Monday, February 13, 2006
On forgiving...
Guest TLB Prime authoring today... For quite a while I've saved this as a draft "for later" - what better time to share it than now, twenty-four hours before the celebration of love in all its forms?
To love is to perform a whole lot of near-superhuman feats...
Far from being the least of which, forgiving is essential to loving.
Love is not selfish nor is it rancorous.
Love is acceptance. Love, at its best and in its purest form, is unconditional.
Forgiving is an act of love - one of the purest of all acts of love that could ever be. And there can be no doubt that it is a divine gift; who forgives more than God?
When He grants us with the ability to forgive, we must not resist it.
Whatever may be the transgression that is being forgiven -if not forgotten- we owe it to none other than ourselves to forgive.
It is liberating. It really is.
Enough of my intro - onwards with the main dish...
A Single Act of Amnesty ~ By Gregg Levoy
For nearly a month, the Tibetan monks worked silently, bent over a low platform that cradled a spiritual rendering of the cosmos—a six-foot wide mandala made of colored sand and powdered gems. The monks had traveled from the monastery of the Dalai Lama to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco to add this glowing sacrement to an art exhibit called "Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet." Day after day, they laid out their intricate geometry of devotion by hand, surrounded by onlookers who sometimes stood entranced for hours, as I did, uncharacteristically forgetting their busy lives.
Although the mandala didn't fit my aesthetic taste, I was nonetheless absorbed by the artistry and concentration that went into it. I was also astonished that anyone could stoop for so many hours, working without complaint. But the greatest measure of the project's drama and poignancy lay in the fact that it was temporary. In the Buddhist tradition of non-attachment, the monks intended from the very start to dismantle their creation after a few months on exhibit and to scatter its remains in the sea.
All that painstaking work wasted, I thought to myself.
The day before the mandala's scheduled completion as the monks were adding finishing touches, a woman jumped the velvet ropes, climbed onto the platform, and trampled the mandala, screaming accusations about "Buddhist death squads." It was an act of desecration, a terrible and profane misunderstanding of the monks' intentions. As I thought of the mandala's destroyer, images of revenge filled my head.
In stark contrast to my malevolent reaction, the monks' response was one of forgiveness. "We don't feel any anger," said one. "We don't know how to judge her motivations. We are praying for her with love and compassion."
I felt incredulous at their equanimity. Coming from a long line of avengers —people who have demanded eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth— I've always had a difficult time with forgiveness. I have hung on certain betrayals all my life, refusing to let go of things I had long ago lost forever.
Yet I was moved by the monks' gesture of absolution, an act that greatly defused the situation and drained much of the bitterness from the mandala's loss. I found myself taking a critical look at the almost instinctive viciousness of my reaction, comparing it to the compassion of the men who should have been most outraged but weren't.
I finally understood that I was moved precisely because I had seen the mandala and its creation with my own eyes; it had become a part of me. Perhaps I would find forgiveness more readily if I could see this destructive woman in the same way, if I bathed myself in her presence as I did in the presence of the mandala, if I took time to wonder how many grains of sand she is made of and why they are arranged the way they are.
The monks reminded me that forgiveness is divine—but also that ordinary people can do it. I admit I find revenge satisfying in some moments, but its sweetness can't compete with that of forgiveness. It may be useful to have laws that punish transgression, but they can't set your soul to rights after you've been wronged. Only the hard, very human work of forgiveness can do that. And, as the monks showed me, there is a healing contagion to even a single act of amnesty.
You might want now to take a test -short and sweet, worry not- to find out if you too don't quite measure up to those monks! *lol* The test is to be found on the link provided today - a short eight question quiz courtesy of beliefnet.com! Blessings!
Link
To love is to perform a whole lot of near-superhuman feats...
Far from being the least of which, forgiving is essential to loving.
Love is not selfish nor is it rancorous.
Love is acceptance. Love, at its best and in its purest form, is unconditional.
Forgiving is an act of love - one of the purest of all acts of love that could ever be. And there can be no doubt that it is a divine gift; who forgives more than God?
When He grants us with the ability to forgive, we must not resist it.
Whatever may be the transgression that is being forgiven -if not forgotten- we owe it to none other than ourselves to forgive.
It is liberating. It really is.
Enough of my intro - onwards with the main dish...
A Single Act of Amnesty ~ By Gregg Levoy
For nearly a month, the Tibetan monks worked silently, bent over a low platform that cradled a spiritual rendering of the cosmos—a six-foot wide mandala made of colored sand and powdered gems. The monks had traveled from the monastery of the Dalai Lama to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco to add this glowing sacrement to an art exhibit called "Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet." Day after day, they laid out their intricate geometry of devotion by hand, surrounded by onlookers who sometimes stood entranced for hours, as I did, uncharacteristically forgetting their busy lives.
Although the mandala didn't fit my aesthetic taste, I was nonetheless absorbed by the artistry and concentration that went into it. I was also astonished that anyone could stoop for so many hours, working without complaint. But the greatest measure of the project's drama and poignancy lay in the fact that it was temporary. In the Buddhist tradition of non-attachment, the monks intended from the very start to dismantle their creation after a few months on exhibit and to scatter its remains in the sea.
All that painstaking work wasted, I thought to myself.
The day before the mandala's scheduled completion as the monks were adding finishing touches, a woman jumped the velvet ropes, climbed onto the platform, and trampled the mandala, screaming accusations about "Buddhist death squads." It was an act of desecration, a terrible and profane misunderstanding of the monks' intentions. As I thought of the mandala's destroyer, images of revenge filled my head.
In stark contrast to my malevolent reaction, the monks' response was one of forgiveness. "We don't feel any anger," said one. "We don't know how to judge her motivations. We are praying for her with love and compassion."
I felt incredulous at their equanimity. Coming from a long line of avengers —people who have demanded eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth— I've always had a difficult time with forgiveness. I have hung on certain betrayals all my life, refusing to let go of things I had long ago lost forever.
Yet I was moved by the monks' gesture of absolution, an act that greatly defused the situation and drained much of the bitterness from the mandala's loss. I found myself taking a critical look at the almost instinctive viciousness of my reaction, comparing it to the compassion of the men who should have been most outraged but weren't.
I finally understood that I was moved precisely because I had seen the mandala and its creation with my own eyes; it had become a part of me. Perhaps I would find forgiveness more readily if I could see this destructive woman in the same way, if I bathed myself in her presence as I did in the presence of the mandala, if I took time to wonder how many grains of sand she is made of and why they are arranged the way they are.
The monks reminded me that forgiveness is divine—but also that ordinary people can do it. I admit I find revenge satisfying in some moments, but its sweetness can't compete with that of forgiveness. It may be useful to have laws that punish transgression, but they can't set your soul to rights after you've been wronged. Only the hard, very human work of forgiveness can do that. And, as the monks showed me, there is a healing contagion to even a single act of amnesty.
You might want now to take a test -short and sweet, worry not- to find out if you too don't quite measure up to those monks! *lol* The test is to be found on the link provided today - a short eight question quiz courtesy of beliefnet.com! Blessings!
Link
