Dharmette: Blamelessness (4 of 5) Forgiving & Non-forgiving

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Dharmette: Blamelessness (4 of 5): Forgiving & Non-forgiving. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 27, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Dharmette: Blamelessness (4 of 5) Forgiving & Non-forgiving

Hello everyone, I'm Maria Straatmann. I am sitting in for Gil^[1] this week, who is, I hope, enjoying the retreat he's leading at Tassajara^[2].

Over the course of this week, what we've been talking about is how one comes to grips with the feelings of self-criticism and self-blame. We've taken the approach of considering the cultivation of blamelessness. Rather than trying to get rid of something, what would we like to cultivate in our lives? We began by talking about impermanence—that we're not the same people that we were yesterday, or will be tomorrow, or in the next moment for that matter. Then we talked about judgment and how judgment leads to suffering, and then we talked about doubt. Today we're going to talk about forgiveness, because forgiveness has as its central feature letting go of blame. Letting go of blame. Not forgiving, or not pardoning, or condoning, but letting go of blame.

We've used as our talisman through the week the opening discussion in the Dhammapada^[3], and it starts with:

"All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind, and suffering follows like the wheel of the cart behind the hoof of the ox. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind, and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow."

But that continues, and that's the subject of today's talk:

"He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me. For those carrying on like this, hatred does not end. She abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me. For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends. Hatred never ends through hatred; by non-hate alone does it end. This is an ancient truth. Many do not realize that we here must die. For those who realize this, quarrels end. Hatred never ends through hatred; by non-hate alone does it end. This is an ancient truth."

This is the spirit in which we approach the idea of forgiveness. Forgiveness really is for you. Forgiveness is letting go of the blame, the hatred, the ill will, the resentment, particularly the resentment from past events. Forgiveness is realizing that whatever the source of this pain is, whatever this insult to you, this behavior that you find offensive, all of that happened in the past. But what's present now is the pain of your remembering it, of your recalling it, of your re-energizing it by telling yourself the story about how, of course, you justify this anger and this resentment. Yeah, but that anger and resentment is actually no longer linked to what the cause was. It's all here. It's all in us.

And the task of forgiveness doesn't even require the other person or the other place agreeing with ourselves. What it requires is laying down the determination to be resentful over whatever that insult was. Being hurt is the normal consequence of living. We all have experienced hurt from ourselves, from others. It happens. Stuff happens. Deliberate or non-deliberate stuff happens, and we get hurt.

But the refusal to let go of the resentment toward ourselves or others is just pounding the nail over the head after it's already in the board. It's done. It's in the past now. There's a famous phrase that forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. All hope of a better past. It's over. That has happened. So now what?

So now what? It's a very human thing to want to blame somebody for something that's happened. It's all part of that: if I'm feeling threatened, I have to protect myself from harm, and so there's a natural reaction that I should understand what happens so I can protect myself against it. We tell ourselves the story over and over again, and we say, "Oh, well, that was your fault." Well, if it wasn't your fault, if I want you to love me and so I can't really make you into a bad person, then I make me into a bad person. I blame me.

But blame does not have to be the response to something that is unjust, unfair, unwanted. It does not have to be the response. And if we understand that that's the part about holding on to the corrupted heart, the part where we're holding on to that resentment, and we're stroking that resentment and making it part of everyday living, we are reproducing the harm in ourselves. We are the source of this suffering. It is not to say that whatever happened is okay. It isn't okay. We're not condoning. We're not pardoning. The act of forgiving is giving up blame.

Not easy. Not easy. But if you think about it and you realize it's really coming from here, it's coming from here. You know, for years I loved Thanksgiving. I love everything about it. It's a wonderful family day. It's got lots of wonderful food. And for years I had terrible Thanksgivings, because the family would all come in and they would expect me to take care of them, and I had envisioned something totally different. We'd all get together, and we'd all cook together, and we'd have a good time together. And other people didn't have the same vision of Thanksgiving as I did. And I suffered every year until I gave up my idea of Thanksgiving. My idea.

And for the last few years, it's been absolutely delightful because I don't require everybody to meet my view of what it looks like. That was a great lesson for me. The first time somebody told me, "You know, it's your fault you're suffering," I was furious. "What do you mean? They're the ones that are just laying around!" No, it all had to do with my wanting things to be a certain way.

Now, that's easier to do than some harm that's been done to you. Some harm that's been done to you, to let go of holding on to the resentment of that is the task at hand. To let go of the resentment of that. But remember, the forgiveness is for you. It's not for the other person.

You have to give up expecting things from your life or other people that they do not choose to give you. You have to give up expecting things from your life or from other people that they don't choose to give you. The fact that they don't give it to you is your wanting things to be a certain way. And that's where forgiveness comes in. It's the letting go of "I need to be right about this."

One of the things that we can do when we find ourselves telling that story to ourselves over and over again—when I find myself putting energy into, "Oh, that's just not right"—I recall that all of that energy of "that is not right" is being created right here. I'm burning up that energy instead of burning up the resentment, and I'm reinforcing it. And what's required is to say, "How can I let this go? How can I forgive?"

There is a forgiveness practice where, similar to something like mettā^[4] or equanimity practice, you could say certain phrases to remind yourself of what you're trying to do. And they're very simple, and probably most of you have heard them before if you've been on retreats at Spirit Rock^[5], for example. So what we say is:

"If I have hurt you by word, thought, or deed, deliberately or inadvertently, may I be forgiven. If you have hurt me by thought, word, or deed, deliberately or inadvertently, I forgive you. If I have hurt myself by thought, word, or deed, deliberately or inadvertently, I forgive me."

Now these phrases are just phrases, but if you can say them and repeat them to yourself and keep them in front of you with the idea of intention—the intention to soften your heart, to have peace in your heart—it's amazing what it can do. But the first thing you have to do is want to get rid of the pain in your heart. You have to want to let go.

Some things have become so ingrained in us that they feel like part of us. "This is who I am. I'm the person who is the victim of this. I'm the person that is fighting against this thing. I'm a person fighting this bias." And all of that reinforcing of me as the person who is fighting against this is all happening here in our own minds. And it's up to us to decide whether we want to let go of that pain or not. Do I want to continue holding on to that live wire?

My stepmother is in hospice right now, and earlier in the year—she's 97, so she's lived a long time—I thought I should go see her because there were some things between us that were not right, and I determined I needed to go and talk to her and just get the air cleared to make my heart at ease. And I went to see her, and she was even then somewhat demented, and she mostly remembered things 50 years ago—that's mostly what she talked about, 50 years earlier. And my husband kept saying, "You haven't talked to your mother yet. You haven't talked to your mother about that yet." And I said, "You know, it turns out I don't need to talk to her. It's all in me, this discomfort, this unease. I no longer need to say anything to her. It serves no useful purpose. Totally unneeded." Not because it was too late, but because I finally let go of my own holding on to the discomfort. I finally just said, "Oh, it's all in my mind. It's all in my heart." It's miraculous.

I'm going to read another Jane Hirshfield^[6] poem. This book is just wonderful. So the name of this poem is "The Bowl."

If meat is put into the bowl, meat is eaten. If rice is put into the bowl, it may be cooked. If a shoe is put in the bowl, the leather is chewed and chewed over, a sentence that cannot be taken in or forgiven. A day, if a day could feel, must feel like a bowl. Wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness, it eats them. Then the next day comes, spotless and hungry. The bowl cannot be thrown away. It cannot be broken. It is calm, uneclipsable, rindless, and, big though it seems, fits exactly into human hands. Hands with ten fingers, fifty-four bones, capacity strange to us almost past measure. Scented as the curve of the bowl is, with cardamom, star anise, long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop. The bowl is just the bowl. It is what we put into the bowl that we eat.

So I hope this has some meaning for you, and understand that it is the laying down of the blame that leads to blamelessness. Thank you.

Q&A

Host: Hey, thank you, Maria. So if anyone on Zoom or YouTube has any questions, you can raise your hand on Zoom, or you can put your questions into chat on Zoom and YouTube, and we'll read the chat messages to Maria as they come in.

I had a quick question about the Thanksgiving dinner, actually. So you know, I think it sounds like you had a change of mindset or change of how you looked at things and expectations, it sounds like. And so was there any—I've experienced this myself where I've kind of changed the way I've seen or drawn boundaries sometimes—and did you communicate your change of expectations to your guests? Or was it just kind of like, "Well, I've changed my expectations, and they'll have to just deal with my shift in mindset"?

Maria Straatmann: Well, of course, the shift in mindset was really positive for them because I stopped grumping around. So it wasn't necessary for me to say, "You know, I've changed my mind, and now I'm going to think this about it." What I did was, I first of all began asking people for something rather than expecting them to offer it to me. You know what that's like: "Well, you know, if you loved me, you would just do this, right? I wouldn't have to tell you."

So I would say, "You have special need requests, would you mind bringing one thing that you..." I used to make three separate meals at Thanksgiving to meet everybody's particular dietary requirements, you know. And so I would ask people for something, and I would give up my idea of what it had to look like. And so I gave up wanting the food to be a certain way, and let go of—I heard that people treated a holiday as a day I can let go. And so my gift to them became letting go for them. Allowing them to let go and not resenting them for letting go and laying around. That's what they wanted to do with their holiday. So it involved looking outward, and not so much emphasis on what was inward. I didn't have to say anything; I just became a more pleasant person. Not by design, but by effect.

Host: So yeah, the communication sounds like it was also a good kind of lubricator as well too. Yeah, cool. It's great. Sometimes you have to tell people what your expectations are, instead of expecting them to know.

Maria Straatmann: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Host: So we've got Lucinda, if you want to unmute yourself.

Lucinda: Hi. I really enjoyed this week very much. Thank you. Two questions. One is, which book for Jane Hirshfield did you read from?

Maria Straatmann: [unintelligible]^[7]

Lucinda: Okay. Thank you. And then I recently discovered it turns out I had another copy on my shelf already. I relate. My question is around forgiveness. I've been recently struggling with a family member and came to a pretty huge conflict. And basically through this practice, I have come to a place of true forgiveness. And what's come up for me is I am scheduled to go on a family trip with this family member—somebody I deeply love, and my ability to get hurt by this person is monumental. And I don't know what to do with it, other than not to do anything about it. I mean, I just, I don't have any idea. It's not until December, but it's a big trip. And I'm just letting it be. I don't know what else to do. I mean, I feel like I have this thing that wants to have a conversation with this person, but he's not very open to that often. Any insight or suggestions?

Maria Straatmann: So it's a little unclear to me what the fear is. It sounds like you don't want to be in conflict with this person, but you want more than that. You want also to have a feeling of affection between one another.

Lucinda: Yeah.

Maria Straatmann: All families are different, but similar. And I have been in conflict with various members of my family and wanted that not to be true. And so the approach I've taken is to avoid those places where I think we are in conflict and recall to mind in me the attitude that I would like to have. So what I mean by that is, I want people to be friendly to me, I begin by being friendly, and not by putting my awareness on how we differ. So I work inside myself to be what I want to be, and not become someone who knows how to deal with this. Does that help at all?

Lucinda: That's so helpful. That is so helpful. Thank you. Thank you.

Host: Okay, and from YouTube, Kane is asking, "How do you let go of judgment and blame from close family, especially when you know your intentions are correct and you are doing the right thing? It feels like I have to emotionally close off to them to protect myself."

Maria Straatmann: No, no. We're actually going to talk about that tomorrow. That is my topic for tomorrow. It has to do with equanimity, establishing equanimity. And it has primarily to do with the realization that what others choose to do is what they choose to do. I don't get to determine what they do, just as they don't determine what I do. And so it comes from a place of: my suffering arises from my own intentions and actions, not what others may wish for me, despite what I may wish for others. Things are as they are. There's a certain amount of letting go of the need for it to be different that is essential. But I'm really going to spend a lot of time talking about that tomorrow. We only have 15 minutes, but I'm going to talk about that tomorrow, so I want to delay that particular theme.

What I can say is that the act of judgment, the deliberate "you are wrong about this," is building up in one's heart the resistance, the blame, the anger, the ill will that will lead to suffering. And understand that in doing that, you are doing that to yourself. I am doing it to myself if I arrive loaded for bear, you know. We all need to see that not everybody is coming from the same place, and whatever they choose to do is their choice. We can be as generous as possible with what we think will help them, but we can't make them do anything. They will do what they will do.

And some of the pain arises from the frustration of not being able to fix it. So to recognize one's own need to fix something is adding to the suffering of watching their suffering is useful. So Kane, without any specifics about the issue, the only thing I can say is that anger, resentment, judgment lies in us. And the way to let go of them is to see when they arise, to not be enchanted by them, and they fall away. To not be enchanted by the unrightness of this, to not be overcome with righteousness, but just to say, "I see your suffering." My suffering arises from our own intentions and actions, not what others wish for us. So we will talk about that more tomorrow. Thank you.

Host: Hey Susie, you've got your hand raised, so you can go ahead and unmute.

Susie: [Muted]

Host: You're muted, Susie. Okay, you're there. Susie, we can't hear you. Now you're muted.

Susie: Sorry about that. Can you hear me now? Yes. I have four Bluetooth devices I can't—I'm trying to always connect because the computer says apps out. Good morning, Maria. I was sort of fixated on your use of the word refusal—"one's refusal to"—which I haven't heard you use that word before. And it reminds me of a past lover who would say to me that I choose suffering. And I would respond, you know, "If I could, it's not something I would actually voluntarily choose. I just don't know how to do it differently." So the refusal was a little new for me in your vocabulary.

And I was thinking also that when you responded to a woman about the Thanksgiving dinner, how you focused—you chose to give your attention to what you have in common with your family members, rather than areas of difference. So when that resentment, anger, judgment, hurt, victimhood arises, and the habit energy is that groove is so deep, you know, before we fall in—besides noticing the arising, which is already not being intoxicated—where can we go? You just said a place to give our attention, but it's not a familiar place for me. You talked about intentions and actions, and is there something more layperson-friendly?

Maria Straatmann: Yeah, and once again I am going to talk about this tomorrow. I discovered, for example, that I got into group behavior, that a group behaves differently than an individual. And so to deal with my family, what I did was call everybody up or text them and say, "I want to meet with you, just you." They appreciated the attention, and then we didn't have the family dynamics that altered it. This is just an example of something that is a shift away from how things always are, so that I set up in advance a little bit of protection around habits, right? So I no longer go to big parties with my family. I see them individually, and I've learned so much more about them. I like them so much more, and I assume they feel the same, because it's just us and it's simpler.

Now, if it's a one-on-one with someone, and I can feel myself saying, "Oh, you always do that," as soon as I hear "you always do that" in my head, I remind myself they don't always do that. And this is me putting the emphasis on "you always do that." It's me placing blame. And if I can just stop placing blame and hear whatever it is they're saying—just hear it, actually hear it—I'm less likely to be reactive. It's when I think, "It sounds just like..." then I drag myself into that pattern.

So I listen for my own triggers. And that "you always do that" statement just right away catches my attention. "You always do that"—oh, and I always react this way! And did you really do that? And what are you really saying? It's a pulling back into now and letting go of all the things that happened before, you know, that little string that we carry along behind us of the continuity of life. It is just get back into the now as fast as you can. Just, "Oh, wait a minute, what's happening right now? What did you just say? What?" And hear it without the baggage of the habit. It just takes practice, Susie.

And sometimes I fail. Boy, there's a wonderful animal out here making clicking sounds, and I don't know what it is, but I am not going to be distracted by it. [Laughter] Other questions?

Host: Theresa, you can go ahead and unmute.

Theresa: Hi Theresa. Hi Maria. Maybe this will all be resolved by tomorrow when you give your other talk, but I'm having a lot of trouble with a sister of mine who's a year younger than me. And the last year we've just had these terrible conflicts and arguments that don't go anywhere. Like, we get so angry that I just get lost. And I think I'm coming to the fact that it's very possible we just can't relate to each other. And I'm having trouble letting go of her, like it's almost like I'm anxious about it. And I mean, I hear everything you're saying, and a lot of it is about "I want this reality to be a certain way. I want this to be a close sister relationship," and for years there's been something wrong.

Maria Straatmann: So let me remind you that the vision of it being a close sister relationship is a specific vision, and for you, a close relationship looks like X. And I'm not going to presume what it is. Yeah, whatever it is, that's the expectation that's not being met. Not the closeness, the intimacy. Intimacy between people is very tricky, because we have an idea of what it looks like, what it should look like. Yep. That is the place. That view is the place they're not matching. My view.

So there's somebody very close to me that I was in conflict with because for political reasons it would be a huge, gigantic political gap. And all of us would say, "How can he believe that? He must not be who I thought he was." And I kept reminding myself, he's exactly who I thought he was. He's living his life this way despite what he professes, and he is a good man. So I shifted my attention to knowing what I know about him, and not the argument that we're having between us. And I never let go of "he's a good man." And the subject over which we fought hasn't come up in about a year and a half. And he is a good man. And it was a serious breach. But what got me through was just recalling: this is a good man.

It's where you put your attention. It's the meat you put in the bowl is what you eat. The shoe you put in the bowl is what you chew on. So yeah, it's an expectation of a family that is hard to—it's dying hard. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Theresa: I'm just hoping it does pass because it just eats at me and keeps me awake, but yes, I just need to continue.

Maria Straatmann: It's in you, yeah. You have more control over it than you think. It's just that we don't have control, so all we do is just repeat: "Here's my intention, but it doesn't have to look the way I see it." This is really important: it doesn't have to look the way I see it. I got my happy family Thanksgiving. It didn't look the way I thought it would look. That's what I had to let go of.

Theresa: Okay. Okay.

Maria Straatmann: And so I also want to say that the Saturday group had a couple of people drop out of it, those of you who know about that, and so there are a couple of open spots on the Saturday practice discussion group. So, next, Kevin.

Host: Hey Wendy, you can go ahead and unmute.

Wendy: Oh, hi. So I was thinking about forgiveness, and I have a family member that caused me some childhood trauma. And I had actually kind of let go of that and kind of forgiven him, but then I started to feel like I wasn't honoring myself and that that was hurtful, and that maybe I should, you know—I don't know what I would do with that, but maybe I shouldn't let him off the hook so easily. I don't know. I'm not really sure, you know, what I... I don't know if this is—

Maria Straatmann: I do. So once again, forgiveness is for you, not for him. Forgiveness is for you. It is so you hold in your heart peacefulness. So there's a place to start from. And then I remind you that it does not mean that you condone or pardon the behavior. You're not pardoning the person. You're not telling them it's okay. It is still not okay.

But the fact that it's coming back says that there's still some part of you that is holding on to a piece of pain and resentment over it. I can tell you I went through forgiveness practice with my father, who had caused some pain in my life. And I finally got to the place where I had forgiven him, and I said, "Okay, he did it the best that he could do." And after I heard that in my head several times, I said, "What if he didn't do the best he could do?" And I realized that my forgiveness was conditional. I had made an excuse for him. And I had to go begin all over again to let go of: "I can only let go of this if I make an excuse for you."

So I did more forgiveness practice and more forgiveness practice until I realized that all the pain I was creating when I felt—you know, it's one thing to intellectually say you're creating your own pain by recalling this and holding on to resentment, and it's quite another to feel it coming and going, quite another. The determination to live with a peaceful heart allows you to notice those moments when there is peace in your heart and to say, "Ah," into those moments. And then you don't choose to suffer. You say, "Ah, that was then and today I'm at peace." And that peace grows. I hope that helps, Wendy.

Wendy: Yeah, yeah. I just have to make the decision, I guess, not to find myself going back to the memories of those events from my childhood. Things about my father that I really loved—only the people who you love can really hurt you.

Maria Straatmann: Interesting, yeah.

Wendy: I guess so, yeah. So I just wish there was a way to turn that off in my head. It feels like I just keep going back there over and over again. I know.

Maria Straatmann: So I had an offense that came up that I worked with a lot, that the forgiveness was kind of global. And that is, it didn't have a single person that I needed to let go of. And over time, I came to the realization that this had become a kind of metaphor for unhappiness in my life. That is, I began to see that when that story came up in my thoughts, it meant there was something I needed to pay attention to that was not actually the proximal cause of my unease. It's just that in my mind, I went back to that.

So whenever I hear a particular story that has to do with something in my life, when that story starts running in my head, I think, "Uh oh, there's some similarity here. Something is going on in my life that I'm not paying attention to. What is it?" I saw it. Now it's become a kind of—not a touchstone, but a warning light, that story. So you might consider that also, that it comes up because there is some need in your life that needs to be seen.

Wendy: Yeah. Okay, thank you.

Host: Maria, we had a question about the Saturday group and how someone would find out about that.

Maria Straatmann: So if you get the weekly newsletter, it's always in there. There's a section that says you can talk with teachers either through the group practice discussions or individual practice discussions. And also on the website. I always—it changes, so on the website there's a section I'd have to look it up. Maureen, do you happen to know, can you help us here, where to find that exactly?

Maureen: Cindy actually just posted the link on...

Maria Straatmann: Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you. That's great if someone posted the link. So it's a Sign Up Genius thing.

Host: Okay, Cindy posted it, and I just reposted it in Zoom. Okay, great. Thank you. Cindy actually had a question in chat: "Is it okay to stay away from the person that has caused trauma in your life? I can forgive, but I'm not interested in being with the person because it's upsetting."

Maria Straatmann: Well, why would you put yourself through that? Yeah, stay away from them. You know, you're not required to seek out suffering. There's plenty of it to go around. So, until I can feel... And you know, the thing is not to make it into a thing, "I'm never going to be around this person," but to avoid being in a place that stimulates the memory and the pain and the suffering. There's no need. There's no need to make yourself feel unsafe. But you can test it every once in a while and see how sensitive you are to that and see if the sensitivity changes. Yeah, Cindy?

Cindy: Well, other people in my family, you know, like, try to put guilt on me that I won't participate. There's seven kids in my family, Irish Catholic anyway, so um, it's one person out of seven, so I guess that's not bad. But yeah, it's just the pressure I get, you know, because I don't want to go to family reunions, I don't want to be involved in... They say what's your you know they just put pressure on me. It's hard to let go of.

Maria Straatmann: We're going to talk about that tomorrow.

Cindy: Okay, great. Thank you.

Host: Hey Maria, well I think that's all we've got today. And I think you've provided a good enough whetting of the appetite for tomorrow's talk. So it sounds like everyone's looking forward to that, so no pressure, right? [Laughter]

Maria Straatmann: Thank you everyone. May you know peace in your hearts.

Host: Thank you everyone. And as you sign off, feel free to come off of mute if you want to say goodbye or give greetings.

Participants: Thank you Maria. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. Thanks everybody. Thank you Maria. Good to see you all. Thank you. Till tomorrow.