Forgiveness in Buddhism: doctrine and real-world limits

The Watercooler
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I’m interested in how different religious traditions shape not only personal ethics, but also public and private responses to (extreme) world events.
Recently, a prominent figure in the USA was assassinated. What struck me was the tension that followed: despite his strong advocacy of Christian values, the reactions - including statements from his widow - seemed and still seem torn between a call to forgiveness and an understandably human, very powerful anger toward the killer and the new ideologies that seem to have informed his actions. Forgiveness, in that context, is a pretty formidable demand.
This made me wonder how Buddhism approaches forgiveness in similarly concrete and emotionally charged situations.
Does Buddhism explicitly teach forgiveness, and if so, where is this articulated in the suttas or early texts? I have done a search with keywords but without as much success is I was hoping.
Is forgiveness framed mainly in terms of compassion, non-aversion, abandonment of hatred, or something else?
Are there historical or contemporary public examples in Buddhist cultures where victims have genuinely and unambiguously forgiven perpetrators of serious crimes?

Thank you in advance for any help on this question, which will hopefully help me access the robustness of different religious beliefs when applied to public “real world” situations.

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Hi,

Check out MN31.

Dhp1-20, particularly verses 3 - 5

MN8

And many others…

In Buddhism, letting go of ill-will and anger not only relieves an otherwise angry being of the burden and dukkha of these unwholesome mind-states, it also offers conditions for deeper samadhi and wisdom, as well as conditions for possible reconciliation with others.

It’s not about scoring positive points with a deity who has the final say in one’s liberation from suffering. It’s about cultivating and embodying wholesome states and conditions that lead to deeper wisdom, kindness, and compassion. All the way to final liberation, the complete cessation of all dukkha.

These wholesome states are both practical and eventually natural as the hindrances of ill will and anger are gradually diminished, until they are gone.

:folded_hands:

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I mean, the Bible goes on to say, in Psalm 137:9:

“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

Or, Exodus 21:24:

“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth…”

So, I would say Christian Values is a complex topic. And Charlie Kirk, being the hypocritical pundit who baited people under the pretense of free speech, was a fine example of such inconsistent values. :slight_smile:

And of course, this is not a condoning or advocacy of murder of any kind. Rather, on the topic of facing violence, perhaps MN 21 is the most famous sutta, commonly known as “The simile of the saw”:

Even if low-down bandits were to sever you limb from limb with a two-handed saw, anyone who had a malevolent thought on that account would not be following my instructions. If that happens, you should train like this: ‘Our minds will not degenerate. We will blurt out no bad words. We will remain full of sympathy, with a heart of love and no secret hate. We will meditate spreading a heart of love to that individual. And with them as a basis, we will meditate spreading a heart full of love to everyone in the world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.’ That’s how you should train.

Is it realistic?

I’d rather think, anything else is harder and more burdensome. Perhaps we can’t always help our conditioning to feel enmity, but wisely attending, we should be able to see it always comes back to hurt us. Once we see that our anger only ever hurts us, we let it go. And thus is the training. :slight_smile:

With the Dhammapada parts mentioned by @Jasudho, with my translation:

“He insulted me, struck me down,
Overpowered me, took what’s mine,”
For those who keep this in their mind,
Hatred then will never unwind.

“He insulted me, he struck me down,
Overpowered me, took what’s mine,”
For those who leave this thought behind,
Hatred shall fade, no trace to find.

For hate is never quelled by hate,
Hate only feeds the hateful state.
Hatelessness alone ends the fight;
This is the ancient, timeless right.

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I completely agree that the idea of ‘scoring positive points’ so that you could be said to want God to be indebted towards you for your salvation is highly problematic. That is why some traditions (say the lutheran) teach that salvation happens through faith and not works, thanks to Christ’s vicarious sacrifice. Any good action one may then perform should spring out of gratitude for having been saved and so is not a way scoring positive points. In any case probably every tradition has their aporias.

I have a genuine question on something that has been puzzling me. You seem to be assuming that an impersonal law (karma) is more reassurig than having a God deciding of your faith. However, if the God is assumed to be benevolent; and the impersonal law is so highly complex and basically impossible to control that it is totally impossible to predict the results of your Karma in practice, why is the karmic law ;ore reassuring? By impredictable, complex etc I am basing myself on empirical facts such as the stories of serial killers like Angulimala who suddenly get enlightened, of lay people causally attending a meditation retreat and by pure chance falling into a deep state meditation - whilst on the other hand you might have monks and lay people meticolously following the precepts for many years and never experiencing a deep meditation by other accounts I heard.

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2500 years ago, the Buddha-to-be was in his early 30’s when he decided that he wanted to get to the bottom of why he could never find lasting satisfaction from anything in life. He left a pretty great life situation (by 500 BCE standards!), gave up everything and became a wandering mendicant. What was different about Siddhartha Gotama was that he was brilliant, inquisitive, logical, deductive, endlessly patient and tested everything to the enth degree. Being already familiar with Brahmanic, Vedic and Jain doctrine and practices, he spent years devoted to personally testing it all out meditatively, seeing where it led.

Although two of his meditation teachers achieved extremely high levels of medtitaive achievements, they mistakenly thought that they had become one with the great Brahma; that their “self” merged with the Great Self of the universe. The Buddha-to-be meditatively surpassed those teachers but found that their assumptions didn’t lead to the end of suffering, so he left those teachers to move on his own into uncharted territory.

As he penatratively practiced each aspect of these meditative practices, he painstakingly and thoroughly tried out alternatives, discarding what led to dead ends and following that which led to better results. In the end, it came down to purifying his mind in order to remove any and all defilements that hindered his ability to see what is really going on. Eventually he reached a point where his mind was crystal clear, free of defilements, disturbances and hinderances and he was able to see things as they really are.

At this point he was able to finally see that there is not a permanent entity or soul but a consciousness which is an ever-changing flux of states of consciousness with a continuity that moves from one birth to another. The sentient being inherits that stream of consciousness from past existence and what keeps this process moving, what keeps living beings moving on roaming from life to life is ignorance and craving. The deeds that one does with intention are a reflection of one’s mind and there are natural consequences of those intentional actions, good or bad.

By purity of view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and samadhi, one can understand what is suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering and that path out of it.

So, when it comes to forgiveness, compassion naturally arises within a person on the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path because they abandon ill will. One has compassion towards a person who is afflicted by greed, hatred and delusion. Forgiveness comes much easier and may take a different form.

The Buddha’s path is much, much different from Christianity. Firstly, being an anthropomorphic myth, the Christian creator god himself exhibits all of the unwholesome tendencies like tribalism, hatred and jealousy that keeps beings in cycles of rebirth. In Christianity, a person can be ethically and morally harmful to themselves and others, done zero introspection but will go to heaven by virtue of forgiveness. Many Christians support people who openly express greed, hatred and delusion that comes out in the tribalism that is so different from Buddhism. A person on the Buddha’s path sees the suffering of those clinging to greed, hatred and delusion and compassion arises and forgiveness makes more sense.

Check out this thread on personal forgiveness:

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this is very true. Some people consider this inclusiveness a strength of Christianity.

Would you say Christianity, or mainly Judaism, is characterised by tribalism? And is that absent in Buddhism? :folded_hands:

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This is a great example of the diametrical difference between Buddhism and many creator god religions.

If one does “good works” in order to please a god or for salvation, it shows that they are unaware of the tremendous impact, affect and effect of intention and deeds.

It also shows the downside of merely taking something by faith. Having faith in Buddhism is knowing from experience that the Buddha is so trustworthy that one can provisionally take something on faith in order to personally put it to the test in the way that the Buddha taught.

People who are generally attracted to Buddhism because they realize that they are afflicted by suffering and wish to alleviate that suffering may be puzzled by some of the things that they encounter. But the suttas in the EBTs point one to actually do the practices in order to see for one’s self what the Buddha was pointing to. Without sitting at the root of a tree or an empty hut and meditating as the Buddha taught, one will not be able to know.

Once a person truly knows the danger and downside of certain actions, doing “good works” comes naturally.

Just intellectually understanding Buddhism is a great start! So it’s best to for one to begin practicing and walking the Noble Eightfold Path so that its meaning is experienced.

I think the Christians are very tribal and actively band together to compel their religion to be the only one. And the Old Testament myths of the Jewish people is as tribal as it could possibly be!

If you read the Buddhist suttas, you’ll see that the Buddha and his followers constantly encountered those from other religions peacefully; not with fear, hatred and war but with understanding, compassion and openness.

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You and I consider a person who is ethically and morally harmful to themselves and others quite differently.

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Please stay on topic of forgiveness. Please don’t make this a discursive thread jumping from one topic to another. If the thread strays too much from its original intent, it will be closed.

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You make it sound like it’s a pick-and-choose between which ideas sound more reassuring, so that might be a tension there. :slight_smile:

Karma isn’t really about being reassured, but knowing. And sure, minute details of Karma might be out of reach for most people to comprehend, but nevertheless.

Originally, karma was what Brahmins called their rituals to earn the favor of their gods. Much like Christian or any other Theistic enterprise. Buddha took the word, and turned it around, saying, “If you want to earn something, meet the appropriate condition for it”.

To me, that’s the gist of the teaching on Karma:

  • You’re more likely to get hurt if you’re carrying a weapon.
  • If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t carry a weapon.

Now, this is not to say that if you don’t carry a weapon, you won’t get hurt. It just might happen anyway. But the best thing you can do is to discard the weapon anyway.

Likewise, not everyone who practices can find enlightenment. But, there’s no enlightenment without the practice, so that’s the only thing we can control.

So that’s how this segment ties back to forgiveness - you’re not forgiving anyone for a future reward. Rather, you realise that carrying your anger and acting on it will hurt you. Why would one intentionally hurt oneself? :slight_smile:

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This very helpful :folded_hands:

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Forgive me for not staying on-topic. I know better.

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Did Angulimala ‘suddenly get enlightened’?

Kamma (deeds) done now, can bear fruit in this life, the next life or some future life, so just looking at a small section of deeds done in a single life and drawing conclusions from that does make kamma and the fruits of kamma look unpredictable and complex. But that just means that we haven’t got the sensitivity of mind to see the full picture.

The Buddha is a teacher (of those who wish to be tamed) and he teaches a specific set of deeds that result in enlightenment. This set of deeds is called the Noble Eightfold Path. You have 4 categories of deeds: bright (with bright results), dark (with dark results), mixed (with mixed results) and finally neither bright nor dark (that leads to the ending of deeds). It is this last category that is the Noble Eightfold Path.

If we look at transformation of Angulimala, we can see just how powerful this teaching can be when it encounters a fertile base. Especially when one is getting the teaching directly from a Buddha.

Now to the other end. Those who practice for a long time, but have yet to get into a deep meditation. Again, looking at this small section of deeds done in a single life, tells us little of how fertile the mind is to take on the teachings.

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Thank you for explaining, this is very helpful.

Does this imply that in order to be convinced of the Buddha’s teaching through experience one has to reach a very advanced level (remember many lives and seeing connections between actions and consequences over huge time spans) and that one has to take them on trust for a long time initially? And if so why trust the Buddha and not another teacher, what draws people to the Buddha when they can’t yet confirm his tachings from experience?

I apologize in advance if this may be off topic, though I guess karma and forgiveness are related :folded_hands: