Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Although many Buddhists talks about forgiveness, it seems there is no concept of forgiving in the orthodox Buddhist philosophy.

When someone does something wrong to you, he has just sown a bad seed which will give him bad fruit. So, indeed he is sinful to himself, because he causes harm to himself. You may be hurt by his wrongdoing, but you don’t have the power to forgive him – he sows and he will reap, under the law of cause and effect. Your “forgiveness” to him has no effects on the causal law.

Buddhism teaches non-anger – whatever people do to you, you don’t get angry because (1) people are ignorant and, therefore, do insane and stupid things, and (2) your heart is always calm facing anything, be it greed or ignorance, happiness or sadness, goodness or badness, virtue or sin… You don’t have anger and therefore don’t have anything to forgive.

Moreover, our non-discriminating heart (upekkha) sees everyone as the same – everybody has Buddha-nature inside and is a Buddha-to-be. No more, no less. The non-discriminating heart sees everyone with love and respect. No fault and no forgiving.

Indeed, the term “forgive” implies a hierarchy: I am higher than you and I have the power to forgive you, such as parents forgive their children, or a creditor forgives his debtor’s debts. This hierarchy is not compatible with upekkha.

There is no fault finding and therefore no forgiving. Just a non-discriminating look of the upekkha heart.

Remember, every time you say “I forgive”, you put yourself on a higher level than others in the power hierarchy. And that is arrogance.

However, in our everyday living, there are situations when we can forgive, such as you the creditor forgive your debtor his debts. Or, someone slaps you and apologizes to you, you say: “Don’t worry. I have forgiven you,” meaning “I will not file a complaint with the police against you.” Sometimes you may hear a government “forgive” student loans, meaning erasing the outstanding student loans that many students still owe. Also, parents often say to a child: “I forgive you this time. Don’t do it again”, meaning “No punishment this time, kid. But watch out for the next time.”

So, forgiveness still has its place in our daily language in some specific circumstances, but it is not used very widely. Usually, when someone apologizes to us, we don’t say “I forgive you”, because that sounds condescending – we say, “Your apology is accepted.”

Back to Buddhist philosophy, “There is no fault finding and, therefore, no forgiving. Just a non-discriminating look of the upekkha heart.”

Wish we all have upekkha heart.

Namo Master Shakyamuni Buddha

With compassion,

Hoành

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