Forgiveness - The Cure For Anger

The great mystic, yogi, and warrior general, Bhisma, 5,000 years ago declared that the first amongst 9 preliminary qualities that qualified one as a civilized person, was to not become angry. His prescription for becoming free from anger, is that one should learn how to forgive. This is an ancient spiritual truth discussed in this talk.

Transcript

Rama Rama Rama Tonight is the concluding talk that we're going to do on anger and forgiveness,

Which was the theme for the month.

The first talk we did,

We spoke about the nature of anger and why it is not a good thing.

And it's principally because when a person becomes overwhelmed with any negative or even positive emotion,

There is a complete lack of spiritual vision.

One cannot see or identify themself as an eternal spiritual being.

One cannot identify the person they are directing anger towards as being an eternal spiritual being.

We are utterly caught up in that which is temporary,

Transitory and passing.

And it brings great pain and suffering.

The second talk was about how anger and love are polar opposites.

And they are polar opposites because the very nature of anger is,

Even if it is righteous,

It is about self-centeredness.

It's about me and what's happening to me.

And I ask you to pause a little and think about what I'm saying.

Don't make a judgment based on your previous conclusions or things that you may have adopted.

Love,

On the other hand,

Is an expression,

Real love is an expression of selflessness,

Where one is absorbed in the well-being of another,

Wishing them well,

Trying to see to their happiness.

So from that perspective,

These two things are polar opposites.

And they cannot exist together.

So tonight we'll be talking about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a panacea for anger.

I've mentioned before about a great,

5,

000 years ago,

There was a great warrior general,

A prince,

Who was also a great mystic and a great spiritual personality.

His name was Bhishma.

And he was in a great battle and became shot so full of arrows that when he fell to the ground,

Not one part of his body touched the ground.

So we can't even imagine what that would feel like.

And he remained for a number of days in that state,

Choosing not to die,

Not to leave his body,

Because he had a purpose and one was to offer amazing instruction to his grandsons.

And part,

A small part of this awesome transcendental dialogue was the.

.

.

He spoke about what it is to qualify as being human.

And the standard he laid down was extraordinary.

He said there were nine preliminary qualities that one should have to be considered actually civilized.

And the first one was to not become angry.

And that's just like,

Whoa,

That's kind of,

That's really far out.

We have this unfortunate tendency to treasure our anger.

If we feel angry at someone,

We feel that we have been wronged,

And we may have actually been wronged in the most horrible ways even.

We hold onto our anger,

Wishing,

Pain and suffering upon the person that caused me suffering.

That is not a good thing.

We become the victim of our own anger.

Our own anger places us in a prison,

A prison of what wrong has been done to us,

And actually shapes and even rules our life and affects our relationships,

How we are dealing with others.

And so one of the most wonderful and liberating things about anger is we become free from what is a prison of our own making.

And again,

Please,

Don't react strongly to that statement.

Think about it and consider it.

You know,

You can have four or five or 10 people experience the same thing and react to it in five or 10 different ways.

The more a person is fixed in spiritual understanding,

The more a person has undertaken this inward journey,

This voyage within of real self-discovery,

Then one is able to actually encounter things and have a reaction that is incredibly compassionate,

Incredibly noble.

When I say that again,

I'm not justifying wrongdoing or thinking that wrongdoing is ever OK.

Hineous,

Painful acts are exactly that.

And according to the laws of karma,

A person who inflicts pain and suffering on others must experience exactly the same thing.

You cannot escape that reality.

That will be visited upon you immediately or some point in the future,

Even another life.

And so there is always going to be justice.

When a person does something wrong to you,

You don't have to hold on to hate and wish ill of them and become blind and hard-hearted and bitter and angry.

That person will suffer the consequences anyway.

Grandfather Bhishma,

He said that the actual panacea for anger is to learn to forgive.

Inforgiveness,

And I'm not just talking about saying it as a lip service,

OK,

I forgive you.

And nothing's actually changed.

And I try to put it out of my mind,

And then later it erupts again,

And a week later,

A month,

A year,

10 years later,

I'm raging.

I'm bringing it up.

I mean,

You're not just talking about saying it I mean,

You just look what happens when people fight with each other.

We have this nasty tendency to dredge up things that have happened in the past and try to use them as weapons to bludgeon each other with.

This is not healthy.

This is not intelligent.

This is not helpful.

Your life won't become better.

You won't develop a deeper understanding of things.

So I just literally came here from the airport.

I had just flown up from New Plymouth,

Because it's part of something I've mentioned before.

I'm working with a friend from Hawaii on a documentary on criminal justice reform in New Zealand.

And as part of this journey,

We met this really incredible young lady.

And when I say incredible young lady,

She is a person who on an ongoing basis struggles with many things in her life.

But one of the nicest things about her is her capacity for empathy.

That no matter what I'm feeling and what's going on with me,

I'm able to feel your pain.

And it saddens me that you have pain and you have suffering.

Her father was murdered when she was two years old.

She was a baby in his arms when he came to the door and some gang members had been sent to kill him because he had become a police witness.

He had witnessed a horrible,

Violent fight.

And he was not going to back down from being a witness because what he saw is what he saw,

And he would speak the truth about it.

The gang members that came to kill him hesitated.

When he came to the door,

They could see him through the frosted glass with his daughter,

Stephanie.

And so they left and they were told by one man,

The vice president of their gang,

To return.

And even if he had the baby in his arms,

They were to kill him,

Meaning that the baby would be killed also.

So that was this girl,

Stephanie.

So the second time he came to the door when they knocked,

He didn't carry her,

And he was shot and murdered.

She wrote a letter when she was 22,

Just over a year ago,

And I've read some of it before.

I'll just read parts of it again.

To all four men and to the Black Power Gang that were involved in the murder of my father,

Christopher Crean,

My name is Stephanie Crean,

And I forgive you for murdering my father.

For many years,

I have not spoken to the media about how I feel about this heartbreaking tragedy.

I forgive you not because what you did in murdering my father was right,

Because that was not right.

I forgive you even though there was mention of shooting me only at the age of two.

And I forgive you so that you may have peace,

And I too.

So that our families may have peace,

And so that the community may have peace also.

So that the nation may have peace,

Because that is what is right.

I believe that with justice comes peace,

And whether or not you are changed men,

I forgive you.

It goes on,

And it's incredibly moving.

And I asked her yesterday when we were doing the interview,

So why did you have this bigger view?

How is it you could come to this state?

And she said that she first learned about the death of her father.

She was only two years old.

And when she was in primary school,

Elementary school,

When she was a little child,

Walking home one day,

One kid came up to her and said,

I know who you are,

And I know that your father was murdered.

And that shocked her,

Because she had not had any recollection of him.

She was only two when he died.

And she had now a stepfather.

And hearing that her father was dead was so shocking,

And that he had been murdered.

She came home utterly,

Utterly devastated and distraught.

You can't even imagine what that's like for a child.

And so she came to learn about what had happened.

And because there was a trial going on and things were happening,

Over time,

She was sometimes singled out for some ridicule or to be identified as the daughter of the guy that was murdered.

But she made friends with a boy,

A boy that was the son of one of the killers.

And she saw how he was abused,

Because he was of what his father had done,

And how he was so traumatically affected by what people were saying.

And her heart cried for what this boy was going through.

And then as time went by,

She knew more of them,

And the trial was really horrible.

And she felt very separated from her grandparents,

Who,

Over time later,

When they would come to New Plymouth,

They would only come there.

They were all absorbed by what had happened.

And they wanted justice for their son.

And so they were constantly attending these bail hearings and giving evidence why the killers should not be allowed out.

But then they were so consumed by this,

Then they would return to their place.

And she felt like,

I don't even know my grandparents anymore.

They don't even cut.

They're so depleted after all the hearings.

They go.

They didn't even visit the grandchildren.

And so she's experiencing a whole other type of separation and pain there.

And she just uncovered all of this stuff.

And it was really amazing.

And she said that she understood as a child that the families of each one of these men that had killed her father,

Their families are going through the same thing that she's going through.

And that is what she was talking about when everybody should have peace.

And that's why she felt the need.

She,

Being a Christian,

And she felt called upon to forgive even that which is unforgivable.

But it wasn't just a superficial thing.

She actually had this vision to see that in forgiveness,

In forgiveness,

A person is able to find peace and become settled in their life.

That spiritual growth depends upon people not being buried in all of this hatefulness and anger and all of these things that come from it.

So I'm relaying this story because this is something.

You know,

This idea of forgiveness,

We shouldn't look upon it superficially.

We shouldn't deal with it in a very light manner.

The idea of forgiveness as a way to address anger that we feel towards others has tremendous spiritual importance.

It has tremendous significance for us,

For us,

For our happiness,

For our peace,

For the opportunity for us to grow spiritually.

And so this was one of the great lessons that are taught in all spiritual teachings but were really something of tremendous importance in the whole process of spiritual development that was part of the teachings of yoga and the Vedic teachings.

So I ask you to kindly do think about that.

I will post this talk on my Facebook page,

And I'll put the letter of Stephanie there again simply because I think there is enormous value in reading it and reflecting upon it in relation to our own life.

At the end of her letter,

I'll just read the last couple of things.

I also know this,

That unforgiveness and hate will not change any circumstance or person until people understand that we were put on Earth to love.

Until then,

There will be crime,

There will be hurt,

And there will be war.

She said,

I forgive you all because I want you to start forgiving yourselves.

And once again,

I am not saying this because what you did was right.

Because whatever love you have left,

I hope that you will use that love to change yourselves,

To change the ending to your story,

And use that to help change others.

Because if you don't,

Who will stand up in your shoes and tell your story?

I hope that you will use it for good,

And I hope you will use that love to give to your families.

Because I hope that one day we all understand that love is the only thing that will give us all peace because forgiveness is the only thing that is going to set us free and to change everything about life's journey.

I am proud of my dad for standing up for what was right.

And one day I hope that your families will feel the same way that I do when they see you change the ending of your life.

Change it to a journey where the ending,

I'm sorry,

I'll read that again.

One day I hope your families will feel the same way I do when they see you change the ending of your life's journey to an ending of men that are not perfect men,

But men that were good men.

So this is what we are called upon to do from a spiritual perspective.

There's a kind of nice quote from Mahatma Gandhi where he states,

The weak can never forgive.

Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

And I will read one verse from the famous Bhagwat Purana.

It says,

It is the duty of all transcendentalists to cultivate the quality of forgiveness,

Which is illuminating like the sun.

The Supreme Lord,

Sri Hari,

Is pleased with those who are forgiving.

So this is a really important message,

Really important.

But don't just think of this in relation to anger and forgiving those who have harmed you or caused you pain.

The main thing that's happening here is in doing this,

We are able to step back from being simply enslaved by our passions,

Enslaved by whatever's going on in your mind,

And to truly begin to touch base with our true and eternal spiritual being.

Unless this happens to you in your life,

Your life will fundamentally be unhappy.

It cannot be any other way.

And one's death will be very unfortunate.

For one who has come to spiritual understanding,

Even one's death is not a freak out.

It can be an extraordinary experience.

Each one of you,

Each one of you has the capacity for complete enlightenment.

You don't need to be special.

You already are special.

The process of spiritual enlightenment is about uncovering what is already there.

Don't live in the covering.

Don't wallow in the mire.

Don't get hung up in all the crap that sticks to us,

Self-inflicted or from others.

Seek that which is eternal.

Seek that which is eternal.

Seek that which is good.

You,

The eternal spiritual being,

And all things become possible.

OK?

Thank you so much for listening.

And good-bye.

This mantra that we'll sing,

Om Hari Om,

Is actually a great mantra for peace,

For spiritual peace,

For our enlightenment and our reconnection with the Supreme.

So one should actually chant these mantras in what,

I guess,

We can call a prayerful attitude,

Where we are actually making appeal.

We are appealing to that which is greater than us,

That we will become blessed with understanding,

Will become blessed with the ability to forgive,

That we will seek to foster that which is important,

And that is relationships that are founded on love and caring,

That we will have empathy for the suffering of others,

That we will feel that pain and feel motivated to try and help others.

So in this mood of humility,

We should chant these wonderful transcendental sounds.

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.

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