For years, I had been hanging onto my resentment towards a person who really did abuse me mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually. Something had to be done.
Then a Zen friend asked a good question: “Is forgiveness an act of will?”
Psychologists define forgiveness as a conscious decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness. It's a choice that allows a person to forgive another for an offense or act that was illegal or immoral. It is intentional. When a debt is forgiven, there is a release of any expectation or commitment to repay or compensate. When someone forgives someone, they let go of negative emotions.
In terms of the law and psychotherapeutic practice, as well as perhaps even the Talmud, these definitions are helpful; however, as a Zen practitioner, I wondered if they went far enough. I’m going to posit forgiveness as a way to move beyond the past, in the sense that the trauma becomes a complete chapter of personal history without any lingering effects in one’s present, everyday life. I’ve set the bar quite high. But it is Yom Kippur today. Forgiveness is an act of God. It is a way to follow God. We all make mistakes. We all need forgiveness.
Some people define forgiveness as a command to forget the past and simply move on. I actually find that injunction extremely annoying. I’ve been told that I didn't have to condone the act, but I had to forgive to live fully and dispel the darkness, or something like that. My instinct tells me that if the past is not fully complete, part of being compassionate is to acknowledge what happened fully, rather than simply setting it aside.
I also hate being told what’s in my best interest. Thanks for advice I didn’t request. But now that I’ve owned up to my off-the-shelf response, perhaps I can examine why I resist this blanket injunction to forgive. I want to decide when, what, and if to forgive. If the offense or event is not in the past because it’s not in the past, that’s a limit to simply declaring something ancient history. And suppose I’m being enjoined to dispel the darkness of past events that are blatantly evil and destructive. In that case, just dismissing them and their consequences under some command to “move on” is not particularly useful or helpful simply because it’s not honest. These are the sort of events that will inevitably repeat themselves.
My friend Susan Murphy, an insightful Australian Zen teacher, pointed to the story of Jesus at Capernaum when he healed a man whose friends lowered him through the roof of a house where Jesus was with some friends—the crowd so dense that this was the only way to get Jesus’s attention. Some version of the story appears in all three synoptic gospels.
The writers of the story clearly distinguish between two aspects of Jesus' healing. First off, Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.” That’s the most important one: the man’s faith and that of his friends have caught the attention of Jesus, and he does what he was sent to do, forgive sins. But it is, after all a teaching story, so there are objections: scribes and Pharisees, at least rhetorically present, ask, ‘How can you forgive? That power belongs only to God.’ And here are the words Jesus responded with in Mark’s gospel: "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? “ The man stands and picks up his mat, demonstrating Jesus’s power, but it also says, compared to forgiving sins, that was the easy part. In the blink of an eye, the past becomes the past.
Why the deliberate separation of two events or two sides of the same event? Forgiveness is an act of grace and God. In the story, the disappearance of the physical impairment becomes the past. Jesus is neither a charlatan nor a soothsayer nor a fake miracle worker; the act of forgiveness belongs to God alone. However, in most cases, depending on factors we cannot fully understand, there may or may not be a sought-after, usually magical physical cure. However, this nuance is usually left for a commentator or preacher to address at a later date.
This is Susan’s observation: “When Jesus told the paralysed man who had been lowered through the roof for a miracle, ‘Pick up your bed and walk,’ effectively he was acting not in the name of supernatural power but in the name of the forgiveness he was asserting he had a right to bestow. ‘Justice is mine,’ says the Lord. What I see here is that the true miracle was not the performance of a nature-bending act. It was forgiveness. He veered away from performing miracles after that. They were cheapening his teaching. . . . Forgiveness is surely the actualising of love.”
I just let a Zen teacher provide the midrash for a Jesus story, so now I’ll spin a Zen tale from the threads of the Gospel..
A small band of Zen monks carries a paralyzed brother to meet Jesus in Capernaum and get his blessing. Like the throngs of people I see in India lining up for darshan, they’re seeking some relief for their sufferings, but following their training, our Zen monks don’t have too many expectations. There, I’ve set the stage for a Buddhist encounter with Jesus.
Their Zen training actually adds a lot of work. They have to carry their brother a long way from a distant Eastern ashram. Then they find the materials and tools to fashion a ladder to get up to the roof. They certainly can’t steal one. After determining where Jesus was sitting, they carefully cut an opening in the ceiling, not hurting anyone in the room with falling debris. Each one of these actions is deliberate, requiring planning and effort. The work is performed as carefully and mindfully as possible. They’re monks after all. I didn’t mention that they might also have to learn Aramaic, but there’s already enough to do without that, so let’s throw in the magical appearance of a good interpreter.
Somehow they climb down into the presence of Jesus with the brother they’ve just lowered in a sling, and hear, “Your sins are forgiven.”
They also hear the Pharisees' question: “Doesn’t forgiveness of sins belong to God?” "Good question," they say, and the dharma combat begins. The Pharisees are the fall guys in the Gospel stories, but not for our Zen monks: What is forgiveness of sins exactly? What is there to forgive? Are a misstep or an evil act the same? These monks live by the Law of dependent origination, Paticca-samuppada. Something in their brother’s past resulted in his paralysis. At least in that regard, on the surface, although Jesus does not talk about any cause for the man’s affliction, there seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that it was the result of something in his past, his sins. In Zen they were taught to chant: “All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind. I now fully avow.”
I promised therapy. Here is an examination of the mental results of past events.
I recognized my personal connection to this Jesus story, and I thank Susan for providing the context for me to work into. I am the paralytic lowered through the roof. Among my sins were sexual dysfunction and frustration; there was alcohol and substance abuse; there were the silly issues with partners that popped up—when I managed to find someone willing to put up with my defensiveness. I would have certainly preferred to exit the dead-end process earlier. I can imagine the possibility of having time and energy to explore other avenues, but daydreams are most often nothing more than dreams.
And yes, I regret those lost opportunities. It is not difficult to be truly forgiving and compassionate when you really comprehend the pain of your own life. But expanding the story just a bit, it also applies to another person’s life. It seems to actually spring up naturally without effort or responding to a command to move on. And, in my case, it happened in its own course after I was willing to do the work of unraveling the complex story of my abuse.
Why do intelligent people believe nonsense? Because when we’re vulnerable and in pain, we need to experience compassion. The real answer to the question about "moving on" is that the compassion and forgiveness had to be for myself. And because I’ve opted for the Zen route, it was not like just falling through a hole in the roof or being lowered into a Blessed Presence. I traveled from afar with the help of companions, and I remained angry long enough to get to the heart of the matter. That was my good luck, at least for me, that route could not be short-circuited.
The hip New Age coffee house sage will tell you that not forgiving only hurts you. There’s no one to break but yourself, so why not “Move On”? By contrast, in legendary Zen, a deceptively ordinary lady at the tea stand doesn’t order you around. Instead, she asks a simple, innocent-sounding, straightforward question: “Hey, Mr. Paralytic, is that ‘not-walking-mind’ past, present, or future?” A good answer might allow you to step into the radical present. The past is past because it’s past; the future might exist in hopes and dreams, perhaps sadly colored with regret; the only place to walk into is this moment.
If there was a tea stand in Capernaum, you can bet that there were crowds like the ones surrounding Jesus. Zen is oftentimes a lonely practice, but maybe a few stragglers found their way there after Jesus had performed enough miracles for one day. They might be lucky enough to come armed with some good questions. That might take some work, work that’s still to be done, like finding a path to forgiveness.
In Zen, forgiveness is an act of will if you refuse to settle for an easy way out. Then the Blessed Presence thing just happens. That cannot be willed.
