Repentance and Forgiveness

It has been a long time since I did my morning and evening practice. There was a period when, like a proper Buddhist, I would recite sutras morning and evening and repent my transgressions, but the habit did not last.

Confucius said, "Reviewing the old so as to know the new." As a young person I could not understand this. Only as age and experience grew did I discover that reading the same book at different stages of life yields different understandings. Recently, before bed, I have been rereading some philosophy and Buddhist texts I read before, and again and again I feel that "reviewing the old brings the new."

I remember in high school, when my beloved teacher commented on one of my essays, he wrote on the composition paper: Do not show your edge too sharply; learn to hide your light and bide your time. At the time I was young and headstrong, arrogant and self-important, and I understood nothing of this comment. More than ten years have passed, and many of the words my teacher left me have been forgotten; only this one has echoed in my mind again and again.

Over these past few years, besides the death of my mother, a series of events dealt me blows and wounds—harms between relatives, betrayals and plots by classmates and "friends." The destruction of beauty and the emergence of ugliness arrived together in my life, and it did catch me off guard. But in the end, with the help of time, all of it has settled into calm.

The grief of losing my mother still lingers in the depths of my heart, but the anger born of interpersonal grudges no longer exists. In the past, if someone hurt or offended me, I always hoped they would get their comeuppance. Now I only hope that one day they will awaken, realize that some of what they did in the past was not right, and through that awakening elevate their own life, so that they can live a little more happily.

This transformation began with repentance. After I felt the hurt and the grief, I too was at first controlled by my emotions. As time passed, I gradually realized that I was not the only one in the world who had been wounded and grieved, and that my own past actions had also caused a great deal of pain to others.

If karma cycles and retribution never misses its mark, then everything I am now encountering may well be the price I must pay for my past actions. The karma I created has now ripened. One person's suffering often makes "those close to them grieve, and their enemies rejoice." Those who once hated me were surely also awaiting the day I would get what I deserved. Because of this, after I am hurt, I would rather say sorry to those I have hurt and ask for their punishment and forgiveness, than take revenge on those who have hurt me. I should be grateful to those who hurt me, because they made me realize that many of my past unrighteous acts were wrong. In this repentance I corrected many defects of my own character.

This repentance finally made me more forgiving. I once saw an American film in which a dying man prayed: May the Lord forgive me, and I too am willing to forgive everyone who has hurt me.

From ancient times to the present, so-called absolute justice and fairness have never been realized in the human world. The real world is not a beautiful place. True justice and fairness can only be realized in fantasy through faith; and people hold this faith precisely because, after suffering in the human world, they look within for the heavenly kingdom of faith to give them solace. Therefore, to keep inner peace in a chaotic world, one must learn to forgive.

In the Bible there is a story about a sinful woman set upon by a mob. The crowd finally asked Jesus to condemn her. Jesus said, "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone." In the end all the onlookers went away. There is no sinless person in this world. We ourselves may be legally blameless, but looking into our own hearts, how many can truly say with a clear conscience that they are without sin?

Throughout this life, driven by the body's and the mind's various desires, people have done countless things that harm others to benefit themselves. On careful reflection, I feel that I, like everyone else, have a "hypocritical" side; the difference may be only one of degree, not of fundamental kind. While I watch others living behind masks, I also see the mask I myself wear. While I despise what others do, I realize I am merely laughing at them for the same fault.

Master Yinguang once said that a person in practice should maintain the attitude that "everyone is a bodhisattva, only I am an ordinary being," rather than feeling that everyone is ordinary and only I am a bodhisattva. In the past I thought this was the master's modesty. Now I understand it differently: if a person has not repented of their own faults, mere modesty can hardly sustain such a disposition for decades. Behind this disposition must lie a wisdom that has matured enough to reflect on the self and be forgiving toward all beings. Being strict with oneself and lenient with others must rest on a sincere recognition that one is no more perfect than all other beings. It is precisely because of this sincere recognition that one corrects one's faults toward the good and treats others with generosity.