Cultivating Forgiveness

Another gentle passage on cultivating forgiveness from Comfortable With Uncertainty by Pema Chodron.

” Forgiveness is an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and make a fresh start. Forgiveness cannot be forced. When we are brave enough to open our hearts to ourselves, however, forgiveness will emerge.

There is a simple practice we can do for cultivating forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel: shame, revenge, embarrassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in our pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don’t have to carry the burden with us anymore. We can acknowledge, forgive and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little, we will learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we’ll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done harm to us. We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, an expression of our basic goodness. This potential is inherent in every moment. Each moment is an opportunity to make a fresh start.”

And so, every moment is an opportunity for a new beginning when we can cultivate forgiveness for ourselves and others.

Cultivating Forgiveness

Cultivating Compassion

A beautiful passage on cultivating compassion from the book Comfortable With Uncertainty by Pema Chodron.

“Just as nurturing our ability to love is way of awakening bodhichitta, so also is nurturing our ability to feel compassion. Compassion, however, is more emotionally challenging than loving kindness because it involves the willingness to feel pain. It definitely requires the training of a warrior.

For arousing compassion, the 19th century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggests imaging beings in torment: an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommends imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in that woman’s shoes. For most of us, even to consider such a thing is frightening. When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain.

Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion; to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance.

It can be difficult to even think about beings in torment, let alone act on their behalf. Recognizing this, we begin with a practice that is fairly easy. We cultivate bravery through making aspirations. We make the wish that all beings, including ourselves and those we dislike, be free of suffering and the root of suffering.”

And so, we begin our path to cultivating compassion gently.

Cultivating Compassion