Acceptance without forgiveness?

tbornottb?

I’ve been reading the How to Forgive thread and there’s some good advice there that I will try to take on board but, like some of the contributors, I sometimes struggle to forgive those I believe have wronged me.
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On the first page of my copy of the Dhammapada the Buddha is quoted as saying:

“He beat me, he robbed me. Look at how he abused and injured me.” Live with those thoughts and you will never stop hating. Abandon such thoughts and your hatred and your suffering will cease.

I don’t know the source, but the Buddha also said:

Holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone. It is you that gets burned.
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Direct, simple and very powerful advice. I see the truth in it, but it’s not always easy to act on it. In my experience, trying to forgive can be difficult for two reasons. Firstly, it can run up against our sense of justice, which results in inner conflict. Secondly, not forgiving is a way of protecting ourselves – it means that we are on guard against the same abuse happening again.

One of my biggest goals is to cultivate the ability to let go of unpleasant memories so that I can be free of the unhappiness they bring. Recently, I‘ve been wondering if this is what acceptance means and whether or not forgiveness is a necessary part of this process. The Second Noble truth states that the cause of suffering is attachment and it seems to me that dwelling on past events is a form of attachment, for which one remedy could be detachment. Meister Eckhart said:

He who would be serene and pure needs just one thing, detachment.

I am not the greatest meditator in the world because I have a very active mind that is resistant to calming down, but in my most peaceful meditations I can achieve a degree of detachment, where nothing that has ever happened to me seems like a big deal and, because life’s events seem less important, then it’s easier to forgive if I choose to. I’m talking about a handful of short-lived meditation experiences here, so I’m not completely sure of my conclusions and my forgiveness isn’t always stable – it comes and goes according to my mood (it’s a two-steps-forward-one step-back process). One of my favourite quotes in the Quotes thread is:

Forgiveness means giving up hope of a better past.

I really like that one, but it seems to me to be a better description of acceptance rather than forgiveness, so I’m a little confused. Am I wrongly creating a distinction between acceptance and forgiveness? And, since forgiveness can be difficult, is release possible through acceptance without forgiveness?

Now-Is-reality

tb or not tb? wrote: »

Forgiveness means giving up hope of a better past.

I really like that one, but it seems to me to be a better description of acceptance rather than forgiveness, so I’m a little confused. Am I wrongly creating a distinction between acceptance and forgiveness? And, since forgiveness can be difficult, is release possible through acceptance without forgiveness?

Well it seems then that acceptance is allowing, letting be. While on the other hand forgiveness is step further instead, rather than two entirely different steps, a step that lets go of past actions, and forgives their coming to completly feel at peace with actions and not to find them bothersome.

One of my biggest goals is to cultivate the ability to let go of unpleasant memories so that I can be free of the unhappiness they bring. Recently, I‘ve been wondering if this is what acceptance means and whether or not forgiveness is a necessary part of this process. The Second Noble truth states that the cause of suffering is attachment and it seems to me that dwelling on past events is a form of attachment, for which one remedy could be detachment. Meister Eckhart said:

He who would be serene and pure needs just one thing, detachment.

So I would think that it isn't neccesarilly enough to accept the past here, but in order to truly let go of it and to be at good terms with it, you would have to forgive things that happened in the past for whatever reasons. Otherwise, though you would be getting rid of "unpleasant memories" you would have no understanding of their occurance nor any peace from this, not trully.

It's like if accepted my past wrongs that had been done to me, maybe I would be okay, but without forgiving the person, I would always be on guard, always be afriad that they might hurt me in the same way again. But if I choose to forgive them, to forgive their action and trully accept that under certain conditions, perhaps you may want to think of them as the aggregates, people are bound to act selfishly and rude at times. Forgiving them, would be, as you were saying, detatching to more worldly ideas of how things work. It's like if a kid picked up a gun and shot it, if the kid didn't know what the gun would do, or the affects it had on them, they are ignorant of this, and may not act the right way. Though it would be hard to forgive someone for this, to forgive would be to accept maybe their imperfections and forgive them in all actions they did. A let go, move on kind of thing.

But, honestly, it's up to your interpretation, as is a lot of things in life. I would agree that forgiveness is hard, but I would not agree that forgiveness and acceptance are the same things, but rather they can go hand in hand when it comes to letting go, detatching as you said.

Jeffrey

Maybe for you the word acceptance takes you to the right place. Maybe not forgiveness. We are all different.

At some point if we want to bring relief of suffering to all beings we are going to have to go to that place. If acceptance does it for you then fine. But they say that on the boddhisattva path turning the back on a being while studying the dharma is like gathering money for a bank account that doesn't exist.

So I guess forgiveness is relevant certainly to the bodhisattva path as well as relevant to the burning coal of anger.

federica

There is no acceptance without forgiveness. They are like the two wings on a butterfly.
you can TOLERATE - without forgiving, but you cannot accept.

To forgive and accept is to look upon something with equanimity.

If you think you have accepted something without forgiving, it's not true acceptance...

Remember that chiefly, we do not forgive to let others off the hook.
We forgive to let Ourselves, off the hook.
If you cling to something negative and distasteful then you cling to it with as much fervour as if you loved it.

tbornottb?

Thank you all for your replies, they are all useful. Taking them together, I conclude that acceptance (letting go) is not quite the same as forgiveness, but they are related and that complete acceptance will ultimately include forgiveness.

I'm starting to believe that, for me at least, the key to acceptance/forgiveness is quietening the mind.