Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Forgive and Forget


Heard a good talk tonight on forgiveness. As I listened to it, I thought that Buddhism would be worth it if it could help just one person forgive another.

In the Lord's Prayer we hear, "And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us."
There we ask God to forgive us, but we could just as well ask that of others.

In the moment there is no forgiveness needed. Without judgement there is no forgiveness needed. When we believe that our memory is real we need to forgive since we attach ourselves to our conjured up past.

2 comments:

sheila said...

Yea esp. for that last paragraph! I did some research with a clergy & a lay person from each of 5 traditions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, & Buddhism. I learned Buddhism doesn't have a word for forgiveness, just "compassion" in the moment of what someone might consider an "offense", so, yes, no judgment, nothing to "forgive".

Anonymous said...

Easy to say, hard to put into practice. H.

Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"