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JACK KORNFIELD: So here's a little bit

about the architecture of forgiveness
as we sort of wend our way toward doing
a practice of forgiveness.
First, some basic understandings.
Forgiveness does not mean that we condone
what happened in the past.
It's not forgive and forget.
In fact, forgiveness might also include, quite understandably,
the resolve to never let this happen again.
I will do everything in my power to protect myself or protect
others to make sure this doesn't happen again,
and forgiveness doesn't mean you have to speak to
or relate to a person who betrayed you necessarily.
It's not about them.
It doesn't condone it.
It can stand up for justice and say no more,
and it's not sentimental or quick.
You can't paper things over and smile and say, "I forgive."
It is a deep process of the heart.
And in the process, you need to honor the betrayal of yourself
or others, the grief, the anger, the hurt, the fear.
And it can take a long time.
Sometimes, when you do forgiveness practice,
you realize, "I'm never going to forgive that person."
You know?
And never takes a while, basically.
You'll see.
[LAUGHING]
Or forgiving yourself, which, in some cases,
can be equally long and difficult.
This great forgivenesses of things that we've done
or small ones and the kind of epidemic of self-hatred
and criticism in this country that I see all the time
are people who come to meditate.
This from Florida Scott-Maxwell, the author,
she writes, "No matter how old a mother is,
she watches her middle-aged children
for signs of improvement."
Right?
[LAUGHING]
And there's some way in which we've internalized this,
and we spend our life judging ourselves.
And some of us are such harsh judges,
they wouldn't hire you in a civilized society.
[LAUGHING]
If there is such a thing.
You'd have to go work for EDMN in Uganda, and they'd say,
"Yeah.
Right.
Put her on the bench."
You know?
"She knows how to judge."
Right?
So it's not sentimental.
It's actually a deep work of the heart that
purifies and releases and somehow
permits us to love and be free.
And sometimes, it's a kind of tearing
of the closeness of the heart.
The Lakota Sioux, they write-- they say that grief,
which is a part of the forgiveness--
because it's all the loss that things didn't work out the way
you wanted.
Somebody said forgiveness means giving up
all hope of a better past.
Right?
It's done.
It's the way that it was.
But with it, there's loss and there's grief.
For the Lakota Sioux, grief was valued.
It brought a person closer to the gods
for, when a person had suffered great loss and was grieving,
they were considered the most wakan-- the most holy.
And their prayers were believed to be especially powerful,
and others would ask them to pray on their behalf.
So sometimes, it's the things that make us vulnerable,
that tear the heart open that actually bring us back
most fully to what matters to love,
to life-- that our vulnerability becomes
a place that our hearts depend on
for staying alive and open even when we're hurt.
Does this make sense to you, that we need to respect this?
So forgiveness isn't sentimental.
It's not quick.
It can take a long time.
It's not a papering over.
It's not condoning.
It's also not for anybody else.
It's like the two ex-prisoners of war,
one who says to the other, "Have you forgiven your captors yet?"
And the second one says, "No.
Never."
And the first one then looks and says, "Well, they still
have you in prison then.
Don't they?"
And I remember sitting with the Dalai
Lama and some Tibetan nuns who had gotten out of seven, eight,
nine years of imprisonment and torture together
with a group meeting that I was running of ex-prisoners
from prisons all across the USA who'd been using meditation,
contemplative practices, mindfulness, compassion, and so
forth to change their lives.
And when they got out, this was a room
and here's these guys-- 25 years in Texas State prison.
18 years in Ohio in a maximum security, just out.
And these people sitting with the Dalai Lama
and with these little nuns who were in prison when
they were teenagers for saying their prayers out loud.
And the nuns-- somebody said, "Were you ever afraid?"
And they said, "Oh, yes.
We were terribly afraid.
And what we were afraid of was that we
would end up hating our guards, that we
would lose our compassion.
That's the thing that we most feared."
And they sat there, these sweet, young nuns.
And I remember this one guy who'd
been in prison for 18 years in Ohio
saying, "I've seen some brave folks in my day,
and I ain't never seen anything like you young ladies."
You know?
It was really amazing.
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