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Forgiveness: The End of Entanglement - Maria Straatmann

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 31, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Forgiveness: The End of Entanglement

Hello again. My name is Maria Straatmann, and I have been around IMC for something over 25 years as a student and a teacher of the Dharma. I use those two words interchangeably—teacher and student—because the one thing I'm sure of is that I don't know. There are many things I don't know, and the things that I'm sure of, I'm unsure of.

In the last few weeks, we have been talking about non-hatred: how do we deal with conflict? How are we in the midst of the unacceptable? Floating around in the back of my mind is, "Well, we really have to talk about forgiveness." Because I've been talking about forgiveness to a number of students over the last few months and have had to deal with the fact that, basically, they are rejecting what I say. I've had to think about why is that. Why is it that what I say about forgiveness comes across as something that's just not possible?

How do we forgive what is unacceptable? On the face of it, they just don't go together. If it's unacceptable, how can I forgive it? I can't say it's okay; I'll just forget it. The good news is that's not what I mean by forgiveness.

The Transaction of Forgiveness vs. A State of Mind

I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about what we mean when we say forgiveness, what I mean when I say forgiveness, and why we get tangled in this thought of, "I can't let go of this harm that you have done me."

One of the things that's true is when we think about forgiveness, we are used to thinking of it almost as a transaction. You have harmed me, you now owe me. There is a debt to be paid. There is a need for retribution; there are reparations. You must apologize, you must pay me back. There's a need to even things up. We kind of think of it as a balance. Somehow, the word forgiveness has taken on a connotation of something bought and sold, something where there is this transaction between one activity and another.

But forgiveness is actually a state of mind, and it's a state of mind that has to do with what one holds in one's heart. What do you hold in your heart? What do I hold in my heart?

How do we live with hatred, conflict, ill will, and the uncertain certainties that come with them? How do we keep from falling into anger and ill will when someone harms us, when someone is doing something that we find abhorrent? How do we keep from falling into that feeling of, "Not only must you be stopped, but you must pay back"? That payback feature has somehow gotten embedded in our idea of forgiveness. If I forgive you, then I'm telling you it's okay. Really? I don't intend to say it's okay. I don't intend to say that it's all right.

The dictionary says that forgiveness is "to cease to feel resentment against on account of a wrong committed." To cease to feel resentment. Ah, now we're getting closer. Resentment. How could you? How could you have done that to me? How could they do that to them? And the buildup of that resentment.

The Weight of Resentment

I've lived long enough that a lot of bad things have happened in my life. Things that I've been resentful about, things that have been harmful to me, things I thought were wrong. Some of those things I carried around with me for a very, very long time. In letting go of those things, I didn't pardon them. I didn't absolve people. It's not as if forgiveness is necessarily tied to confession. I was raised Catholic, so I got used to going in, saying confession, and the priest would tell me how many Hail Marys I had to say so that I could wipe those sins away. There is this tendency to say if I do something bad, I have to pay for it.

I can see some reason for retribution. But the person who's holding the other end of that string and saying, "I'm not going to let go of that string, I'm going to tie myself to you"—the question is, why? Why are you tying yourself to that bad event? Why am I tying myself to my ex-husband's foibles? What's that about? Why am I carrying around resistance and resentment for someone stealing my work and publishing it? Why hold on to it? What difference does it make?

It makes a real difference. It's a harming. But holding on to the resentment is not harming anybody but me. That's the part of the suffering I don't want to hold on to anymore. That's the part that we get rid of in forgiveness.

There are lots of synonyms for forgiveness: things like pardon, remission, indulgence, understanding, tolerance. Somehow all of those seem to give somebody a pass, right? I don't want to give anybody a pass. I don't want to say it's okay. I don't want to say it doesn't matter. I might want to provide people with mercy, with clemency—that kind of forgiveness where I say, "Okay, okay."

But suppose I decide I'm going to forgive you because now you're going to owe me? Now we're back into the transaction phase, and it's not mercy at all. It's something entirely different. Now it's much more vengeful or greedy. I've known people who have totally destroyed relationships because they're waiting for an apology. "If you can't apologize to me, that's it. It's over." Really? Over an apology? Because there's so much weight on that apology; it has something to do with who I am and what I mean, and who you are and what you mean. We load up these things that are harmful, and we build them into something. We create a harm story, and then when it starts to fade, we build it up again. We retell the story so that we can be angry again.

Wars full of savagery and cruelty have arisen from murderous attacks. Not everything is trivial. When harm is done, we tend to establish blame. We measure the amount of harm. We vow we're not going to forget this source of harm. We don't condone this behavior, and therefore you need to be punished. We measure it out: so much punishment for so much offense.

Somehow, we need to step away from this tendency to take those who harm us as somehow directing it against "me and mine," who I am, and what I am. The self-interest of the harm.

The Buddhist Perspective

When we look at it from the Buddhist point of view, there is what we call a forgiveness practice. It's usually based on a couple of different ideas. One is: don't hold hatred in one's heart. The practice of non-hatred, which is kind of where I'm going to go with this. Second is the importance of forgiving oneself, so that we don't turn harm against us and turn it into self-criticism and a belief that "this wouldn't have happened if I'd been a better person." And the third one is non-clinging. Don't hold on to that string.

But how do we refer to the process of letting go of the past without saying something about pretending there wasn't any hurt, or granting somebody a free pass, or making an excuse for someone?

At one point in my practice, I decided that I was carrying a lot of resentment toward my father. I spent a lot of time doing forgiveness practice around my father, and eventually, I came to the point where I said, "Okay, you know what? He did the best he could do, and I've got to let go of that." About the 150th time I heard myself say, "He did the best he could do," I realized I was making an excuse for him. What if it wasn't the best he could do? I had to start the whole thing over again because I hadn't let go of it; I'd just made an excuse for it.

So one of the things about forgiveness is you have to be brutally honest. You have to really look at what you're deciding and why you're deciding it. What am I saying about it?

To me, forgiveness means renouncing the suffering of anger and resentment. That's what forgiveness is. It almost doesn't matter who the person is—myself, exes in my life, governments doing things I don't believe in. The anger and the hatred I have to own. The resentment I have to own. They didn't create that; I am.

That's kind of tough, really. Somebody harms you, and then you have to take responsibility for your response? Yep, that's how it works. We have to stay in a place where we don't hold grudges or hold on to old hurts. Because face it, we all have them. But letting go of them is also possible. And then one day you wake up and you say, "What was the big deal? Why was that so hard?" I still don't agree with what that person did, and I'm not going to go to them and say it was okay. But I can go to them and say, "You know what? I'm free of you now. I'm actually free of that because I am not holding ill will toward you." That's what freedom is. And that's what forgiveness is. It's residing in the place where I am not tied to that.

Some people think that the way to get through forgiveness towards someone that has offended you is to do mettā¹ practice. It's useful to do mettā practice, wishing people well, because it tends to soften your heart. It makes your heart more resilient, more willing to open. But there's a tendency to think that if you've harmed me, I'm just going to wish you well and then everything will be great. But what if you don't wish them well? What if you just want to break the connection that keeps you tied to them in any way?

What if you just wish you could wish them well? That's pretty good. I wish I could wish you well, because I don't want to be tied to thinking ill of you anymore. That's what I'm giving up. That's what I'm letting go of. I'm letting go of the desire to harm you in return. I'm saying no to that. I'm living in the now and not in the memory of what happened. This is possible.

Forgiving Ourselves

It's possible to forgive ourselves, too. How often have you said to yourself, "Why did I do that? Why did I stay there? Why did I do this?" and wring our hands, regretting. There's nothing wrong with regret and remorse, but then we let go of it. Guilt is not useful; it just builds up the story about what a crummy person I am.

Rather, I want to live in a world where happiness is possible. "I regret that, and I'm not going to do that again. I regret that, and now I'm severing that relationship so I don't have to do that anymore."

When I was talking about non-hatred, I read from the beginning of the Dhammapada² that talked about the importance of keeping up a free and open heart:

"All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind, and suffering follows like the wheels of a cart behind the hooves of the ox. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind, and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow."

I find that just gloriously hopeful. Yes, that's where I want to live, right there. And what comes immediately after that is:

"'He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me.' For those carrying on like this, hatred does not end. 'She abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me.' For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends."

This sounds like the way I look at forgiveness. Letting go of resentment. Removing myself from harm, but letting go of the need for retribution to right old wrongs. Stepping away from the connection that is tying me down to a constant retelling of the story.

The Buddha says:

"Speak not harshly to anyone, for those spoken to might retort indeed. Angry speech hurts, and retaliation may overtake you."

As we hit back, the next thing that happens is they hit back at us, and then we hit back at them, and then they hit back at us. Does this sound like any conversations you've had? And on and on it goes.

"He who checks rising anger as a charioteer checks a rolling chariot, him I call a true charioteer. Others only hold the reins."

He's saying that controlling one's anger, controlling one's need to strike back, puts you in control. It really puts you in the place where the suffering only occurs if you allow it to.

Changing Everything

It's not as if it happens overnight. You just decide, "Okay, I'm not going to let it bother me anymore." Really? I'm talking about years of practicing this to see any change. But it's the small things that make a difference. I'm going to read you a poem here from Jane Hirshfield³. This poem is called "Changing Everything":

I was walking again in the woods, a yellow light was sifting. All I saw willfully, with a cold heart. I took a stick, lifted it to the opposite side of the path. There, I said to myself, that's done now. Brushing one hand against the other to clean them of the tiny fragments of bark.

A tiny thing. Lifting a stick and moving it to the other side of the path. Taking one action and saying, "I'm not going to do that. I'm going to drop that. I'm not going to pick up that insult." And then you go, "Oh, you know, that wasn't so bad." It actually changes everything. It changes everything.

Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation

Now, the Buddha did actually talk about forgiveness, and there's a word in Pali called khamā⁴. It means the earth. What does that have to do with forgiveness? It is the patient, forgiving, tolerant, enduring, bearing—it's the sense of continuation, a kind of steadiness of mind.

He referred to it when he talked about conflict between his monks. He said, okay, conflict will arise. What he did not want to have happen was for people to endure continuing conflict. So he set out a number of rules for how they should resolve conflict among the groups. It involved people getting together, and the wrongdoer should admit his transgression, and the other person should accept that apology. Then they should agree to go forward under certain rules. But you have to agree on what's right and what's wrong at the outset. If you can't, then you cannot reconcile.

There's a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. There is someone that I've been talking to for quite a long time who really wants to reconcile with a family member and can't seem to make it happen. Sometimes you have to learn to accept that it's a two-way street, and you have to give up expecting what is not offered—what is not on offer. And not continue your own suffering by trying to right a wrong that requires something of someone who is unwilling to go there. Reconciliation is not the same thing as finding forgiveness and letting go of ill will. They're entirely different functions.

I have this quote from Than Geoff⁵:

"When you forgive me for harming you, you decide not to retaliate, to seek no revenge. You don't have to like me. You simply unburden yourself of the weight of resentment and cut the cycle of retribution that would otherwise keep us ensnarled in an ugly samsaric wrestling match. This is a gift you give us both, totally on your own, without my having to know or understand what you've done."

You see, forgiveness doesn't require the other person to know that you've forgiven them. You're totally free of the other person. All you have to do is let go of it. You don't have to tell them, you don't have to explain it to them, you don't have to justify it. You just stop.

What we want to do is live more in the world of response rather than reactivity. You can respond to what is harmful. Reactivity is more of an automatic response where you're not paying any attention to what's going on, and you tend to get things that are not very skillful as a consequence. But with a steady mind, we can see what's happening. We can see an offense happening and we can say, "This is very familiar. I think I'll pause here. I don't have to go into this."

I think I said a couple of weeks ago that I was very happy when I watched a recent TV show and found myself not reacting to something that's a typical trigger for me. I went, "Oh my goodness, look at that! I didn't react." It was very exciting.

There's a famous Tibetan story about a couple of monks that had been imprisoned. Afterward, one says to the other, "Do you think you can ever forgive them?" And he said, "Never, never. I'll never forgive them." And the other said, "Oh, too bad. You're still imprisoned."

That's the way it is. If you can never forgive someone, you are the person who is imprisoned by that. And that's what we need to let go of first. Free ourselves. We have to see what we're holding in our hearts, and that's where we want to put our energy. What am I holding in my heart?

Life While-You-Wait

That gives me another opportunity to read a poem to you. This is by Wisława Szymborska⁶, a Polish poet and Nobel laureate. It's called "Life While-You-Wait":

Life-while-you-wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation. I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it's mine, I can't exchange it. I have to guess on the spot just what this play is all about. Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise, although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can't conceal my hayseed manners. My instincts are for hammy histrionics. Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliates me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel. Words and impulses you can't take back, stars you'll never get counted, your character like a raincoat you button on the run — the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness. If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen. Is it fair, I ask (my voice a little hoarse, since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage). You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh, no. I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise. The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere. And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.

Whatever I do will become forever what I've done. So hold in your heart who you want to be, how you want to be. Don't give anyone else the power to decide that. It's hard enough to decide for yourself.

Formal Forgiveness Practice

The practices that we typically use for forgiveness are very simple:

For any harm that I may have caused myself, knowingly or unknowingly, through my thoughts, words, or actions, I offer myself forgiveness as best I can.

Everything else is a variation of that.

For any harm you may have caused me, knowingly or unknowingly, through thoughts, words, or actions, I offer my forgiveness as best I can.

For any harm I have done you through thoughts, words, or actions, knowingly or unknowingly, I ask your forgiveness as best you can.

That's it. Those phrases. You repeat them and see what arises in your heart. See what comes up. It doesn't say, "Shame on you, shame on me." It says, "May I let go of any resentment I have toward myself for any actions I may have taken knowingly or unknowingly through thought, word, or deed, as best I can." There are all kinds of little slippery places there. It's not harsh. It's not intended to be harsh. It's intended to be free and open so that you can be free and open.

The word forgiveness is not an eraser. It's really a letting go. It's taking the tension between you and some previous event and saying, "I don't have to hold on to this." It says absolutely nothing about whether you continue to fight against a cause, stand up for a cause, reject behavior, or form opinions about behaviors. It only says, "I'm letting go of the resentment."

I was active in a particular environmental issue at one time, and there was a person who was sort of the head of the other side. Every time I would head to town, that guy's name would come into my mind, and I would just become agitated. As I was driving to town—this was when I lived out in the country—I could feel that agitation and my stomach would get tense.

Then I thought about that and I thought, "You know, this person does not even know I exist. This person that I'm giving this power to create this turmoil in my stomach doesn't know my resentment. This is all mine. All mine."

Whatever else is true—whether I continue to fight against what he is trying to do to the environment, and he continues to do whatever he's doing to the environment—has nothing to do with my getting all roiled up and upset on the way to town. And when you see that clearly, it becomes very easy to let go of it. Wait a minute, what am I getting upset about? This is right here. All I have to do is stop doing that. All I have to do is say, "Okay, this isn't useful. I've got to go do something useful now."

To get rid of the extra stuff that we imbue, the extra importance, taking the weight of resentment off our plates—that's forgiveness. So those are my thoughts. I hope that's helpful. Thank you.

Questions and Reflections

Questioner 1: I just write things down... I just write down the thought and often I don't go back and read it again, and it seems to relieve it, if you know what I'm saying.

Maria Straatmann: Uh-huh. The practice of not letting something fester. Not having to retell the story.

Questioner 2: That poem you read about the stage, who wrote that and what was its name? That was awesome.

Maria Straatmann: It's a woman, Wisława Szymborska. She's Polish. I think I'll come up afterwards and [spell it for you].

Questioner 2: I won't remember that, but that was just like, "Oh yeah, that's my life."

Maria Straatmann: Yeah, I love that one.

Questioner 3: I guess for me, a thought of forgiveness brings with it sort of a fear that if the person that I'm forgiving has done something wrong, and I forgive them, then maybe they're going to do it again. I don't know how to deal with that.

Maria Straatmann: Yeah, that's a very valid concern. And it is not included in carrying resentment. So if I fear someone's going to do it again, whatever it is, then I feel that I have a responsibility to either not put myself in the way of that happening again, or somehow try to prevent it from happening to others.

An example of that might be any kind of racial discrimination or being in an abusive household. It's not okay. I might let go of my resentment, but that has to stop. Whatever that behavior is—abuse of other people, harming of other people—that has to be stopped. Forgiveness is not saying that's okay.

Now, if the forgiveness is within an ongoing relationship, then there is a need for the process of reconciliation, where there is an agreement on what is right or wrong, or there has to be some break. So I don't want to imply that it should be allowed to happen again.

Also kind of tied in with that is, when one remains in a relationship where it is repeated, then there's a possibility for self-criticism from that as well. Coming to terms with why one is choosing to stay in that relationship is very important. I don't know if I addressed your particular issue, but I think it's extremely important that forgiveness does not include, "It's okay that this happens again." It can't happen. If it's harmful, it should not happen.

There's a wonderful quote, unfortunately, I cannot remember the Korean Zen Master's name⁷, but he had this wonderful phrase. He said, "There is no right and no wrong, but right is right and wrong is wrong." When you think about that... you may think this is right, and I may think that is right, and we won't agree. But killing someone is wrong. In that regard, you can hear that in your head and listen to that: "I may not agree with you, but this behavior I will not tolerate."

But I don't have to tie myself to the burden of resentment as a consequence. That space I have to navigate, that's on me. The burden of ill will and resentment.

Okay. Be safe, everyone. Thank you, I've enjoyed being here the last three weeks, it's been fun. Good night.