Forgiveness 2.0

Of late, I have been switching channels very often navigating through piles of serials and movies all around. On to something very important. Last week was good. I had tough time towards the end but I liked it very much. It forced me to think about it rather deeply. It made me realize the importance of forgiving others. A very good lesson. Gandhian stuff.
I always thought to forgive your juniors is a complete achievement but it seems I had won half the battle.Forgiveness does not have boundaries. My resolution this year is to take the important first 2 steps i.e. of understanding what it means and practicing it.

But what is forgiveness ? People wrong you. It creates terrible pain and then you try to forgive them. And how do you do that ? To answer that seems to be difficult, but let us understand what forgiveness is not.

Forgiveness is not a meek submission to folks elder to you. It is not unwillingly pardoning some one younger to make him feel good. It is not about making a facile smile when your peer pokes fun on you. It is neither forcibly accepting a fault which one has not done just to put things in control. Nor it is an embarrassing smile if you are denied to talk to your so called dream girl or if you hear her being courted by someone else. To add, the deeper and very incorrect notion of forgiveness comes to the fore when you are painfully hit by the wrong end of destiny's stick. We 'justify' it to everyone by associating it to be a karmic event and yet unconsciously curse our selves deep within. Forgiveness is not that justification either.


To me forgiveness is something entirely different. It is letting others be what they are. It is your honest and complete acknowledgment of how others are and the way they behave; what others feel and believe and most importantly 'how things in general' pan out. It is the most faithful acceptance of the fact that you do not have any control of anything other than yourself. And in the extreme cases not even yourself.

It is to watch the pain inside you as it is and yet dissociate the pain from the perpetrator. It is to speak , act and hear about things as they are with no speck of lie in it. To take the truth to its full course.
As one watches the pain , it reveals a control you just lost. It may be material or psychological. And this should force you to look out for things you have unknowingly associated with yourself by now and that too without any right. But most essentially, in the scheme of things , your perception of the perpetrator does not get affected because of the pain he inflicted.

Anything which you might have spoken and done on your 'right' will never cause you any pain. If you are passive and not speaking the rightful truth, then it is a blasphemy to humanity.

As you practice it day in and out, you will see a familiar wave driving these things. This wave has a peculiarity of being correct , reasonable and peaceful. The one who rides this wave is happy. He is also powerful. This wave is called truth, the actual. Forgiveness is the first step towards seeing the nature of truth and what it is not about. It is the fairy tale of life one ought to live.