting compulsively exactly like an animal and because of that state of consciousness,

Their life will be filled with pain and suffering,

Their death will be very unpleasant and they will not be able to escape the result of these things.

This is the nature of the illumination that takes place when a person actually learns to forgive.

If you learn to forgive and if you practice forgiveness,

You become a better person.

You become a bigger person,

Not in the sense of greatness but in the sense of spiritual understanding and adopting a far healthier approach to life and to relationships and dealing with things.

So this is actually quite a big topic and I'm going to end it there.

There's a lot more to say and there will no doubt be things that I've said that will kind of,

There'll be question marks in your mind beside it and what I will ask you to do is simply take these truths away from you,

With you rather,

Take them away with you and over the next weeks and months try to reflect upon them,

Sometimes remembering this and considering it specifically in relation to your own life.

If you begin this practice and if you encourage others to also adopt this,

You will be doing yourself a great favor.

You will become far more free from all the things that,

The weight and burden of pain that we often carry around associated with our anger that we feel towards others.

Okay,

Anybody have a question or?

So I'll invite you to join in another chanting.

Well first I'll just read you the full verse,

I only read half of it.

The duty of a person who aspires for spiritual enlightenment is to culture the quality of forgiveness which is illuminating like the sun.

The Supreme Lord Hari is pleased with those who are forgiving.

This name Hari is a name of the Supreme or if we want to refer to as God and it means one who removes our burden.

So we all to different degrees carry different burdens within our heart.

Anger,

Resentment,

Pain from before,

Things that have happened to us,

Doubts about our loveableness,

Our worthiness,

All kinds of things that actually are quite oppressive and weigh heavily upon our hearts and really affect how we deal with other people in this world.

This spiritual sound Hari means the remover of this burden of the heart.

And so I was going to chant this mantra Om Hari Om and if we are a little mindful of the spiritual significance of this mantra then we can chant it with thoughtfulness and benefit greatly from it.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Om Hari Om.

Thank you very much.