Catherine Burns is a firm believer in the power of storytelling. For the past 20 years, she has served as the artistic director at The Moth, a nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling. In this role, she has helped hundreds of people craft their stories, including a New York City sanitation worker, a Nobel laureate, a jaguar tracker, and an exonerated prisoner. For Burns, listening to stories can be a way of cultivating empathy and healing from trauma.

In a recent episode of Life As It Is, Burns spoke with Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and cohost Sharon Salzberg about the art of good storytelling, how we can break free from harmful narratives, and how stories can help us find community in the midst of isolation.

***

How storytelling can change our past

We can have a very different relationship with our past, depending on what story we tell about it. I’ve seen the act of storytelling transform people. I’ve certainly seen it transform myself. If we can change our thoughts, we can ultimately completely change our story. If you look at the facts of something and write down your thoughts, you find that those thoughts lead to certain feelings, and those feelings lead to action. If you can practice new thoughts, you can change outcomes for yourself. I always try to change the thought just a little bit at a time. People want to change it all at once, but if you can shift the thought slightly and give it the benefit of the doubt, you can really transform things. This has changed the way I see some of my parents’ actions during my childhood, and it’s helped me forgive actions from my past that I used to think were unforgivable. Often, our bad habits are things that served us at the time. They worked to save us from pain. The problem is that we hang on to them after they’re no longer serving us. You have to shift your thoughts to teach yourself that these habits aren’t really serving you.

How our own stories can surprise us

Often, I’ll start working with someone on a story, and the story will surprise them. Sometimes, they’ve always thought of a story in one way, but in the process of telling it again and again, they see a whole other side of it: They can see the other person’s point of view, or they can see how they had been blaming themselves. Telling stories can help people have empathy for younger versions of themselves—or empathy for younger versions of their parents. Our stories can change over time, and that can be a really healthy thing. 

How storytelling can bridge divisions 

Most of my family voted for Trump. But I find that when I have conversations with them, we often agree more than we disagree. I think stories are a way to bridge that divide. It’s so easy to have an opinion about an issue based on reading the newspaper or listening to a news anchor. But when people hear a story directly from the person who’s most affected by it, suddenly, there can be real change. We see it as a moral responsibility to try to seek out personal stories that can help shed light on some of these complicated ideas—not necessarily to change people, but to give them an opportunity to think about things in a new way.

The post How to Break Free from the Stories We Tell Ourselves appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Forgiveness can be a powerful practice that strengthens compassion and releases us from the grasp of fear, anger, and resentment. Still, it is often easier said than done to forgive those who have caused harm, ourselves included. If you find yourself struggling with extending or accepting forgiveness, here is a collection of teachings from Tricycle’s archives on how to cultivate a merciful heart.

1. Make Peace with Imperfection 

“One of the things I’ve most appreciated about my years of meditation practice is having made peace with my humanness. It’s not that I don’t aspire to grow and develop and work on myself. But I’m no longer holding myself to some impossible ideal. The less I expect myself to be perfect and never mess up, the more likely I am to make headway toward forgiving myself. I am more able to release the heavy guilty burden I’ve been carrying for painful things I’ve done in the past, for the things I regret.” — from “Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves?” by Mark Coleman

2. Take Your Time 

“Sometimes the process of forgiveness takes a lifetime, and that’s perfectly fine. You can unfold in your own time and in your own way. We’re not trying to manufacture some kind of feeling, so if all you can muster is the understanding that harm was done, that’s perfectly okay. Emotions will come not because we force them to but because they’re there, because they’re an expression of some deep feeling inside. So if as a result of the harm, there were ways in which your heart closed or your feelings closed, you can acknowledge that too as part of the harm. Whatever you feel, you feel. And whatever you don’t feel, you don’t feel. Forgiveness is an attitude of welcoming and inviting and spaciousness rather than some emotion that we pump up in our bodies and minds and hearts.” — from “The Power of Forgiveness” by Gina Sharpe

3. Examine What Forgiveness Is Not 

“Forgiveness does not mean condoning a harmful action, or denying injustice or suffering. It should never be confused with being passive toward violation or abuse. Forgiveness is an inner relinquishment of guilt or resentment, both of which are devastating to us in the end. As forgiveness grows within us, it may take any outward form: we may seek to make amends, demand justice, resolve to be treated better, or simply leave a situation behind us.” —  from “How to Forgive: A Meditation” by Sharon Salzberg 

4. Stop the Cycle 

“When you forgive someone who has wronged you, it doesn’t erase that person’s karma in having done wrong. This is why some think that forgiveness has no place in the karmic universe of the Buddha’s teachings, and that it’s incompatible with the practice of what he taught. But that’s not so. Forgiveness may not be able to undo old bad karma, but it can prevent new bad karma from being done. This is especially true with the bad karma that in Pali is called vera. Vera is often translated as ‘hostility,’ ‘animosity,’ or ‘antagonism,’ but it is a particular instance of these attitudes: the vengeful animosity that wants to get back at someone for perceived wrongs. This attitude is what has no place in Buddhist practice. Forgiveness is what clears it out of the way.” — from “Three Tactics from the Buddha to Forgive without Feeling Defeated” by Thanissaro Bhikkhu 

5. Remember That Forgiving Doesn’t Mean Forgetting

“Sometimes we have been holding onto anger or bitterness related to a particular person or event. Something to think about is: What would I have to give up in order to free myself from this bitterness? We might think, ‘Well, yes, but what he or she did was absolutely unforgivable.’ Consider the possibility, and I am only saying consider the possibility, that maybe nothing is unforgivable. Maybe there is a way to find forgiveness even for what we have believed for so long to be unforgivable. Explore this mindfully. 

To forgive does not necessarily mean to forget. Sometimes to forget is not wise, but to forgive is wise. And it is at times not easy. It can, in fact, be quite challenging. It will come as no surprise that one of the most difficult people to forgive can be yourself. Yet with patience and gentle determination, it can be done.” — from “Lighten Your Load” by Allan Lokos 

The post 5 Timeless Teachings on Extending Forgiveness to Ourselves and Others appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When I ask a room full of students, “Who hasn’t caused someone harm through their words and actions?” not a single hand is ever raised. We have all done things we regret. I similarly ask if there is anyone who has not caused harm in some way through their sexuality. Again, rarely does a hand go up. It is the same when I ask if there is anyone who doesn’t regret acting or saying something foolish in a moment of passion and reactivity.

Making mistakes, having poor judgment, and doing things we know we shouldn’t in the heat of the moment are a natural part of the human condition. Why then are we so hard on ourselves? How do we account for all the self-blame? We can trace this pathology of self-recrimination to the critic and to an idealized and impossible standard of human behavior.

One of the things I’ve most appreciated about my years of meditation practice is having made peace with my humanness. It’s not that I don’t aspire to grow and develop and work on myself. But I’m no longer holding myself to some impossible ideal. The less I expect myself to be perfect and never mess up, the more likely I am to make headway toward forgiving myself. I am more able to release the heavy guilty burden I’ve been carrying for painful things I’ve done in the past, for the things I regret.

Sometimes I look back and am embarrassed at what I used to say, the views I espoused, and the self-centered hubris of youth. But that too is part of living, of growing up, the inevitable growing pains of being human. When I first discovered meditation, I was like a “born-again meditator,” and I would enthusiastically try to convince all my friends and family that they should meditate. I was, in my youthful arrogance, eager to point out all the ways they were not enlightened and what they should do about it. Now my family teases me about that.

One particular realization I owe to my meditation training is an understanding that there is no time but now. The future is an illusion, the past is now a dream, and the only reality we have access to is the present. In that light, self-forgiveness is the willingness to stop trying to fix our past or make it better. It is giving up all hope of improving that which has already happened. What is done is done.

If this is true, then why do we try so hard to fix the past? It is because we can’t bear to live with the painful fact that we did and said all those things that we regret and wish we could take back. We do it as a way to try and stop the pain that still lingers in the present from past events. The mind has a deep-seated resistance to feeling pain, even if it happened a long time ago. That is why we spend so much time in our head, thinking, replaying, rehashing, arguing, rather than acknowledging the tender, vulnerable part of ourselves and letting in the sadness and loss that accompanied the pain when it occurred.

I went to school in a rough part of town. There were constant physical fights, and harsh bullying was rife. Like so much human pain, it got passed down the chain, from the older kids to the younger kids. I was on the receiving end of a lot of painful bullying and psychological taunting. However, I also learned to dole it out. I would pass on the psychological ridicule I had received to others, when there was no risk of being physically threatened while doing so.

I used to look back with horror and shame on the ways that I teased and taunted a classmate. How could I, who knew how painful it was to be ridiculed in public, serve out the same? Given the space of time and some wise reflection, I can now see I was just a cog in the wheel, just passing on what I had learned, trying to survive in my own way and to keep the bullying attention away from myself. Find a scapegoat and stay safe was the motto. Of course, that does not in any way justify it or make it right. I still wonder to this day about the impact that my words and actions had on my poor classmate, and I still feel sad that I chose to act that way.

And it is self-forgiveness that allows me to understand the conditions of that period of my life and feel the pain of all involved; at the same time it allows me to release the judgment and shame. Even though I was the one being cruel, deep in my heart I also knew that it was mean and was fueled by my own pain and fear. It was what it was. It happened due to a painful set of causes and conditions, and I can feel tender toward myself, the classmate, and all the ways such actions continue today out of blindness, fear, and hatred.

In what ways do you judge yourself for your past errors? In what areas of life are you trying to make your past into a better one? In what ways are you unable to accept who and what you were? This is not about denying what happened or making it all better. It is about turning the light directly on the areas of painful regret and extending a loving hand to them.

Anytime we have an unusually large amount of space and time on our hands, our mind will ruminate on the paths of yore. This is partly the brain rehashing past experience in an attempt to learn for the future. In such times things from the dim and distant past that are still not resolved will surface in our hearts. This is especially true for those who have had brushes with death, are very sick, or are facing terminal illness. Given that we are social creatures, at these times our hearts may do a life review, with a particular focus on how we have acted in relation to others. This may certainly be about our romantic history, but it also includes our relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

I noticed this tendency in my father as he got older. He would occasionally ask about how he was as a father when I was young. In particular, he would inquire as to whether he was around enough or was gone too much. He served in the British Royal Navy, so he was absent for long stretches of time when I was an infant. I could tell it weighed heavily on his heart. There was nothing he could do about it now, yet something in his heart needed comforting and reassuring. And as much as I could offer assurance, it has to, as always, ultimately come from forgiving ourselves.

Any consideration of our relationships will inevitably reveal both joys and challenges. And, of course, it is easy fodder for the critic, who will pick on all the ways we have let people down, spoken falsely, hurt our loved ones, or just not shown up as a friend in ways we might have wished. These are often tender and painful memories to harbor. It is important that we hold these memories with compassion and kindness, not recrimination. It is all too easy for the judge with 20/20 hindsight to see all the ways we could have done better. It’s important to remember we always do the best we can with the information, skills, and resources we have available at the time.

So, as part of healing the heart and the past that keeps cascading into the present, we practice extending forgiveness to ourselves for our past choices and actions. We aim to fully accept what happened, take responsibility for it, and form a strong intention to learn from our past and live more wisely, with more care and compassion. We also extend forgiveness to ourselves in the present and for the future, knowing that, being human, we will make other choices that we may live to regret. We aspire to hold true to our intention to act with as much integrity and kindness as we can muster, but we forgive ourselves when we inevitably mess up.

In this way your practice of forgiveness becomes a positive mental habit that allows you to release judgment, regret, and the torment of shame from the past and present. And that opens the capacity for the loving heart to grow in all directions.

Practice: Fostering Self-Forgiveness

Turning toward our mistakes with forgiveness rather than judgment or blame contributes significantly toward feeling peace in our heart. It is like bringing a soothing balm to painful parts of ourselves that we have long rejected. When we can access this attitude of forgiveness in times of distress and angst about something we have said or done, it can allow us to release that experience and be at greater ease.

This meditation will aid you in developing a sense of self-forgiveness.     

1. Find a place where you can be undisturbed for at least 10 minutes. Sitting in a chair where you can be upright yet relaxed, assume a comfortable posture.
2. Gently close your eyes and feel your breath in your heart center (the center of your chest).
3. Call to mind one particular way that you have harmed others through your words or actions. It may be mental, emotional, or relational pain that was caused.
4. Take a few moments to feel into the experience and suffering of those involved in these memories. Can you be with their pain and angst with a kind attention?
5. Hold that pain with caring attention, and offer these words slowly and meaningfully to yourself:  No matter what I have done, knowingly or unknowingly, that has caused pain and suffering to others, by my thoughts, words, or actions, by what I have said or not said, by what I have done or not done, or by what I have thought, I offer myself forgiveness as much as is possible in this moment. Repeat these phrases a few times while remembering what happened. Try to stay connected to your heart and allow all your feelings to be present. If the critic arises and reminds you how bad you are and why you should feel shame, shift your attention away from the judgment. Thank it for its opinion, then shift your attention back to the meditation and the phrases of forgiveness.
6. Now call to mind one particular way that you have harmed yourself. It may be physical or emotional harm, caused by self-neglect or by the way you punish yourself, mistreat your body, or disparage yourself in public.
7. Hold the pain of that incident with caring attention, and offer these phrases slowly and meaningfully to yourself: No matter what I have done, knowingly or unknowingly, that has caused pain and suffering to myself, by my thoughts, words, or actions, by what I have said or not said, by what I have done or not done, or by what I have thought, I offer forgiveness to myself as much as is possible in this moment. Stay present to whatever feelings, reactions, or pain comes up. Try to bring as much loving presence to yourself, to the feelings, and to the pain as possible. Say these phrases several times, slowly and genuinely, so you can let in whatever feelings may be present.
8. When you feel ready to end this meditation, slowly open your eyes, and gently move and stretch.

Know that when it comes to forgiving yourself, you may not, at first, feel much mercy at all. The key phrase in this practice is “as much as is possible in this moment.” We do the best we can to begin the slow, patient path of forgiveness. Learning to forgive takes time, sometimes years. So be patient as you weave a little forgiveness into your daily routine as a way of strengthening your capacity to forgive.

It is also important to remember that we do not do this forgiveness exercise to gloss over any harmful wrongdoing, past or present. We practice forgiveness while also taking full responsibility for what we did. And then we aspire to not repeat such behavior in the future.

Once you learn to do this in formal meditation, you can bring the phrases of forgiveness to mind wherever you are.

♦

Excerpted from the book Make Peace with Your Mind. Copyright © 2016 by Mark Coleman. Printed with permission from New World Library.  
This article was original published November 9, 2016.

The post Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

On the rainy evening of April 27, 2016, the State of Georgia executed Daniel Lucas. At age 37, he had spent almost half of his life in prison. When he was 19 years old, Daniel shot and killed an 11-year-old boy, the boy’s 15-year-old sister, and their father. But when I saw him on the day of his execution, he was no longer the same young man. He was an artist, poet, and accomplished Buddhist practitioner who had developed a network of dharma leaders and drawn supporters from around the world.

Daniel found me through that network. He had been looking for a preceptor with whom to take refuge and bodhisattva vows before he died, and someone put him in touch with me. I arranged for a senior teacher in my lineage, Shambhala Buddhism, to visit the prison and be preceptor for Daniel.

Then, after months of writing to Daniel, I decided to visit him.

He was a handsome young white man, meticulous about his appearance even in his prison uniform and very white sneakers (reserved for his infrequent visitations). He was courteous, shy, and soft-spoken. He was extremely knowledgeable about Buddhism, had been taking a rigorous correspondence course, and maintained a sophisticated meditation practice. After a while I started visiting him regularly, and for two hours every week, the two of us practiced meditation together and discussed the ways in which the dharma might be applied to reckoning with the past—even his past—and his present situation, the cruel environment of death row.

Daniel had no clear memory of the murders. He was homeless and sleeping in an abandoned car at the time. And when his accomplice, another 19-year-old, asked Daniel to join in a robbery, Daniel agreed. Then he took a handful of sedatives.

For a long time I had not wanted to know all the details of the crime. I wanted to be able to be there for Daniel in an uncomplicated way. But my husband, Dan, insisted that I know the facts of Daniel’s case, so I listened as he read to me one news article after another about the gruesome murders that had indeed been committed by the kind and gentle man I was coming to know.

On April 23, 1998, Daniel and his accomplice (who was executed in 2010) entered a house, robbed it, and left. Then, for some reason Daniel never could reconstruct, he and his accomplice returned to the house. By this time, the children had arrived home from school. The two young men tied the 15-year-old sister to a chair in the living room and brought the 11-year-old brother to a bedroom. It was never clear who did what, only that Daniel and his accomplice shot and killed these children. When the father came home, they shot and killed him too. Daniel remembers that he went to the car, retrieved a shotgun, came back, then shot each family member again before leaving. The mother arrived home to find her family murdered.

Before our first meeting, Daniel sent me a letter apologizing in advance for his social ineptitude, saying that he was much more comfortable communicating in writing than in person:

I must warn you that I am quite awkward and nervous in social situations. Communication and social interaction were not skills I developed growing up. I can write far better than I can speak.

It was true. When we met, Daniel was awkward, looking down and sitting on his hands. Even so, I noticed a lightness and brightness to him. Although his eye contact was fleeting, he smiled warmly, laughed, and nodded. This was not the depressing, uncomfortable experience that I had thought it might be.

As a child, Daniel was told outright that he was “a piece of shit.” He said, “I don’t remember having a single meaningful conversation with my parents. They never asked me about my life or taught me anything about life.” In solitary confinement, he saw for himself that he had a good mind and artistic talent. Nevertheless, he eventually came to feel that these skills did not amount to a life worth living, and they didn’t make it any easier to live with having done something terrible that he could never undo. He sank into depression and began to experience extreme physical pain.

It is easy to take for granted the ease with which dharma has become accessible today, but just four years ago, information and social exchanges were extremely restricted on death row in Georgia. There was no library, no Internet, no email, no cell phones, and even books were limited to only seven at a time.

Daniel Lucas had never heard of Buddhism. He was raised in rural Jones County outside of Macon, Georgia, and because his mother was constantly on the move fleeing abusive relationships, Daniel attended 19 schools before he dropped out entirely during his senior year of high school. Once he entered prison, he lived in one of four deathrow cell blocks, each of which had one TV positioned so that all the men on that block could see the same screen. A program was decided upon by rotation, and everyone had earplugs so that they could choose to listen or not. There was no cable.

To the disappointment of many, Daniel’s turn led mostly to PBS, where he got his first introduction to Buddhism from a program that showed Buddhist monks making a sand mandala. Everything about this was remarkable to him. He asked his one friend, a pen pal from England, to send him a book about the tradition. He followed the meditation instructions the book described and began to meditate every day, and his pain began to ease.

Over the next five years, Daniel developed a network of people who sent him books, teachings, and letters of support. This included prominent dharma masters from different Buddhist lineages and practitioners in their communities throughout the West and Asia. And eventually it included me as well.

When I first started learning more about the crime, I had badly wanted to place the blame on Daniel’s accomplice, or on his family for the abuse and neglect he had suffered, but Daniel took full responsibility for all he had done.

For many years, Daniel’s mother requested visitations, but he refused to see her. His father never even attempted to see him. His only consistent visitors were his grandparents, who came every Sunday until health issues prevented them from visiting him. After that, Daniel’s only visitors were his lawyers. Then, in 2014, Daniel’s parents asked to make a visitation together. They were each single again and practicing sobriety. This development gave Daniel hope, and by the time I met him, he was beginning to forgive his parents. Yes, they had failed him, but Daniel now saw his parents as people who had acted out of pain and unconsciousness.

As the final processes of Daniel’s case were drawing to a close, my husband and I went to visit the graves of Daniel’s victims. I stood before the gravestones and felt literally beside myself, as though one of me could not contain all the pain and sadness there was to hold. It was hard for my heart to accommodate the suffering of those who were killed, those who would be killed, and those who had survived to live with it.

Daniel had given me some words to say, but as I prepared to read them, I felt cut off, emotionally paralyzed. This was surely a futile gesture. Yet I knew that Daniel’s deep sorrow and remorse were real, and that the heavy burden of an interconnected reality had played out that day in April when the meaninglessness of his life spilled into the lives of others. I spoke Daniel’s words for him:

I am sorry. I practice and pray for you every day and keep you in my heart. I wish you peace. I wish for healing and for your forgiveness. I wish that when we meet again in future lives we will be healed so that we do not perpetuate harm to each other. May we bring only benefit to each other. I send you my love and my wish for your happiness. I wish you free from suffering.

Finally, after all legal appeals were denied, the date of execution was set. The last recourse was an appeal for clemency, which in Daniel’s case would be life in prison without parole. He was ambivalent about appealing. In one of his letters to me, Daniel wrote:

I have never given clemency much thought. I have lived most of my life in depression, having suicidal thoughts, and feeling like life wasn’t worth living. I haven’t felt that way in years, but I still can’t state positively that I want to live. I know that sounds bad. I don’t want to die either, but clemency presents some challenges. It would be like living in the hell realms for the rest of my life—where men beat, kill, and rape each other, steal, and use drugs. I wouldn’t have the freedom to practice dharma as I do now.

In addition to wondering about the prospect of a life in prison, there was another question that Daniel needed to grapple with: Did he deserve to have his life spared?

The buddhadharma is clear about this. All beings share the same innate buddhanature, the capacity to attain enlightenment. Nothing can change this. And although human beings are capable of and do unspeakable things, a person can wake up and change their outward manifestation to match the basic inner goodness that characterizes all human beings.

For most people this is hard to believe, and for Daniel it was especially hard. How can a murderer be basically good? To appreciate his worth he would need to look at who he presently was, including his values and his actions now. He would need to believe that his remorse and his resolve to live differently were all he could do, that these deep changes were powerful and were sufficient.

As his legal team continued pursuing clemency—they cared for Daniel too much to let go of the only thing that they could offer him—Daniel’s focus was elsewhere. To live his last remaining weeks and days working to save his life would, for him, be totally depressing. He considered preparing for his death to be the best use of his time, and he wanted to devote himself to his spiritual practice.

Winning his life for the purpose of benefiting others, however, was another matter—one that he was willing to work for. Daniel now understood himself to be someone who had something to offer other inmates consigned to a life of imprisonment, not necessarily as a Buddhist, but as a developed human being. He wanted to share the healing value of artistic expression. And he wanted to give the men on the clemency board an opportunity not to kill someone. Daniel insisted to his lawyers that he include in his hearing the fact that he was Buddhist, that he could not give an honest account of who he was without this acknowledgment. He was determined to do all he could to present himself as the good person he now believed himself to be, so that the board would know that if they voted to kill him, it was a good person they were killing.

The clemency hearing was a heartbreaking and intense proceeding.

Daniel’s father refused to wear the collared shirt bought for him by one of the team’s investigators; instead, he came as he typically dressed, in jeans and a T-shirt. But his long hair was in a ponytail, and he looked tidier than the disheveled-looking man I had first met when, at Daniel’s request, I met with his parents to get consent for his body to be cared for in a Buddhist manner and cremated.

His father moved exceedingly slowly to take his place at the podium. Bent over, he mostly stared at his hands as he spoke. He talked about the sweet child that Daniel had been. He did not elucidate the abuse and neglect that he and his second wife had visited upon Daniel, but he did say that he and Daniel’s mother were young high school dropouts when they had Daniel. He said he had not known how to be a parent or a spouse and, faced with responsibilities he could not rise to, he had abused drugs and alcohol. At the end of his testimony, Daniel’s father looked up at the panel of men and said: “Daniel can rightfully blame me for many things. But he never does. He never blames me.”

The board listened patiently, sometimes leaning back in their swivel chairs, facing the ceiling—maybe contemplating, maybe not. Their exchanges with Daniel’s mother and grandmother were kind, and they complimented the lawyers on their exceptional work. The only sticking point was Buddhism. I had prepared myself to speak about the influence Buddhism had on Daniel, and how his belief had changed his life. But I was unable to answer questions like why Daniel had chosen Buddhism rather than Christianity to the board’s satisfaction.

After three hours of this excruciating process, we drove to the prison and joined other friends and family who had gathered to spend what would possibly be Daniel’s last hours with him. He sat at the back of the visitation cell with three armed guards seated at the front. Another guard unlocked and relocked the heavy iron-bar doors separating the waiting room from the visitation cell. Five people were allowed in at a time, and Daniel coordinated the comings and goings of all of us. Those of us who had come from the clemency hearing recounted our experience to Daniel and the others. We could not help but feel hopeful; our task had been difficult, but we had done well.

I received the call at 7:30 p.m. Clemency had been denied.

The following day, the day of execution, everyone returned to see Daniel for the last time. We were there from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., laughing and crying, and we even did some singing. We put baggies of quarters around for the vending machines, our source of food for the day. Daniel asked small groups of us to be with him off and on for short periods of time. He seemed to know that we would need many chances to see him, many chances to say what we needed to say, and many last experiences of him. Daniel let the fondest memories of his childhood be told and retold; he let his mother wail; he let his family feed him vending machine honey buns and Cheetos until he couldn’t eat any more. I wondered if he would have room for the pizza that he’d requested as his last meal.

At 3:00 it was over. Everyone had to leave. I was permitted to stay with Daniel a half hour longer for his “last rites.” It went by so quickly, and we were deep into our practice and stunned when the guards interrupted us to tell us that our time was up. My last image of Daniel is seeing him seated in a circle of empty chairs, silent and dignified, as the guards approached him, cuffed him, and took him away.

Daniel was allowed only two witnesses for his execution. One was his lawyer, Lisa, and the other was me. We returned to the prison at 6 p.m. and waited with our “handlers.” As the time went slowly by, fearful anticipation welled up in me every now and then. There would be footsteps down the hall or the phone in our room would ring. I felt jolted each time and then a letdown as I realized that people were just checking in on us. Just how long could you hold off the future? Somewhere an appeal for a stay was underway, but I knew it would be denied. I wondered how Daniel was doing.

The call comes at about 9 p.m. I tell Lisa that I need to pull inward, and I sit in meditation while she sits in prayer. I hear our handlers talking to each other and then they finally quiet down for us. Before much longer, footsteps approach. They have come to take us.

A death row counselor tells us the rules: There is to be no loud sobbing, no communication out loud, nor any motions made to the inmate. Anyone who makes noise or movements will be removed. Complete silence must be maintained.

She tells Lisa, “Daniel expects you to be upset.” And then she says directly, “Don’t.” She gives Lisa a firm gaze and hands her some napkins to take in with her. “You can be sad. You can cry. But it will make it easier for him if you don’t.”

The counselor turns to me, saying only, “He expects you not to be upset.” I understand.

It’s cloudy and drizzling. Armed guards stop our van at several checkpoints. Bright lights bounce off the barbed wire. I feel like I might throw up. The two of us are the last of the witnesses to be escorted into the execution hall, where three rows of pews face a curtained window. We sit behind the victims’ witnesses, family members, and maybe their trial attorneys. The press is next to and behind us, and the walls are lined with suited men at attention. The curtain is drawn to reveal Daniel strapped to a gurney that is tilted with his head upward so that everyone watching can see his entire body and face. His arms are strapped to boards at either side, and in each arm an IV has been placed for the lethal injection. He is wrapped in white sheeting. He is expressionless. I bow my head, hoping that he will see my slight gesture. I am afraid to bow to him more fully, because I do not want to be removed. Our eyes lock.

The warden announces the rules of silence and the rule of law about to be carried out. He turns and asks Daniel if he wants to say last words. We had discussed this, and Daniel had initially planned to say nothing. He wanted to be engaged in meditation practice for the entire time in order to be clear-minded as he died. When the time came, though, Daniel chose to speak. His words were recorded by a witness for the Department of Corrections and appeared in some press accounts:

If the family of Mrs. ___ is present,
I want you to know how sorry
I am for all of the pain that I
caused you and your loved ones.
I want to say to my family, I am
sorry for the pain that I have
caused you. I love you.
I would like to say a short Buddhist prayer:
All beings are basically good.
All beings are basically wise.
All beings are basically kind.
All beings are basically strong.

The chaplain delivered a brief prayer and then stepped away. The warden quickly came forward and made a scripted announcement that sounded mostly like numbers referring to the law about to be carried out. And then, just as quickly, the warden was gone. I realized that the actual killing was beginning. I forced my mouth to move in an exaggerated way, hoping that Daniel would see this as I silently uttered the mantra that he and I agreed we would both be saying, Om Vajrasattva . . . , a prayer that acknowledges wrongdoings and asks for forgiveness and love.

Our eyes were still locked. His lips began moving. His eyes closed, opened, then closed for the last time. His lips stopped moving. Long minutes passed, and then two men in white coats entered and positioned themselves on either side of Daniel. They placed stethoscopes on his chest, lifted his eyelids, then nodded to each other and walked away. The warden stepped back onto the scene and made an announcement: Daniel Lucas died at 9:54 p.m. The curtain closed.

A light rain fell as we were all led back to our respective vans. Lisa and I were silent as we were driven to the prison entrance, where vigils had been going on. It was raining more heavily now. At the gate our group waited, holding umbrellas out for us.

The post The Execution of Daniel Lucas appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When we are held prisoner by our own past actions, or the actions of others, our present life cannot be fully lived. The resentment, the partially experienced pain, the unwelcome inheritance we carry from the past, all function to close our hearts and thereby narrow our worlds. 

The intention of forgiveness meditation is not to force anything, or to pretend to anything, or to forget about ourselves in utter deference to the needs of others. In fact, it is out of the greatest compassion for ourselves that we create the conditions for an unobstructed love, which can dissolve separation and relieve us of the twin burdens of lacerating guilt and perpetually unresolved outrage.

It is not so easy to access that place inside of us which can forgive, which can love. To be able to forgive is so deep a letting go that it is a type of dying. We must be able to say, “I am not that person anymore, and you are not that person anymore.”

Forgiveness does not mean condoning a harmful action, or denying injustice or suffering. It should never be confused with being passive toward violation or abuse. Forgiveness is an inner relinquishment of guilt or resentment, both of which are devastating to us in the end. As forgiveness grows within us, it may take any outward form: we may seek to make amends, demand justice, resolve to be treated better, or simply leave a situation behind us.

The sense of psychological and spiritual well-being that comes from practicing forgiveness comes directly because this practice takes us to the edge of what we can accept. As you do the reflections, many conflicted emotions may arise: shame, anger, a sense of betrayal, confusion, or doubt. Try to allow such states to arise without judging them. Recognize them as natural occurrences, and then gently return your attention to the forgiveness reflection.

Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and let your breath be natural and uncontrolled. Begin with the recitation (silent or not, as you prefer): “If I have hurt or harmed anyone, knowingly or unknowingly, I ask their forgiveness.” If different people, images, or scenarios come up, release the burden of guilt and ask for forgiveness: “I ask your forgiveness.”

After some time, you can offer forgiveness to those who have harmed you. Don’t worry if there is not a great rush of loving feeling; this is not meant to be an artificial exercise, but rather a way of honoring the powerful force of intention in our minds. We are paying respects to our ultimate ability to let go and begin again. We are asserting the human heart’s capacity to change and grow and love. “If anyone has hurt or harmed me, knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive them.” As different thoughts or images come to mind, continue the recitation, “I forgive you.”

In the end, we turn our attention to forgiveness of ourselves. If there are ways you have harmed yourself, or not loved yourself, or not lived up to your own expectations, this is the time to let go of unkindness toward yourself because of what you have done. You can include any inability to forgive others that you may have discovered on your part in the reflection immediately preceding—that is not a reason to be unkind to yourself. “For all of the ways I have hurt or harmed myself, knowingly or unknowingly, I offer forgiveness.”

Seeing Goodness

Since the proximate cause, or most powerful conditioning force, for metta to arise is seeing the good in someone, we make an effort to turn our attention to any good we can find in a difficult person. 

The first time I was given the instruction to look for one good quality in a person I found difficult, I rebelled. I thought, “That’s what superficial, gullible people do—they just look for the good in someone. I don’t want to do that!” As I actually did the practice, however, I discovered that it had an important and powerful effect. In fact, it was doing just what it was supposed to do: looking for the good in someone did not cover up any of the genuine difficulties I found with that person, but allowed me to relate to them without my habituated defensiveness and withdrawal.

There may be people who absolutely defy our ability to think of even one good thing about them. In that case, focus on the universal wish to be happy, which this difficult person also shares. All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others. 

The Difficult Person

As we come to sending metta to a person with whom we experience conflict, fear, or anger, we can reflect on this line from Rainer Maria Rilke: “Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something that needs our love.”

It is useful to begin with someone with whom the difficulty is relatively mild—not starting right away with the one person who has hurt us the most in this lifetime. When I was first practicing metta in Burma, I received the instruction to send metta to a benefactor repeatedly, for about three weeks. The whole time I was frustrated, thinking, “Why am I spending all this time sending metta to someone I already love? That’s easy—I should be sending metta to my worst enemy. That’s the only kind of love that really counts.” I expressed some of this to U Pandita, who laughed and said, “Why do you want to do things in the hardest way possible?” This practice is not meant to induce suffering, though it may reveal it. If a particular person has harmed us so grievously that it is very difficult to include them in the field of our loving care, then we approach sending them metta slowly, with a lot of care and compassion for ourselves.

In order to begin to develop metta toward a person with whom we have problems, we must first separate our vision of the person from the actions they commit that may upset or harm us. In developing metta, we put aside the unpleasant traits of such a being and try instead to get in touch with the part of them that deserves to be loved.

Perhaps you can most easily feel metta for the person if you imagine them as a vulnerable infant, or on their deathbed (but not with eager anticipation—be careful). You should allow yourself to be creative, daring, even humorous, in imagining situations where you can more readily feel kindness toward a difficult person. As the strength of our metta grows, we can eventually reach a place where we sincerely extend wishes of well-being to the difficult people in our lives, even while we work to counter their actions and activities of which we disapprove.

Sit comfortably, and start with directing the metta phrases toward yourself, enveloping yourself with your own loving care. After some time, direct the phrases toward a benefactor, then a friend. If you have found a neutral person, you can then include them. You should turn your attention to the difficult person only after spending some time sending metta toward yourself and to those you find it relatively easy to feel metta for. If you can, contemplate one good thing about them. If you can’t, remember that this person, just like ourselves, wishes to be happy, and makes mistakes out of ignorance. If saying, “May you be free from danger, may you be happy,” brings up too much fear or sense of isolation for you, you can include yourself in the recitation: “May we be free from danger. May we be happy.”

Gently continue to direct metta toward the difficult person, and accept the different feelings that may come and go. There may be sorrow, grief, anger—allow them to pass through you. If they become overwhelming, go back to sending metta to yourself or a good friend. You can also try to hold those feelings in a different perspective. A classic one is to ask yourself, “Who is the one suffering from this anger? The person who has harmed me has gone on to live their life, while I am the one sitting here feeling the persecution, burning, and constriction of anger. Out of compassion for myself, to ease my own heart, may I let go.”

Another reflection is done by turning your mind to the suffering of the difficult person, rather than viewing their actions only as bad or wrong. When we feel anger, fear, or jealousy, if we feel open to the pain of these states rather than feeling disgraced by their arising, then we will have compassion for ourselves. When we see others lost in states of anger and fear, and we remember how painful those states are, we can have compassion for those people as well.

When you can, return to directing the metta phrases toward the difficult person. You can go back and forth between yourself, a friend, the reflections, and the difficult person.

You may find yourself expressing greater lovingkindness in actual life situations before you experience a greater depth of loving feeling in your formal meditation practice. Sometimes in difficult encounters there is more patience than before, more willingness to listen than before, and more clarity than before. 

Be patient with yourself in this practice, and try not to hold rigid expectations of what you should be experiencing. When we have rigid expectations, we can feel a great sense of helplessness if those expectations are not quickly met. We see our actions as being fruitless, not going anywhere, and we get lost in contempt or self-condemnation. We can always return to the intention to care for ourselves and for all beings. 

Beginning again and again is the actual practice, not a problem to be overcome so that one day we can come to the “real” meditation.

♦

From Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg © 1995 by Sharon Salzberg. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

The post How to Forgive: A Meditation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” According to chapter 23, verse 34 of the Gospel of Luke, these were the words of Jesus Christ as he looked down from the cross upon his persecutors, imploring God to absolve them of their sins. This biblical quote is not infrequently called forth to reassure victims of attack that their assailants are fundamentally ignorant of the gravity of their crimes, and, therefore, should be pardoned—spiritually, at least. However, there is yet another interpretation, a textual one that places as much emphasis on the weight of the sin as on mercy for the sinner.

The call for forgiveness—directed at God in the Bible, though advised for all beings no less—is not merely a plea to soften a heart hardened by bitterness and resentment. Forgiveness, rather, is also an inextricable consequence of one underlying cause—and that is bloodshed. “Without the shedding of blood,” as stated in Hebrews 9.22, “there is no forgiveness.” When Jesus implored God from the cross, he was not only calling for compassion but was also speaking into existence something that had already been prophesied: the New Testament, the new covenant between God and man. This new covenant was, indeed, a blood covenant, one whereby Jesus sacrificed his life so that—with his shed blood—God would cleanse man of his sins.

It was this grittier and bloody sense of forgiveness that I had in mind when reading Grace Will Lead Us Home, by Jennifer Berry Hawes, an award-winning reporter who chronicled the afterlives of survivors of the 2015 Charleston massacre. Americans across the entire country know that Dylann Roof, a young white supremacist, shot and killed nine men and women attending Bible study in the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and that survivors of the shooting and many family members of the murdered parishioners have been widely hailed for announcing that they forgave Roof for his horrific act. What has received far less attention, however, is the continued pain and grief of those who summoned the strength to forgive. Hawes’s reportage chronicles the survivors’ lives in the aftermath of the shooting, drawing forth in her closely rendered portrayal a portrait of forgiveness that refuses to overshadow the brutality of Roof ’s crime.

In Hawes’s telling there is, of course, eventually grace; but first there is blood. After Roof took out his Glock and targeted Bible study attendees, “warm blood seeped onto the bare skin of Felicia [Sanders’s] legs.” As Sanders’s son tried to reach for his great aunt, who also lay gravely injured on the ground, “blood from his wounds spilled onto his white T-shirt and smeared onto the white floor.” After Roof had fled and police had safeguarded the area, “a thick pool of blood and paramedics’ trash were all that remained of Reverend Simmons on the green carpet runner after medical crews hauled him into an ambulance.” After hours of wearily withstanding police questioning, Felicia Sanders finally returned home, removed her clothing, and entered the shower, where “the blood of her son and aunt swirled into the water and then vanished down the drain.”

Later, Sanders did manage to retrieve one thing from the massacre—her Bible. A police lieutenant had fished it out of a biohazard storage unit, bullet-pierced and blood-soaked. He had the Bible professionally restored and returned it to Felicia, who opened its cover to find that “a pinkish hue now tinted the gossamer paper inside.” Her Bible, rehabilitated yet stained, is not only the source for the forgiveness she mustered but is also symbolic of the violence from which her forgiveness is inextricable.

Yet even after all this blood was shed, what followed indeed foreshadowed a recent courtroom scene, wherein Brandt Jean forgave and hugged Amber Guyger—a white female police officer who shot and killed his brother of Saint Lucian origin in his Dallas apartment, which Guyger had mistaken for her own. Relatives of the nine slain victims rose—one by one—to speak at Roof ’s bond hearing. God forgives you. And I forgive you. And my family forgives you. … May God have mercy on your soul.

This display of grace captured both the media’s attention and the political imagination. “Grace,” in fact, was the refrain of the eulogy delivered by the then president Obama at the funeral of State Senator Clementa Pinckney—a speech that, in itself, was a stark reminder of an alternate universe not yet inundated by Donald Trump. Citing the “long history of bombs and arson and shots fired” at black churches, Obama praised the show of grace, which thwarted the killer’s attempt to “deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin.” The sin to which Obama referred was slavery, codified in a Constitution that bound the relative freedom of white men to the bondage of black slaves. Indeed, just as blood sealed the covenant between God and man, so has blood sealed—and continues to seal—the covenant between state and citizen.

South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, for her part, praised the people of Charleston for demonstrating forgiveness rather than “hate and retaliation,” noting the absence of riots following this massacre as well as the earlier police shooting of Walter Scott, gunned down by officer Michael Slager in April 2015. Indeed, the specter of violent insurrection haunts the celebration of forgiveness, as implied by Hawes’s repeated references to Denmark Vesey, leader of a foiled slave rebellion in the city of Charleston and one of the original founders of Emanuel AME Church. Where forgiveness arises as a response to bloodshed, revolt still looms as an unfulfilled promise.

Remarkably, Haley soon availed of the tragedy and mobilized sufficient political support to have the Confederate flag—a prominent talisman among Roof ’s symbolic armor—removed from the State House. The long debate over whether the Confederate flag represented “honor and bravery” or “slavery and oppression” seemed to have been won—for the time being.

Forgiveness, in Hawes’s narration, is an inspiring display of compassion, strength, and, yes, grace. It is, in the words she cites by James Cone, father of Black Liberation Theology, “a form of deep spiritual resistance” that empowers the aggrieved. To an extent, this perspective aligns with Buddhist practice, if we consider holding on to thoughts of unforgiveness to be a form of delusion that blocks one from reaching nirvana—a state of total emancipation from suffering. Forgiveness, then, is ultimately self-empowering as well as self-purifying for those forced to contend with the question whether to extend it.

Nonetheless, as evidenced by the social media censure of Brandt Jean’s display, many detractors doubt whether forgiveness actually extinguishes, rather than suppresses, fury—which, as with the riots feared by states, is often conveniently bypassed among those who readily celebrate models of grace. The question, then, always arises whether forgiveness is truly authentic or mere icing layered on a cake saturated with rage.

The post Forgiving Grace appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Let me say, right at the start, that I am not going to be diplomatic. The extent to which the notion of forgiveness has insinuated itself into contemporary Buddhist thinking disturbs me deeply. Although many may disagree with me, I feel that current interpretations of forgiveness in the Buddhist community undermine the teachings of karma, encourage the cult of victimhood, weaken human relationships, and obfuscate the practice of purification.

In contemporary Buddhist settings, forgiveness is interpreted in several ways. One is as a way of letting go of our expectations and disappointments in others—in other words, letting go of our attachment to a different past. Another interpretation is as an extension of lovingkindness. In the Tibetan tradition, it is sometimes presented as an extension of patience or of compassion. These are all key practices, and they appear in virtually every Buddhist tradition, but to call them forgiveness? Well, that may be unforgivable. As Idries Shah writes in Knowing How to Know: A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition, when you adopt the methods developed in another culture, those methods and the ways of thinking associated with them eventually take over, and you lose touch with your own understanding and training. In the same way, by importing the foreign (to Buddhism) notion of forgiveness, contemporary Buddhists are unwittingly importing a very different system of thought and practice and undermining the powerful mystical practices in Buddhism that may have inspired them in the first place.

These various interpretations of forgiveness all overlook the fact that the meaning of forgiveness is grounded in the language of debt. In days of yore (and, in some cultures, not so yore), when I impugned your honor, I incurred an obligation to you, a debt that had to be paid somehow. From there, the notion developed that when I do any kind of wrong, to you or anyone else, I have incurred a debt, to you or to society or to God. When we view interactions with others in terms of debt, we are, wittingly or unwittingly, reducing our relationships with others to transactions. Human feeling, human understanding, human empathy all go out the door. “I owe you” or “You owe me” now becomes the defining expression of the relationship.

Whether the debt is a debt of honor or a material debt, if I am in debt to you and am unable or unwilling to honor the debt, you can choose to use whatever power you have to compel me to make good on what I owe, or you can choose to forgive the debt. In today’s world, the person owed has a certain moral power supported by custom, the law or the state. As the American anthropologist David Graeber writes in Debt: The First 5,000 Years, “There’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong.”

Forgiveness releases me from my obligation to you and from the threat that you will bring those instruments of power to bear on the issue. In this sense, forgiveness is itself an exercise of that power. In the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, the four kinds of awakened activity (pacification, enrichment, magnetization, and destruction) provide an effective template for meeting conflict. One begins by trying to talk things out, and if that doesn’t work, then one brings in additional resources—time, money, a mediator, and so on. If those efforts fail, one may try to compel a resolution, but if that is not possible, the only course of action that remains is to sever or destroy the dynamic in the relationship that gave rise to the conflict. Forgiveness represents the implementation of the fourth stage—destruction. All other efforts at resolution having failed, we make the unilateral decision that the only way to be free from the shadow that the debt casts in our own life is to forgive the debt.

There is no grace in the operation of karma, just as there is no grace in the operation of gravity. The only way to stop the evolution of reactive patterns is to change our relationship with those patterns.

Such self-interested motivation is hardly awakened activity. Awakened activity is exclusively motivated by the wish to help others awaken (bodhicitta). The self-interest implicit in this exercise of power reinforces attachment to a sense of self. As taught by some Western Theravada teachers, this self-interest is made quite explicit: people are encouraged to practice forgiveness to make themselves feel better. For me, at least, such interpretations go against the basic tenets of Buddhist practice. 

Related: Three Ways to Practice Forgiveness 

The act of forgiveness changes the relationship. It does not go back to what it was before. Something necessarily comes to an end. Consider what happens with a bank loan. As long as I owe money to a bank, the bank and I are tied together. When the bank forgives the loan and writes it off, I am free to live my life without the threat of collection, foreclosure, or court action, and the bank frees itself from any further obligation to collect on the debt. The relationship between the bank and me with respect to the loan is ended. To forgive the loan is to end the relationship. This is one of the overlooked aspects of forgiveness—the dynamic in the relationship that tied the two parties together no longer holds. It is gone.

Forgiveness is also a way for you to step out of the transactional framework that has reduced our relationship to what is or is not owed. In this sense, forgiveness is about returning to the human quality in our relationship, but the power to do so still rests with you, not with me. 

Because of this essential power imbalance, it is easy for me to regard myself as a victim, a victim of circumstance, a victim of your harshness or callousness, or a victim of societal or state power. Victimhood is always a temptation because the status of victim releases me from any moral or social obligation. Ironically, when you forgive my debt, you may reinforce my identity as a victim  (which is precisely what the political right complains about).

All these aspects of forgiveness are often overlooked when people talk about forgiveness. To come closer to a measure of understanding, take a few minutes now and consider: What do you really mean when you say to someone, “I forgive you”? 

What about personal responsibility and forgiveness? When you forgive me, you allow me to go on with my life without the burden of obligation. Others will see you as compassionate, and I will usually be grateful. But your forgiveness on its own does not and cannot do anything about whatever I did to incur the debt in the first place. That is out of your hands. 

One of the central principles of karma is that no one can intervene in the way my actions evolve in me, not even a buddha. Only I can do something about that, through purification practice or other means. In Christianity, where the notion of forgiveness is central, the picture is quite different. Even here, the language of forgiveness operates in strange ways. When God forgives our sins, which are regarded as debts incurred to God, it does not mean that our relationship with God is over. On the contrary, it means that the relationship has been restored. But this restoration is possible only because of God’s grace (again, the power element), and God’s grace can enter only a mind that is sincere in its remorse. The words of Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet speak to such sincerity:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; 
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

And the words of the hymn “Amazing Grace” speak to the entrance of God’s grace:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

When God’s grace enters a sincere mind, through the action of grace that person is freed from the reactivity that gave rise to the original transgression. But this direct intervention by a higher power into the mindstream of another person is not a Buddhist notion. You may forgive me—that is to say, you may forgive the supposed debt I owe because of my transgression. It may well be that by saying to me that you do not hold the transgression against me, you help me come to terms with the reactive process within myself. Yet it is still up to me to work through the reactive patterns that gave rise to that transgression. 

In the Protestant context, the picture is a bit different. With the elimination in all but name of the mystery of God, forgiveness has evolved to a social protocol that functions to restore a sense of connection when a break or disruption has occurred. It would be easy for me to understand forgiveness in this context as an application or extension of lovingkindness, compassion, or patience, though in doing so, I would be ignoring the intrinsic power dynamic that lurks just beneath the surface of social interaction.

My concern here is that in today’s world, many people who practice Buddhism seem to feel that when someone forgives them, they have been absolved and the matter ends there. Forgiveness in their minds completes the transaction, albeit not as it would have ended if the debt had been paid. No mention is made of the power of grace, and not many individuals would claim that power for themselves.  Karma does not work that way, however.

Karma is not based in transactions. It is based in evolution. Patterns of behavior set in motion by our actions in the world continue to evolve and shape our perception and predispositions. That process does not stop until we change our relationship with those patterns. As the 11th-century Tibetan teacher Gampopa wrote in The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, “Samsara is notorious for being without end.” There is no grace in the operation of karma, just as there is no grace in the operation of gravity. The only way to stop the evolution of reactive patterns is to change our relationship with those patterns. And that is what purification is about. 

In Buddhist thinking, the analogy of dirt is used to understand how such actions affect us. When I do harm to you, I set in motion a process that will ripen in time in my own experience. I have, as it were, introduced some dirt, some impurity, into my experience of life. Purification is about removing that impurity so that it does not fester and generate problems in my stream of experience. 

Related: Three Tactics from the Buddha to Forgive without Feeling Defeated 

One set of traditional teachings on purification is called the four forces: regret, reliance, remedy, and resolution [see below]. Regret (or remorse) means to acknowledge the harm or wrong we have done, to know we have done wrong and to regret it. Reliance means to renew our connection with spiritual values. Remedy means to do what we can to remedy the harm or wrong or, if that is not possible, to do some good, not as compensation (let alone penance), but to set the evolution of habits in a different direction. Finally, resolution means to stop feeding the inner patterns that moved us to do that harm.

Apology is part of the third force, remedy. An apology can do much to mitigate the harm done and to set things in a more constructive direction. Even in serious medical situations, when a doctor does something wrong, in many cases what the aggrieved party wants most of all is a sincere apology. To know that the doctor knows he or she did something wrong and sincerely regrets it may put patients at ease, if only because now they have some confidence that no one else will suffer the same fate. 

What constitutes a sincere apology? A sincere apology consists of an admission and expression of regret not for the results of an action but for the action itself. Feel the difference between the words “I’m sorry if I offended you” and “I’m sorry I spoke harshly to you,” or even “I’m sorry—that was insensitive on my part.” In the latter two versions, I am acknowledging my action. I am not making the apology conditional on your state of mind. We can only take responsibility for our actions and the intention motivating our actions. 

Purification in the spiritual sense is about creating the conditions for reactive patterns to release themselves. More than this we cannot do. If we try to let go of a pattern directly, the survival mechanism on which the pattern is based goes into operation and the pattern is usually reinforced, not released. In neurological terms, purification often involves creating the conditions in which an experience from the past can move from intrinsic memory to narrative memory. The key capacity necessary for that transition is to be able to experience in open awareness the emotional material associated with what happened. All purification practices do precisely this. Some practices use ritual as a way to create a space for that material to be experienced without acting it out or reliving it. Other practices make use of specific behaviors to create that space for awareness. Still others use visualizations (deity practice in the Tibetan tradition, for instance), or powerful positive emotions (lovingkindness, compassion, joy, or equanimity). Through such practices, we experience what we could not or would not experience before, and our relationship with those reactive emotions change. They become experiences, and they no longer run the show. That shift changes everything.

Needless to say, the path of purification is not easy. It involves experiencing precisely what we have always ignored or suppressed. For instance, the Tibetan practice called tonglen, or “taking and sending,” extends and deepens our relationship with compassion. In this practice, we imagine taking in the pain, illness, negativity, confusion, and ignorance of others, freeing them from those afflictions, and then sending to them the joy, health, goodness, good fortune, well-being, and understanding that we experience in our own lives, giving it all away so that they may enjoy it, too. Practitioners are often surprised a few months into this practice by the deep and difficult emotions they find themselves experiencing in reaction to taking in pain and negativity. Understandably, they would prefer simply to be forgiven for their own negativity and to continue to repress their own pain.

One final point: purification is not about being pure. Purification is about changing our relationship with the reactive patterns that run our lives. Purity, on the other hand, is a spiritual ideal. Many religious traditions and many practices have been built around purity, usually by taking a practice of purification to an extreme and idealizing a hypothetical end state. However, the idealization of purity is a pattern based on a deep and often unacknowledged aversion to dirt. Sadly, unless open awareness plays a role in the practice (specifically by bringing acceptance and equanimity into the picture), every effort made to avoid dirt reinforces the aversion at the core of this pattern.

As I wrote at the beginning of this piece, forgiveness is a notion foreign to Buddhism. Many Asian teachers do not understand the nuances of forgiveness in Western usage, and they naively associate or equate it with teachings and practices with which they are deeply familiar. On the other hand, few Western teachers take time to consider, let alone understand, the Abrahamic resonances that color their interpretations of Buddhism. 

Buddhism has sometimes been viewed as a science, an equivalence that was promoted in the late 19th century in an attempt to establish the legitimacy of Buddhist thought in the minds of the Western colonialists who occupied Asia. But it is not a science. Its objectives and methods are completely different. More recently, Buddhism has often been presented as a psychology or psychotherapy—again, an attempt to translate Buddhist thought into Western idiom. But it is not a form of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy’s aims are cultural. Buddhism’s aims are soteriological. Today, as Buddhism becomes more and more part of the spiritual landscape of Western culture, it risks being taken over by indigenous Western spiritual perspectives. For this reason, I encourage all those who find inspiration in Buddhism—teacher, student, monk or nun, working stiff or retreatant—to take care to understand, practice, and present Buddhism on its own terms, in its own vocabulary, so that all who seek a path of freedom as exemplified by the Buddha may find it. 

The four forces: regret, reliance, remedy, and resolution 

Regret means that we admit what we did and acknowledge the harmful consequences of our action. The intention of regret is to remove any defense or justification of the action in our mind. In Buddhism, nonvirtuous actions are regarded as negative because they grow into unpleasant and painful experiences, not because they violate an authority or law. Therefore, regret does not involve guilt. Suppose you unwittingly drink a glass of poison and learn right afterward that what you drank is poisonous. You haven’t violated a law. You don’t feel guilt, but you do feel regret because you will suffer from the poison. Reliance means that we renew our connection with spiritual practice, whether it be through devotion, compassion, awareness, or presence. Most of what we do that is negative happens when we fall out of attention and mindfulness. Reliance means that we deliberately reestablish our practice so that the conditions for negative action are no longer present in us. Remedy means that we act in a way that disrupts the operation of the pattern behind the negative action. If we can, we correct the negative action—apologize, make restitution, or make amends. If we cannot remedy the action itself, then we undertake a positive action with the explicit intention to remedy the negative—make a donation to charity, do some community service, help a friend, or better, help someone we don’t like. Remedying does not by itself remove the patterns of negativity established by the negative action, but the introduction of a positive dynamic changes the way the action develops into experienced results. Resolution means to form the intention not to act that way again. As long as we retain the slightest sense that we might repeat the action, the patterns associated with that action have a place to grow and develop. To stop the karmic process from evolving further, we renounce completely any defense of the action and any intention to act that way again. The resolution we make irrevocably commits us to cutting through the pattern and doing something different whenever that issue arises in the future.

Adapted from Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention © 2002. Reprinted courtesy HarperOne.

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The sense of psychological and spiritual well-being that comes from practicing forgiveness comes directly because this practice takes us to the edge of what we can accept. Being on the edge is challenging, wrenching, and transforming. The process of forgiveness demands courage and a continual remembering of where our deepest happiness lies. As Goethe said, “Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies show us what we must do.”

It is indeed a process, which means that as you do the reflections, many conflicted emotions may arise: shame, anger, a sense of betrayal, confusion, or doubt. Try to allow such states to arise without judging them. Recognize them as natural occurrences, and then gently return your attention to the forgiveness reflection.

The reflection is done in three parts: asking forgiveness from those you have harmed; offering forgiveness to those who have harmed you; and offering forgiveness to yourself. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and let your breath be natural and uncontrolled. Begin with the recitation (silent or not, as you prefer): “If I have hurt or harmed anyone, knowingly or unknowingly, I ask their forgiveness.” If different people, images, or scenarios come up, release the burden of guilt and ask for forgiveness: “I ask your forgiveness.”

After some time, you can offer forgiveness to those who have harmed you. Don’t worry if there is not a great rush of loving feeling; this is not meant to be an artificial exercise, but rather a way of honoring the powerful force of intention in our minds. We are paying respects to our ultimate ability to let go and begin again. We are asserting the human heart’s capacity to change and grow and love. “If anyone has hurt or harmed me, knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive them.” And, as different thoughts or images come up mind, continue the recitation, “I forgive you.”

Related: Dharma Talk: The Power of Forgiveness: Forgiving Ourselves and Others

In the end, we turn our attention to forgiveness of ourselves. If there are ways you have harmed yourself, or not loved yourself, or not lived up to your own expectations, this is the time to let go of unkindness toward yourself because of what you have done. You can include any inability to forgive others that you may have discovered on your part in the reflection immediately preceding—that is not a reason to be unkind to yourself. “For all of the ways I have hurt or harmed myself, knowingly or unknowingly, I offer forgiveness.”

Continue this practice as a part of your daily meditation, and allow the force of intention to work in its own way, in its own time.

♦

From Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg © 1995 by Sharon Salzberg. Foreword © 1995 by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

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Forgiveness is not simple. When we have been harmed, hurt, betrayed, abandoned, or abused, forgiveness can often seem to be out of the question. And yet, unless we find some way to forgive, we will hold that hatred and fear in our hearts forever. Imagine what the world would be like without forgiveness. Imagine what it would be like if every one of us carried every single hurt, every single resentment, all the anger that came up, when we felt betrayed. If we just kept that in our hearts and never let it go, it would be unbearable. Without forgiveness, we’re forced to carry the sufferings of the past. As Jack Kornfield says, “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.” In that sense, forgiveness is really not about someone’s harmful behavior; it’s about our own relationship with our past. When we begin the work of forgiveness, it is primarily a practice for ourselves.

Maha Ghosananda, a Theravada monk who was known as “the Gandhi of Cambodia,” used to lead dhammayietra (“pilgrimage of truth”) walks in the early 1990s, after peace accords ending the civil war between the Khmer Rouge and the new Cambodian government had been signed. When Maha Ghosananda died in 2007 at the age of 78, an obituary in The Economist detailed his experiences walking through Cambodia after the war: He often found war still raging. Shells screamed over the walkers, and firefights broke out round them. Some were killed. The more timid ran home, but Ghosananda had chosen his routes deliberately to pass through areas of conflict. Sometimes the walkers found themselves caught up in long lines of refugees, footsore like them, trudging alongside oxcarts and bicycles piled high with mattresses and pans and live chickens. “We must find the courage to leave our temples,” Ghosananda insisted, “and enter the suffering-filled temples of human experience.”

Now, though the Khmer Rouge had outlawed nostalgia, had razed the monasteries and thrown the mutilated Buddha statues into the rivers, old habits stirred. As they caught Ghosanada’s chant, “Hate can never be appeased by hate; hate can only be appeased by love,” soldiers laid down their arms and knelt by the side of the road. Villagers brought water to be blessed and plunged glowing incense sticks into it to signal the end of war. . . He could not stay out of the world. Rather than devoting himself to monastic scholarship, he built hut-temples in the refugee camps.

Maha Ghosananda built those temples even though he was told by the remnants of the Khmer Rouge that if he dared to open these temples he would be killed. As thousands of refugees arrived at the temples, Maha Ghosanada handed out dog-eared photocopies of the Buddha’s Metta Sutta:

With a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world,
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depth.

This story is a powerful reminder of what forgiveness can do. Maha Ghosananda’s family was wiped out by the Khmer Rouge, and during their reign Buddhist monks were labeled as social parasites. They were defrocked, forced into labor fields, or murdered: out of 60,000 monks, only 3,000 remained in Cambodia after the war. But despite all that he had suffered during the Khmer Rouge regime, Maha Ghosananda was able to find forgiveness in his heart.

In order to cultivate a truly loving and kind heart, we need to develop the practices that cultivate and strengthen forgiveness and the natural compassion within us.

Forgiveness releases us from the power of fear and allows us to see kindly with a wise heart. First, we need to understand forgiveness: then we learn how it is practiced, and then how we may forgive ourselves and others. The Buddha said, “If it were not possible to free the heart from entanglement and greed, hate, fear, and delusion, I would not teach you or ask you to do so.” The power of forgiveness releases us from the power of fear. Our practice of lovingkindness can be enhanced by our practice of forgiveness, because it allows us to see with kind eyes and to rest in a wise and peaceful heart. In any moment, we can learn to let go of hatred and fear and rest in peace and forgiveness—it’s never, ever too late. But in order to cultivate a truly loving and kind heart, we need to develop the practices that cultivate and strengthen forgiveness and the natural compassion within us. Our ability to forgive allows us to make space for our ability to meet suffering—our suffering as well as the suffering of others—with a kind heart.

Forgiveness does not gloss over what has happened in a superficial way. The practice is not about planting a smile on our face and saying, “It’s okay. I don’t mind.” It’s not a misguided effort to suppress our pain or to ignore it. If you’ve suffered a great injustice, coming to forgiveness may include a long process of grief and outrage and sadness and loss and pain. Forgiveness is a deep process, which is repeated over and over and over again in our hearts. It honors the grief and it honors the betrayal. And in its own time, it ripens into the freedom to truly forgive. And if we look honestly at our own lives, we can see the sorrows and pain that have led to our own wrongdoing. We’re not just victims; sometimes we also need to be forgiven. And in this way we can finally extend forgiveness to ourselves and hold the pain that we have caused in the heart of compassion. Without such mercy we would live in isolation or in exile.

As you do the following forgiveness practices, let yourself feel whatever small or large release there is in your heart. Or if there is no release, notice that too. And if you are not ready to forgive, that’s all right. Sometimes the process of forgiveness takes a lifetime, and that’s perfectly fine. You can unfold in your own time and in your own way. We’re not trying to manufacture some kind of feeling, so if all you can muster is the understanding that harm was done, that’s perfectly okay. Emotions will come not because we force them to but because they’re there, because they’re an expression of some deep feeling inside. So if as a result of the harm, there were ways in which your heart closed or your feelings closed, you can acknowledge that too as part of the harm. Whatever you feel, you feel. And whatever you don’t feel, you don’t feel. Forgiveness is an attitude of welcoming and inviting and spaciousness rather than some emotion that we pump up in our bodies and minds and hearts.

We practice with the faith that as we do the repetitions, the body, mind, and heart learn. That’s the beauty of these practices, we learn that we’re not in control of the fruits of our practice, but we are in control of how we do the practice—whether we do it with patience and diligence and determination and wisdom and effort and energy. We’re not in control of how it then manifests in our life. We’re not trying to make anything happen, because in the trying to make something happen, we will miss the beauty and the delight of what does happen.

Forgiveness Practice

This practice of forgiveness comes in three parts: forgiveness from others, forgiveness for ourselves, and forgiveness for those who have hurt or harmed us. This is not a coercive practice, so if we feel that we don’t want to ask for forgiveness, then we don’t have to. If we think we can’t forgive ourselves, we can sit quietly and see if there’s any small, even tiny little opening in our hearts that can allow just the smallest amount of light to come in. And if we feel that we can’t extend forgiveness to others because we think that something is completely unforgivable, then we can know that too. During this practice we reflect on whatever resentment or bitterness we’re holding onto and how that is working in our own hearts. And if you think that there is just a tiny little amount that you can forgive, then that’s fine too. This is a deep, unfolding process that can take a lifetime to work through.

You may not want to take on the largest thing that you’ve not been willing to forgive up to now, but maybe you can address some small offenses. Let your heart get some exercise in forgiveness. You want to start with something that isn’t quite so overwhelming and allow the heart to begin to exercise. It’s like exercising a muscle in our bodies. We don’t start with the 500-pound weight. We start maybe with a couple of small barbells, and we work with those to get the muscle going. And then eventually it may be strong enough to take up heavier and heavier weights. In the same way, with forgiveness practice, you may want to start small.

Sit comfortably and allow the eyes to close and the breath to be natural and easy. Let the body and the mind relax. Feel your connection to the earth. Breathe gently into your whole body, especially into your heart.

As you’re breathing, feel all the barriers that you’ve erected and the emotions you’ve carried because you haven’t forgiven yourself or others. Let yourself feel the pain of keeping your heart closed.

Forgiveness from Others

As you are breathing into your heart and feeling any hardness there, repeat silently to yourself, “There are many ways that I have hurt or harmed others. And I remember them now. Ways that I have betrayed, abandoned, or caused suffering, knowingly or unknowingly, out of my pain, fear, anger, or confusion.” Let yourself remember and visualize the ways you have hurt others. See pain that you may have caused with your own fear and confusion. Sense that you can finally release this burden and ask for forgiveness. Take as much time as you need to picture the memory that burdens your heart. And as each person comes to mind, just gently say, “I ask for your forgiveness. I ask for your forgiveness.”

Forgiveness for Ourselves

To ask forgiveness for yourself, repeat silently, “Just as I have caused suffering to others, there are many ways that I have hurt and harmed myself. I have betrayed or abandoned myself many times in thought, word, or deed, knowingly or unknowingly.” Let yourself remember the ways that you have harmed yourself. And extend forgiveness for each act of harm, one by one. “For the ways that I have hurt myself through action or inaction, out of fear, pain, and confusion, I now extend a full and heartfelt forgiveness. I forgive myself. I forgive myself. I forgive myself.”

Forgiveness for Those Who Have Hurt or Harmed Us

To extend forgiveness to those who have hurt or harmed you, repeat, “There are many ways I have been harmed by others, abused or abandoned, knowingly or unknowingly, by thought, word, or deed.” Picture the ways you have felt harmed. Remember them. We’ve each been betrayed. Let yourself remember the ways that this may have been true for you, and feel the sorrow you have carried from the past. And now, sense that it’s possible to release this burden by extending forgiveness gradually as your heart is ready. Don’t force it; every harm does not have to be forgiven in one sitting. The point is to exercise in a very small way something that you think you are ready to forgive right now. Gently repeat to yourself, “I remember the many ways that I have been hurt, wounded, or harmed. And I know that it was out of another’s pain, confusion, fear, anger. I have carried this pain in my heart long enough. To the extent that I am ready, I offer you forgiveness. You who have caused me harm, I offer my heartfelt forgiveness. I forgive you.”

These three practices for forgiveness may be gently repeated until you feel a release in your heart. For some great pain you may not feel a release. Instead, you may experience again the burden or the anger that you’re holding onto. If that is the case, then you can just touch this softly. Be forgiving of yourself for not being ready to let it go, and move on.

The post The Power of Forgiveness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Walking along the Rhine River during my lunch break from teaching yoga in Basel, Switzerland, I felt mellow and full of gratitude to have such a wonderful job opportunity. Then my phone started to vibrate. Instantly my mood shifted, and a powerful sense of urgency took hold of me. It was like a Rube Goldberg chain reaction—I was balancing a cappuccino in one hand, fighting an uncooperative purse zipper with the other, trying to keep my glasses on my nose, and worrying that someone was calling from my mother’s nursing home.

As my phone rang a thought flashed through my mind: “Since everybody who knows me knows I am in Europe and there is a five-hour time difference, this must be important and I’d better answer!” My life was built on the idea that taking care of my mom and my students and my business and my friends and my dog must come before my own needs, including the needs for space, peacefulness, and quiet appreciation of life.

I realized I was working myself into a dither by letting my phone be the boss of me. And why? Out of sheer habit. My need to answer the phone was part of an automatic-pilot way of thinking that told me it was wrong and selfish to put myself first.

After the incident in Basel I got to a place where I felt stuck. I had been badly hurt by a dear friend who told me that since I hadn’t been there for her when she needed me, she was turning her back on our friendship. It was the last straw for me. How could she abandon me when my life was so hard already? I was stuck in a puddle of anger, pain, and betrayal. I told myself that I wanted to forgive and forget, and I knew that my resentment was hurting me, but I couldn’t seem to let go of it.

Related: Making Friends With Oneself 

Then I went to hear Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, give a talk. During the talk, Jetsunma paused and said in a soft voice, “Let go. Let go. Let go.” It was then that I knew I was ready to let go.

Jetsunma granted my request for a meeting and greeted me at the door with a big hug. She offered me a cup of tea and a seat on her couch. We sat facing each other with our legs crossed, and I told her how I felt hurt by my friend’s accusations that I had not been a good friend, that I had not given her the attention she needed.

When I had finished speaking Jetsunma held my hand and simply said, “You must take this onto your path.” She told me that I had to let go and forgive everyone. “And that includes yourself,” she said. Aha! How had I forgotten that so completely?

Jetsunma suggested that I begin practicing maitri for myself. Like many Buddhist practitioners, I’ve always loved the practice of maitri, or lovingkindness. I learned to use this practice as a method for cultivating genuine caring and good will for others. Practicing maitri toward others fits nicely with my bodhisattva vow, a commitment to living one’s life in a way that is helpful to all living beings.

The practice of maitri is deceptively simple. You repeat these four lines:

May you be happy
May you be healthy
May you be safe
May you live with ease

Each time you recite the sequence of lines, you visualize a different category of sentient being:

Those you love
Those you don’t love
Those you have never met

These three categories cover the entire spectrum of how we relate to other beings: attachment, aversion, and ignorance.

Practicing maitri helps to soften the boundaries of these categories. It opens our hearts and reminds us of our commonality with everyone. When we really see, in our mind’s eye, a person we think we don’t like, and instead of solidifying our reasons for hatred we honestly wish them happiness, good health, safety, and an easeful life, we start to forget what we thought we hated and why we felt that way in the first place. A sense of equanimity toward everyone arises as we do this practice—we feel compassion for those who were once invisible to us, and our disregard and apathy morph into concern for their well-being and safety.

Related: Unlimited Friendliness

And just as we sometimes feel love or hatred toward others, sometimes we feel love toward ourselves, sometimes we hate ourselves, and sometimes, now and then, we don’t even notice ourselves. As a Buddhist, if my focus is truly to help others, I need to work with these emotions toward myself. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo reminded me that walking the bodhisattva path—dedicating one’s life to the benefit of all beings—includes doing whatever we can to help ourselves be happy and free.

The little cell phone drama in Basel was not such a big deal, but if you add up all the moments when you become exhausted or stressed out because of the mistaken sense that you are doing something for someone else, those moments become a pile of resentment, isolation, and feelings of depletion.

Many of us have people who need and depend on us. How can we really be helpful to others when we are depleted? What good are we to others when our generosity has shriveled and our patience has run out? I’d like to be more loving, but I also know it is my responsibility to give myself time, space, sleep, exercise, fun, and healthy meals. When I take the time to provide myself with those things, I find that I have more goodness to give to others.

Thinking of yourself first, when your goal is to help others, might seem counterintuitive, but in fact it is the only way it can work. In the end, the notion of putting oneself last is really an inside-out form of self-cherishing. That’s why during pre-flight instructions the flight attendant says to put on your own oxygen mask first, and then put on your child’s mask. When we are happy, healthy, safe, and at ease, we can model those qualities for others as well as make choices and take action from a place of sanity and lovingkindness. The following maitri practice will help you to open your heart and connect to the sentient beings around you.

♦

A Maitri self-practice

Mindfulness Meditation
Sit in a comfortable position. With your eyes halfway open, place your attention on your natural breath. When your mind strays, gently return your attention to your breath. Sit like this for five minutes. Close your eyes.

May I Be Happy
Think about what would really bring you happiness. You can start with small things. Look carefully at what you think makes you happy and then drop into the feeling of that experience. Does that really make you happy? Can you connect to a feeling of happiness that is not based on getting something or someone; of any specific situation being just so?

May I Be Healthy
Think about what you do and don’t do to support your own health. It might be dietary choices, exercise or lack of exercise. What changes might you make to move toward being more healthy? Perhaps your friendships, job, marriage, or ambition are obstacles to you living a more healthy life?

May I Be Safe
Safety can come from within and without. Are you too judgmental toward yourself? Do you feel bad if you are not perfect? Can you find a way to be more accepting of who you are? Perhaps feeling safe for you means creating more physical health or emotional health. What relationships offer you a safe haven?

May I Live with Ease
When do you feel a sense of ease in your life? What can you do to live there more often? What stressful habits can you let go of? What would living with ease feel like to you?

Breathing Exercise
Inhale through your nose for 6 counts
Exhale through your nose for 6 counts
Repeat 6 times

Mindfulness Meditation
Return to Mindfulness Meditation for five minutes.

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