Forgiveness Meditation - Zoom Talk by Delson Armstrong

This is, as David was saying earlier, sometimes the dreaded word amongst the community. Every time somebody prescribes forgiveness, it's like, oh no, I've done something wrong. I'm not progressing. But no, there's a saying in Star Wars, I love Star Wars. So one of the sayings is by Darth Vader. He says, do not underestimate the power of the dark side.

that forgiveness is the dark side but i would say do not you know do not underestimate the power of forgiveness right because it is very powerful um monte numaramsi when he introduced this practice he himself was doing this for about two years and uh when i met him uh the first time well i'd say the second time in dhammasuka uh he recommended this book to me which is a book by uh stephen lavine it's called who dies i have it over here this is the copy i got from you and uh he had me read it uh to get a better understanding of uh this whole process as well and if you actually go to that book it's i won't read it but i'll let you know what page it is in

It's on page 81 to 83. It talks about forgiveness, it talks about self-forgiveness and forgiving others, and so this is really the beginnings of how Bhante developed this. He spent some time, if I'm not mistaken, in Hawaii for a couple of years practicing this forgiveness practice. When I was there at Dhammasukha, Venerable Metananda was there as well. Every morning, Bhante and Venerable Metananda would go through an exchange of forgiveness. This is actually common within the Bhikkhu Sangha, the Bhikkhu and Bhikkhuni Sangha, where on every full moon night or on every Uposatha day, what they will do is they will confess any, you know, misdemeanors, any mistakes, any things that they might have done to cause harm intentionally.

And they ask for forgiveness. And then it's as easy as, the elders, if I'm not mistaken, if I remember it correctly, saying, very good friend, please do not do that again, friend. And then that's what Bhante and Venerable Metananda would do, right? Venerable Metananda would be there for Bhante to tell him, and then Bhante would be there for Venerable Metananda. So this forgiveness practice seems very simplistic, yeah, and we know that there are, let's say, multiple subtler versions of it depending on when you joined this practice and how you understand it. I would say don't get too hung up on the technique, don't get too hung up on how to do it so much, because the most recent one that Bhante had introduced was just forgive and relax. The way I came across it was you use certain statements.

You say, I forgive myself for not understanding. This is a very important thing to remember. When we say not understanding, not understanding means being in ignorance, right? Because ignorance is not understanding the Four Noble Truths. Ignorance is a lack of mindfulness, and so when we say not understanding, we're saying that we have not understood the Four Noble Truths in that moment. This is the deepest of the deepest layers of understanding. This statement, I forgive myself for not understanding, is a statement you would repeat in your mind a few times, not like a mantra, but you would just say it a few times in your mind, and then you would just relax and wait and see what comes up. It might take some time, and that's okay, but you're just there, available to the moment, available to whatever is arising, and whatever will arise then will be something like, either something you did, something you said, something you feel bad about, some remorse, some regret coming up.

And it's important not to relive the emotions of whatever happened. Yeah, it's okay. It happens. If you relive the emotion, you experience remorse, you experience regret, all of these things. Actually, the fact that you do experience remorse, the fact that you do experience regret, it's indicative of the fact that you do have empathy, right? So that's a step in the right direction. So anyway, if you recognize something that feels off, that you did something that makes you feel regretful, you would just, again, say, I forgive myself for not understanding, or I forgive myself for hurting this person, or I forgive myself for indulging in this, whatever it was that arose in the mind.

And the key there is that the forgiveness practice starts to release energetic blocks, right? So the reason why we're giving the forgiveness practice is because somebody is not able to naturally feel loving kindness for themselves. In the interviews, the very first thing I ask people if they have problems with the practice is, do you feel like you deserve to be happy? And this is just the truth of the situation. A lot of people will say, no, I don't deserve to be happy, I don't think I deserve to be happy. And in that case, I will tell them I think you should do some forgiveness practice, because forgiveness is all about self-acceptance first.

and acceptance of whatever has arisen, in terms of somebody saying something to you or somebody doing something to you. So you will, in this practice, say, I forgive myself for not understanding. Something comes up. You allow it to be there. You forgive yourself. You accept it, and you drop it, and it drops away. And how you know it drops away is that the emotional rawness of that experience that causes you mental suffering goes away. It's not like the memory goes away, but the emotional core of the memory is changed. It's replaced by a level of acceptance and equanimity. So if you go back to the experience and there was guilt before, now you realize, okay, that was a mistake, I've learned from that mistake, and I have moved on. I can still remember that experience where I harmed this person in mind, body or speech, but I have accepted it, and I have decided to not repeat that offense again, and so I am leaving it be. That's what the

Finality of this practice is for yourself. Now, eventually somebody will come up, or you might say, I forgive you for not understanding. You might say that a few times, and you wait, and what will happen is somebody will come up, a situation will come, an experience, a memory of where this person hurt you in mind, body or speech. This person said something untoward. They were not understanding. They came from a level of ignorance, and they didn't understand in that moment that they themselves were suffering, and it was because they themselves were suffering that they were trying to inflict suffering on you. This is the ultimate understanding that you get, and so one of the fruits of the forgiveness practice is natural compassion for the other person.

Now, a lot of people will say, well, does that mean that we have to then interact with that person? Does that mean we have to forgive them and talk to them, and, you know, do we have to be all nice to them, and all of these things? No. Yeah, there's that statement, forgive and forget. I think we should understand, when we say forgive, we're just saying that we are forgiving that person because we want peace of mind. Everything that we do in this practice, whether it's forgiveness, whether it's metta, whether it's compassion, sending compassion to others, ultimately it's for the benefit of our mind. It's for our peace of mind, it's for our freedom of mind, it's for our ability to be okay

with the reality of every given moment. So when we forgive the other person, what we're saying is, I understand that in that moment you were ignorant. I understand in that moment you didn't know what you were saying, in the sense that if you did know any better, chances are you would have behaved better. So I'm choosing to let go. I'm choosing to let bygones be bygones, but I don't have to interact with you. I don't have to always put a smile on my face in front of you. If I can avoid you for the peace of my mind, not that I'm avoiding you out of aversion, but for my peace and your peace, I'm just letting you go and I'm not going to interact with you. That's okay.

So forgiving means being okay with what that person did, but not having to forget. Yeah, what that means is you don't have to interact with, if you know that this person might be incorrigible, or that person is still having some resentment towards you, if it was a mutually destructive relationship in that sense, then you don't need to be there to bring that up, to aggravate that again. And then the last part of that practice is where you are standing there, so to speak, when you're in your mind, and you see the other person looking back at you, and you receive forgiveness from them. Now, this doesn't have to happen all the time. It can happen, and it has happened for some people, but it is something that helps to release further blockages, where you see the other person genuinely looking at you and saying, I forgive you.

I forgive you for not understanding. I'm moving on. And that might help you to let go of situations where perhaps you can't communicate with that person, either because they're gone or they're living in another country. Maybe they blocked you or you've blocked them or whatever it is. But ultimately, it helps you bring a better understanding of the situation, and it helps you have peace of mind, because ultimately that is the goal of the Dhamma, right? It's to have peace of mind in every moment so that you can see things as they actually are. What does it mean to see things as they actually are? It means that I am not projecting my biases onto the situation.

I am not proliferating with all kinds of concepts and ideas and preconceived notions. Every moment is fresh in my mind. Every moment is fresh to me. Every person that I meet, even if I've had a relationship with them for 50 years, I don't have any projection of this is who they are. I don't plant into them some kind of an identity. I don't have any expectations. This is obviously an ideal level of understanding the Dhamma, but the forgiveness practice is a very important stepping stone towards that. If you're not able to progress further in your practice, sometimes what will happen is somebody is in the eighth jhana, somebody is experiencing neither perception nor non-perception.

But there is something that is always coming up in the form of formations, in the form of these proto-thoughts, and it's like they can't progress any further. It's like they've hit a wall. And it could be because they don't have enough disenchantment. It could be because they have too many expectations, too much desire, that is to say, too much craving for nibbana.

And what I will recommend to them is, just let that go and do a little bit of forgiveness, maybe for half a day. Just do some forgiveness. And when they do this, they'll come back to another interview and say, I've done this, I feel much better. I'll go back to the eighth jhana practice, I'll go back to quiet mind. And what they'll find is that they're at a much deeper level now. Now their mind is much quieter.

So forgiveness will always be needed until you become fully awakened. Because forgiveness is basically a tool in your toolkit on the way to final awakening. For somebody who is fully awakened, what is there to forgive? Forgive on what account? There is no more identity. There is no more taking things personally. There is no more defending this way or that way. There's just whatever is happening in this moment. That is the perfection of the Dhamma, being able to allow things to be as they are, allow things to unfold as they would.

So forgiveness is the preview of that. It helps you to see that. Now, sometimes what happens is people become, for lack of a better word, addicted, just as you can be addicted to or obsessed with going into jhana the first time, maybe the first couple of times. When people do the forgiveness practice, they experience a great deal of catharsis. And I even warn people: when you do forgiveness practice, you are going to cry, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not. You are going to cry.

because it it unleashes very gently it brings to the forefront all of the subconscious pains all of the difference um you know blocks that the mind is holding on to and it's released in the form of crying it's released in the form of tears and tears are a good thing in this practice it signifies that you are ready to let go that indeed you are letting go so that's why i'll tell people if you want to do the practice you can do it in your cabin or whatever it is and do it privately if you feel like you're going to disturb other people problem but i'll tell you what when people do this and they come back they feel so much relief they'll come back the next day and you will see it on their face

They feel happy, they feel joyful, they feel a sense of renewal, a sense of revival. And then I'll know that they're ready for loving kindness again, and I'll ask them, do you feel like you want to continue with forgiveness, or you feel like you're ready for loving kindness? And in that moment, they'll say, I feel like I'm ready to go back to loving kindness. And because they've released all of this gunk, all of this emotional turmoil that was plaguing them, the joy that arises in the form of piti becomes like a fountain. And it's like an unquenchable, so to speak, fountain that keeps coming out. It keeps giving you joy.

And so now you start to experience the first jhana and the second jhana, and then you continue progressing as you would. Sometimes, as I was just saying earlier, people will get addicted to that, though, because they will feel that joy and then they'll continue and they'll feel like, oh, the joy is diminished and now nothing's going on. Well, your mindfulness is sharper, you're experiencing more equanimity, so chances are you're getting to the third and fourth jhana.

And then they'll come to a different retreat and they say, you know, I think I need forgiveness. And I'll say, okay, go ahead, do forgiveness if you feel like you need it. Spend the first two days doing it. And they'll do it and they'll be like, nothing's coming up. I want that release experience again. They become addicted to that. They're like, I want to feel that catharsis again. That's actually an improper understanding of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about you having to chase the experience of release. It's you being open to release, it's you being available to disturbing emotions and being okay with them, and then whatever comes up in the way of that release, as crying or whatever it is, comes about naturally. This is what I want you guys to know. Whether it's forgiveness, whether it's practicing metta, whether it's quiet mind, whether it's trying to understand each of the jhanas and so on, stop trying to make it an exercise.

Stop trying to make it something where you want something out of it. When you become outcome driven and you become obsessed by it, then you're completely misunderstanding the situation. You're not understanding the significance of what this is. The beauty and the magic of that release that arose, the beauty and magic of the jhanas that might have arisen when you're doing a regular practice, is because you have no expectations. So when you had that experience the first time around, it was because you didn't know what to expect, and secondly, it was because you were genuinely open to the moment. You weren't waiting for something to happen.

So if you want to experience release from forgiveness and you feel like you need forgiveness, do it, but don't be obsessed by the outcome, like it needs to be done this way, it has to be this way, this has to, this should, this must. This is what's known as musturbation. This is a term coined by Albert Ellis, who was the father of rational emotive therapy, and he talked about this. People have a problem with how things are going in their emotional life, and people have a problem with the way people are interacting with them, and they have a problem with the outside world. It's this non-acceptance that these blockages

come in the form of these words in your mind, which is like, I must do this, I have to do this, I should do this. This is just another kind of craving. It's a craving for existence, it's a craving for a certain kind of identity. It's an expectation that you put on yourself, and it's unfair for you, it's unfair for other people, and it's unfair for the world at large, because it's unbeneficial for you and it's unbeneficial for others. This is the way you know if something is wholesome or not. If it is wholesome, it's something that's beneficial for you and beneficial for others. And the beauty of forgiveness is that it transcends any specific tradition. You will find forgiveness in all traditions one way or the other. It has great psychological significance, great psychological relief for those, and people don't even need to follow anything in order to experience the benefits of forgiveness. You don't have to be a Buddhist. You don't have to be a Christian. You don't have to be Hindu, Muslim, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. Forgiveness transcends all of that.

And the other thing I'll say is, forgiveness also stops karma. Now, what I mean by that is not that it somehow burns your karma, that it somehow takes all of the karmic residue and just does away with it. No, it allows you to bring in some level of insight that sheds light on the situation, so that you don't react in the same way again, causing that same karmic output. I mean, this is the way the world is, this is the way samsara is. But can you just imagine if world leaders had this understanding of forgiveness? Unfortunately, in the world that we live in, that is just the nature of samsara.

People use forgiveness as lip service. Oh yeah, I forgive him, or I forgive them, or let's not forget the power of forgiveness. And what do you know, next this world leader or that world leader stabs this person in the back, stabs that person in the back, does this, does that, all of these other things. We can't control that. But if on an individual level people understood this, things would change, things would really, really change. One of the biggest proponents of forgiveness was Jesus, and Jesus Christ. He talked about forgiveness more than anything else. When you read the New Testament, somebody asked him, how many times should we forgive the same offense that somebody does?

Seven times? How many times? And he says, 70 times 70, or 70 times seven. That's how many times you should forgive. Obviously, he was being a little cheeky, because what he's saying is, just keep forgiving. Just let it be, let it go. But he was one of the best examples of forgiveness being a personification, let's say, of forgiveness, according to the Bible. Right up until the moment of his death he said, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. What does that mean? He says, I forgive them for not understanding. They don't know what they're doing, so I'm choosing to forgive them. Now, we can't all be as great as Jesus or Buddha, but we can aspire towards that, and for our own benefit of personal relief and release, we can do it. Now, sometimes what will happen is the pent-up emotions that are present in your energy system, as it were, can manifest as pains in the body. And sometimes what I'll recommend to people is, you go to that pain if it arises

and you say in your mind, I forgive this pain for being there, and you say that a few times, and you wait, and you will notice that that pain starts to unravel itself energetically. And what arises is this emotional memory. It might be something you said, something somebody else said. It could be some kind of trauma that was inflicted upon you, or whatever it is.

And now what you do is you deal with it in the same way you would with the regular forgiveness practice. You say, I forgive myself for not understanding, and you experience that. You let it go. You accept it. Or you see somebody else doing something to you, and it has created this resentment, which has now manifested as this pain in the body, and so you take that resentment towards the person and you forgive them. You say, I accept what has happened, I forgive you, I'm choosing to let this go. And bit by bit, what you will see is, because of those momentary experiences of relief that you experience, less pain in the body, that particular pain starts to diminish, it starts to dissipate. So this can happen, and so we always have to come with an attitude of forgiveness in this practice.

Whether you're doing forgiveness or not, whether you're doing metta, compassion, whatever it is you're doing, always come with that attitude of forgiveness, which ultimately means, okay, I'm allowing things to be as they are. I'm accepting whatever is going on. Because in my introductory talks, when I give to people on retreat, up. The thing I say to them is there's two things that people have to deal with.

Oh, here are the balloons. I don't know if anybody else can see the balloons, but in any case, these situations arise where a person will say, I can't feel the joy. I don't feel like I deserve to feel the joy. I've already explained that part. The second is they're trying too hard. That's another side of the same coin. That's basically saying I'm choosing to push against the flow of reality and I'm choosing not to accept that this is not happening right now. I'm going to push myself

into a jhana and that's the wrong way to do it. All you're going to do is cause yourself more pain. For a moment or maybe a few moments of extreme joy you're going to push too hard and that can create problems. It can cause pain in the head, pain in the body. It can cause headaches. It can cause, you know, different kinds of energetic issues. So I urge all of you: do not push hard, do not try so hard. And if you find yourself doing this over and over, what do you do? You forgive yourself for it. You say, okay, I forgive myself for pushing so hard. I'm going to let that go. I'm going to take it easy.

and so sometimes what bhante would do and sometimes what i will do is i will tell the person i want you to go usually when they're at the retreat center at damasuka in missouri i'll say i want you to go for a walk if it's too hot i want you to find david or kishin and take and have them take you to the lake and spend some time at the lake and just relax enjoy yourself don't do any practice don't think about metha anything and what happens is because they're no longer caught up in the head of all of these thoughts and i got to do this i have to do this i must do this i should do this

they are able to just live in the moment yeah they find themselves enjoying seeing the lake enjoys enjoying seeing the birds listening to the birds enjoying the breeze you know just experiencing nature that in itself is the meditation that in itself is understanding that the meditation is all about being here right now that is the beginning of mindfulness and it the fruition of that is a mind that is collected not concentrated not pushing not trying too hard so going back to this forgiveness allows you to release those expectations that you put upon yourself now you could go to a therapist you can psychoanalyze all you want why do i feel this you know was it because i wasn't uh you know told i love you enough times it was because you know my father did this my mother did this whatever it is but we're not here to find out the why we're not here to figure out why this happens we're trying to figure out how this arises in the moment and how we can stop reinforcing it right with our continual habitual tendencies

that is the wisdom aspect of this practice we realize okay this is what we keep doing now there must be a different way we let go of that and we replace it with something that is wholesome so the forgiveness practice reconditions the behavioral patterns from being a resentful person from being a person who feels constant guilt and as a result and as a result a lot of anxiety and restlessness to being a person that is accepting to being a person that has some level of inner peace and this is really the path of the dhamma seeing what is unwholesome seeing that which is not beneficial for you and for others

choosing to let it go and replacing it with something that is wholesome and the wholesome will always be greater more beneficial than the unwholesome so there's a wonderful saying by this scientist by this thinker named r buckminster fuller And it's a great statement. He says, you don't change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, you put a new model in its place so that the old one becomes obsolete.

This is a very powerful statement. This is basically the Dhamma. You don't change the existing reality. What does that mean? You don't resist the Dhamma of this moment. By pushing against it, by fighting against it, you replace whatever is arising in terms of your reactions and your responses to them with something else. And that only can happen when you have wisdom, When you have openness, when you have mindfulness, when you have the energy to use the six R's.

But all of this can happen when you don't have these energetic blocks, these heavy sort of things that keep you, you know, cloudy in your mind. That you're not able to experience what's going on. So forgiveness starts to clarify that, starts to clear the way so that you can see what's actually going on, so that you don't have to take things personal.

Really, I mean, all of the things that have been experienced, the past that we experience. I was recently in the mountains and I had a great discussion with some of my friends that I had met. And one of this person was a beginner to the meditation practice. And he said, you know, how do I let go of all of these past resentments and all these past hurts? I mean, later on, I did prescribe him the forgiveness practice. But, you know, from an understanding on the level of mind, I said, if you think about it, if you truly think about it, the past as it is doesn't exist in reality.

It only exists in your mind. And it only persists because of your attention to it. but the only reality that we can experience is right here right now even being right here right now is still about maybe i don't know a fifth of a second or a tenth of a second whatever half a second in the past you can't truly be here in the now because whatever you're experiencing is the feedback is a reflection whatever your senses are picking up picking up and whatever your mind is interpreting so that can help a person understand that i don't have to cling to the past it only exists so long as i choose to hold on to it but as soon as i let it go i'm no longer living in the past and because i'm no longer living in the past i don't have expectations that the future will be the same as the past

because if you're truly here in the present then you don't even care about the future it doesn't matter to you what happens in the future not because you have some kind of craving for non-existence it's just because you're so content in the present moment as it were you're so happy and fulfilled right here right now that whatever happens is just a natural unfolding of the dhamma. And so that future being unconditioned, or rather no longer conditioned by expectations rooted in past resentments, past hurts, past experiences in general, is limitless. Anything can happen.

But it doesn't tie you down. with karma these are the different kinds of insights that will come to you as an experience when you get deeper into forgiveness you start to realize the value of being here you start to realize very bluntly speaking the waste of time so to speak in continually reliving your past you're wasting the opportunity to be in the present moment by utilizing it for reliving in the past if that's happening forgive yourself for that too no big deal it happens the mind is a crazy

machine we have to accept that and we just let it go now i was talking to david offline about this but at some point somewhere depends on the situation and if it makes sense i will be introducing a another variation of the forgiveness practice as if we don't have any as if we don't have enough variations right but in any case i'll put it out there and if you're interested you can check it out um there are a couple of people beta testing it as it were and uh i'll have to get their approval before it's out there it needs to have the twin stamp of approval before it can get out there so uh suffice it to say though it really helps with the energetics of the body it really helps like purge a lot of stuff anyway i won't keep uh talking about it and try to sell it to you um i'm gonna open the floor for my very good and dear friend umberto who i consider to be the meditator foremost in forgiveness the master of forgiveness

please come back to take it away um thank you uh thanks uh for giving me the uh opportunity to i guess express uh the value that you do uh get from the forgiveness practice um so yeah i don't want to you know make this too kind of lengthy or anything like that because sometimes stories like this could get lengthy but it's not really a need for that ultimately i think the the practical uh value that i can give throughout the story of mine that to get on this path uh was that i wasn't even aware of what meditation was i'm not you know really that um aware of a lot of those things with meditation but i was in a really dark place at one point in my life um and uh dark enough to say that i was ready to take my own life so kind of like in a fork in the road and

um i had children so i thought to myself you know i can't really leave this kind of burden and so i had to find another option another alternative and uh you know intuition and uh something else guided me towards meditation i was lucky enough to meet this application called fit mine which i think we're kind of uh familiar with here um but fit FitMind was my introduction to meditation, and I found it really practical and really easy to start off like five-minute module and then six-minute module, and that was amazing. It allowed me to start kind of like unwinding a bit. I would have to say that, you know, to get into that dark place where I was, it was caused a lot of trauma, early trauma, and that's something that we kind of stick to.

where we do take really personal and as we take it personal, we say, oh man, this is something that is affecting me and it's making a change in my life. Well, I found the forgiveness practice that Bhante was teaching through the Insight Timer application. I found Suttavada and Bhante through the Insight Timer application, through a podcast that Liam had, and then I was like, okay, cool. I get to actually see where this came from, where this practice came from. And I went to Suttavada, and also through the YouTube channel, I really got a chance to really focus on it.

Right. And it was a practice that I really had to learn how to make it that I would do it every single day, because as Delson mentioned, you tend to create this story of, oh, I'm taking this personal. And because of that, you have to really sit down every single day and go, what am I actually taking personal? What is this situation? I would have to say when I started meditating, also, I found it really difficult to do it. I couldn't sit still for five, 10 minutes. I couldn't sit through meditation for more than like three or four minutes. So what that was, honestly, was all these resentments and regrets that I had created this story about. And through those resentments and regrets, I really had to sit down and go, okay, I really need to sit down and see these things that were coming up. So the mind actually made it pretty easy to see these moments and go, oh okay, so I gotta focus on forgiving that.

There's a big portion of the fact that we create all these little stories, and we have to forgive not just all these situations that happened to us in our life, but we have to forgive ourselves, obviously, through this also. And that's a big portion of it. Now, going through those meditations and through those practices, there were watershed moments.

I would have to say that when I got to Suttavada, I was lucky enough to meet Delson there. And he had one of his talks initially that I saw. The first one was at Suttavada, and it was on Majjhima Nikaya 9, Right View and Dependent Origination, through the Four Noble Truths, which is pretty much amazing because that's the whole practical application of what we're doing here. When I heard that talk, forgiveness became a thousand percent easier, because I realized that none of this was personal

that all of it was just cause and effect and strings of processes that were happening, and then I was just taking it personal. And then of course I could hear Bhante in my ear now going, you're taking it personal. So it became really easy. I knew now that the storylines that were happening, and you could even say to yourself, well, take this person out of the equation, and somebody else was in that equation, would it still happen? Chances are, because this person, those people, are stuck in that habitual tendency, it has nothing to do with you. It's not personal. When you can see yourself through that, also notice that sometimes you're causing pain to people and you don't even get it, because you're just going down the path of a habitual tendency that you have conditioned yourself into and really believing

you go, oh man, this is easy to forgive because it has nothing to do with me, nor did I really mean to do those things to those people. So at the end of the day, I now every day still do forgiveness practice, because every day I do. I'm not saying I do it for like an hour every day, maybe like 30 minutes or so, but I do make it part of my practice, because on a constant basis we do engage, especially if you're in the lay community, you engage with a lot of people, and you don't realize how a small interaction with somebody could cause you to hold on to resentment or regret. Something you might have done, something you might have said to someone. Right, those things

you know, like the Dhammapada says, we learned that in Suttavada every morning too. He abused me, he attacked me, you made this person like this attacker. If you harbor those thoughts, hatred's not appeased. If you do harbor it, you don't say anything, you don't react with these emotions, you don't react with these causes that you're actually creating yourself, then hatred is not at peace, love. And that's the biggest portion also. The biggest insight that I learned from forgiveness also is that, and it's the same thing as the 6R's and the brahmaviharas, you're bringing up this feeling of compassion, you're bringing up this feeling of forgiveness

and you share that feeling of compassion and forgiveness, and that's the same thing we're doing, right? Projecting that love. So it's practical, it's really good value to it. I would have to say, how do I know this is a great practice? What are the changes that it makes in your personality, in who you are? I would have to say that prior to the meditation and TWIM, I was an angry person. I would say I was a violent person. I would say that all that was part of the character, and I made myself into, like, I'm angry, I'm a victim. I hear Bhante right now going, if you're depressed you're really selfish. You make a change because you really come to terms with the fact that it's all part of something that is the cause and effect, and part of dependent origination was kind of interesting to actually see.

So, being on this path, I changed my life. I'm able to pretty soon become fully integrated into the Sangha and really content about that. But you can, it's a great practice that I think should be experienced on a daily basis. Thank you. Just go through the instructions really quickly one more time, now that we've talked about it. The practice is very simple. You sit down in a very comfortable position, whether it's in the chair or on a cushion or whatever, close your eyes, and you relax for a bit. The way I remember it, as far as my version of it from understanding it from Bhante's videos, has been that you start off with a statement: I forgive myself for not understanding. You say that a few times, not like a mantra, maybe four or five, half a dozen times, and then you just wait and see what happens.

Something might come up. Some resentment might come up. Some guilt might come up. Some remorse might come up. Some memory might come up. A situation that you were involved in will come up. And all you do there is, again, you say that statement in your mind: I forgive myself for not understanding. Sometimes people want to say, I forgive myself for having caused pain to this person, or I forgive myself for having caused pain to myself.

Or for not realizing, whatever it is, but try to stick to the original. That's always pretty much overarching for all experiences. So you start with that, and you will feel a catharsis. You will feel something coming up. You will feel tears welling up, and if they come, they come. Allow them to be there. Now, after you let go of that, perhaps there's a person that has hurt you, has said something to you, has done something to you, has created a situation for you where it was unpleasant for you, it was painful for you, it was harmful for you.

And you have that person. You don't bring them up. You would just say, I forgive you for not understanding, and that person will come up, whoever it is. Sometimes you don't even have to say the statement. After you go through that, somebody will automatically come up. And when they do, then you say, I forgive you for not understanding.

You might say that a few times, and you will feel resentment coming up, maybe. You'll say, I forgive this resentment for being here, and I forgive you for not understanding. And eventually, it might take time. That's okay. But eventually you accept what has happened, and you realize, as Umberto rightly said, that it had nothing to do with you. It was all about that person's habitual tendency, and so you accept that that was the case, and you let go of any resentment. The third part of that, that can happen, not all the time but it can happen, is that that person might look at you in your mind. They might look at you and say to you, I forgive you, or I forgive you for not understanding. You might hear that in your mind, and you receive that and you accept it, and that kind of closes the circle. Now, this practice, you don't have to do more than 30 minutes. 25 minutes is pretty much good. The other thing is

the forgiveness walking practice is pretty straightforward. It's like a march that you do. It's like, so, this is the right step, left step, right step, left step: I forgive you, you forgive me, right? So you say that, and it doesn't have to be longer than 15 or 20 minutes. And you do that, take a break when you're ready to go back and sit. You do the same process, and you do that until the emotional quality of whatever that experience was, whatever that emotion was, the memory, whatever that situation was, starts to dissipate, so that when that memory does come up, it doesn't have any emotional value to it. It's not like you don't feel anything. It's rather you just have acceptance and equanimity towards it. So the memory will still arise, but there won't be any clinging going on, no identification with it going on. That's how you know that you're ready to move on. And secondly, there will be an energetic shift in your body and in your mind. You will notice that there is a wellspring of joy that naturally arises.

and that is a sure sign that you're ready to move on for the time being and continue with the regular practice okay thank you could you just clarify this is a big question like what is it that you're not understanding and why don't you fill in the rest of that statement i forgive myself for not understanding but yet it's an open statement why is that yeah this is important it should be an open statement because otherwise you're trying to control the situation you're controlling the meditation you're like i specifically forgive myself for doing this no no now you're actually

Bargaining with what should be forgiven and what should not be forgiven. You're keeping it open-ended enough so that whatever is coming out from your subconscious is uncontrolled, unconditioned, so to speak. Not to say that it's unconditioned, it means that it's not conditioned by your biases. It's just whatever will flow out, whatever will come up. So for you to try to direct the forgiveness towards something is actually you trying to control the situation. So keep it open-ended. Now, when that does arise, that some situation happened where you did not understand, and if it's specific you can say in that moment, I forgive myself for not understanding this person's perspective, or I forgive myself for not understanding how I felt in that, for not accepting how I felt in that moment, or I forgive you for not understanding how I was feeling in that or what I was saying that.

But the thing that comes after the understanding doesn't really matter. It's all about letting go what does arise. You're not trying to analyze. You're not trying to come to a point where now you have all of the therapeutic benefits of psychoanalysis. No, it's all about an emotional release that happens. And an emotional release can only happen when you take away the thinking controlling mind out of the situation great thanks um okay i think now we can take some questions or maybe some stories and looks like josh you've got your hand raised so go ahead and unmute and let's hear what you have to say hi thanks first time here i was late other things what i'm feeling into this is um it works great but at a certain point though what's coming up for me around this is um i forgive you for not understanding then it's it's slipping into for me i'm better than the other person they're ignorant they're they're there there's ignorance here which there is and i'm better and more righteous than them and so they're lacking understanding or the reversed inferiority conceit where, oh, I'm ignorant.

I didn't understand, which is, you know, somewhat true, but feeling into, and of course I can forgive both of those things. But at a certain point, I'm feeling like it's more beneficial to not even, that this is just a process. There's not me forgiving another person or, you know, on a relative level, of course there is, but, or vice versa. There's just this lack of wisdom that's involved in this, that's driving, that had driven the behaviors, you know? And so just a more general notion of, okay, you know, there was a lack of understanding and wisdom here that led to the choices that were made and things that happened. So I don't know, that's kind of how it's sitting.

How would I, is that okay to say or how would this be addressed if i'm being understanding so um yeah i get what you're saying and what i would say is if that's happening in that moment where you feel like oh there's an inferiority complex or there's a superiority complex then just forgive that if that arises just say okay i feel a little superior here i'm going to forgive myself for feeling that way right now because the idea is you can try to use all of the theory of the dhamma you can try to use all of the understanding of the absolute that this is an impersonal process and all of that but none of that necessarily is going to make a meaningful very frankly speaking meaningful impact because the whole point of the forgiveness is because you took something personal to start off with

And so now, in order for you to come out of it, there is a give and take. There is an exchange of forgiveness for yourself and for the other person. Yes, in the absolute sense it's all just karma, it's all just vibration, it's all just experience that's impersonal. But try telling that to your heart. Try telling that to your emotions. Yeah, very good point. And the other thing I wanted to share real quick: I also heard about perceiving things in other people that will stir the heart, stir the chitta, that I could actually forgive something in myself that's even allowing that to happen to begin with, and allowing that perception of wrongness or something that's causing friction. That there's something, well, maybe not, but what would it hurt anyway to forgive something in me that's having that come to fruition to begin with?

Fruition to begin with. So absolutely interesting. I mean, when in doubt, just keep forgiving, even front-loading forgiveness, as long as it aligns with wise action. Like, I already forgive you. You could do anything, right, or to a certain degree, that you're already forgiven. It's pre... supposed, you know, it could even almost get to that point. Yeah, and that's actually touching upon compassion, because now you're recognizing, okay, the other person's suffering, so I don't need to add to their suffering, and I don't need to add to my suffering. Completely valid, completely fine. Steve, thanks.

um at the level of experiencing craving and then clinging and becoming and so on and then once we reach that birth of action basically you know karmic uh the karmic waterfall and we really don't have a lot of opportunities to recall the arrow shooting towards the target at that point um just wondering if if forgiveness practice provides another alternative especially if we do that birth of action where we regret something you know we react and lash out or whatever and we're like oh now there we go what's coming next um just just wondered your perspective on that yeah i mean in the context of dependent origination as you're saying you know with the birth of action what does the birth of action cause it causes suffering and that suffering can manifest in regret that's one of the things we see in the whole mass of suffering that that grief despair and so on and so forth so

that in itself is a feeling that you're experiencing in that moment and you allow that feeling to be there and say okay i see this now and i choose not to repeat that same mistake or i choose not to repeat the same offense I forgive myself and I move on as best as I can. That's why I'm saying, and that's what I said earlier, which is that forgiveness is a great tool for releasing karma.

Not in the sense that it somehow metaphysically burns karma, but in the sense that it brings you a level of understanding where you see that if I continue to behave in the same repeated habitual tendencies, it's only going to cause me more and more suffering. But if I choose to allow things to be as they are and I accept it, fine, in this moment I slipped up. I said something I shouldn't have said. I did something I shouldn't have done. I slipped up. But the easier, or I should say the faster, I'm able to recognize that, let that go, I need to forgive myself, I forgive myself, forgive the other party, the easier it becomes to release that karma so that it doesn't happen again and again. And because you don't continue to dig into these channels of continual repeated behavior, they start to fade away, and they're replaced with deeper insight, deeper understanding, and ultimately more acceptance.

Okay, Jordan, Delson, thank you again for doing this wonderful session. Forgiveness was a big piece in my practice, and really was the only way I could ever feel loving kindness, and then it just started pouring in. So it's like an unstoppable faucet of kindness and friendliness now. So yeah, we're so grateful to Bhante for doing this, and I want to thank Collum and the Freedom of Mind organization for sponsoring this. Hey, thank you so much for doing this. And David.

Sam, you have your hand raised. Yes, thank you. Can everybody hear me? Yep. Yeah. So thank you, Delson, for giving this talk. I have two questions, actually. The first question is about the context and the feeling of forgiveness. I was wondering if Delson could speak a little bit about that feeling of forgiveness and what that feels like versus loving kindness, and how you separate the two, and how you know that you're ready to switch back to loving kindness. And the second question was just a little, if you could talk a little bit about working in the context of therapy, if you have therapy or working through that in a secondary practice or with a professional, how you tie that into either forgiveness or loving kindness, and how the two can work together.

Thank you. Yeah, this is a good question, because we talk about forgiveness, and people try to hone in on what that feeling of forgiveness is. I don't want to go too much into it, because then people will try to look for it. But what I will say is, as a result of forgiving, what you experience is a lot of release and a lot of relief. So the idea is to come to terms with what was happening, whether it was something you did, something somebody else did, or something that just arose. And it's a level of acceptance. It's a level of dropping it. It's a level of letting go. It's a level of seeing that your mind has clenched onto this for far too long.

And then slowly, bit by bit, have a lot of patience. It might take time, but if you have patience it will see itself out. Bit by bit it starts to loosen up, and bit by bit you do feel certain energetic shifts. You feel like there's a level of clarity in your mind. You feel like your body is looser. It's no longer too stiff, too tight. And you feel relief. That's the big thing with this practice, whether it's TWIM in general or whether it's forgiveness: you want to experience a level of relaxation, of letting go, of dropping, of relief.

The second part is that, the thing about therapy is it has its benefits in different ways. One of the, I quoted Albert Ellis for example, and the reason I did that was because I studied him when I was 15 or 16, rational emotive therapy, and related to that, cognitive behavioral therapy. And what I found is, especially cognitive behavioral therapy, it has these things called cognitive distortions, and in some sense they can be likened to unwholesome states of mind. And you rationalize those cognitive distortions by letting them go and replacing them with what seems to be the truth, or what seems to be the reality of the situation, by becoming less emotional about it and bringing in a more insightful perspective to the memory or the situation or whatever it is.

That's the rational aspect of it. And by doing this, you are essentially practicing the 6R's, whether you know it or not, because you're recognizing the distortion, or you're recognizing the painful memory, or you're recognizing the hindrance. You're letting it go, you're relaxing it, you're replacing it, continuing it with loving kindness or whatever the wholesome state of mind is. So there is some overlap in that sense. But I do want to caution people to say that meditation should not be seen as an end-all be-all cure for everything. It has its purpose, and the purpose of it is to gain insight that liberates you from your bondage, let's say, to samsara. I mean, for all intents and purposes, if we're very blunt about this, the Buddha talked about samsara as being this prison, like we don't want to continue to be here anymore because it is painful, it is suffering. So we are using liberating insight, as it were.

By this process of right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, so that through that we can experience complete freedom. And when we have complete freedom of mind, freedom from suffering, we are able to act spontaneously. We are no longer acting conditioned by our past projections. That is the great benefit of any practice rooted in the Dhamma, that allows you to see, and allows you to let go, and allows you to then replace it with something else. So there might be some overlap in certain therapies, but again, we should not say that they are one and the same. They each have their own uses. They can be complementary to each other, but that doesn't mean that they need to be used in tandem all of the time.

Thank you, Maureen. Hi, I love this topic. I'm engaged in forgiveness practice right now, and I have done it before, and that's why I'm doing it again. The first time was a few years ago, and the issue came up while I was on a retreat, and I was deep in meditation, and something very painful came up in the person. It blew me away, but I had guidance from my teacher, and he directed me to this specific practice.

Because it was so old and had been with me for so long, it took a few months, and it had to do with a parent who abused me, who was also an alcoholic at the end. I mean, it was about four months, five months that I did this every day, and at the end of it all I had was compassion for that man. He wasn't even my parent anymore, he was just another being who suffered. And it changed, and it really changed a lot of my life to have that

removed. And now I'm engaged in another practice of meditation with a friend, and we had a different view of a particular situation, and this time I'm having a harder time getting to the other person. I'm forgiving myself, what comes up while I'm doing the forgiveness. I do this daily, the 30 minutes, but I'm just having a hard time. I know it will occur, I just have to be patient, but the other person is not coming up. In the few other times I've done it, it comes up, and then I start to see them and they soften, so I soften.

And actually, I don't even know if I'm asking for your input, though I would love it, but I trust the experience because it's worked for me before, and I've never cried, though I've softened and softened and softened. For me the forgiveness then kind of turns into metta at some point. It just starts to transition to metta rather than, it's just a wonderful practice. It takes a lot of patience for me to just wait, to trust, to trust. So I just wanted to, at that, my experience has changed my life with the forgiveness meditation, so thank you, and thanks for having this talk, especially, it's so serendipitous. Okay, thank you. Um, Delson, were you going to address that, the demand? Yeah, I just wanted to point out what she said, which is very important to see, which is that forgiveness does invariably lead to compassion, because that's the greatest understanding that you have, is that person is suffering. It has nothing to do with you personally, although you were not you, I mean specifically, but anybody who is a a a

receiver of that pain and that suffering. Ultimately you transcend that through compassion. It doesn't mean you condone what they did, it doesn't mean you agree with what they did, but you realize that that person was just not of right action. They were not understanding themselves and they had suffering, and so seeing that and having compassion really is a great fruit of forgiveness. And I have seen that a lot with people, is that it invariably does change to metta, it invariably does change to compassion, and that's a step in the right direction. That's one of the ultimate fruits of this practice. So thank you for sharing. Okay, one thing I wanted to add was that you don't want to demand people come up. If they come up, they come up. If they don't, forget it, move on. Just open the space, let whoever comes in come in, because maybe that's not really the person you have to forgive. Your mind knows who it is, and just open the window and let them come in. So don't control.

Yvonne. Hi. Hi, Delson. Thank you so much for this talk. I think I was badly in need. I just want to tell a little bit about my experience with the 6Rs. It is a new thing for me, really new. I start doing it, because I said no, I'm putting out all the other practice that I was doing was concentration, and I was quite surprised, I would say successful. I was not expecting, because in the beginning I could not feel loving kindness, but then I start doing it, follow the instructions Bunty gave, and you gave, but then when I, I don't know which jhana, if it was third, second, church, it was all those steps going that I never felt before, and then when it was about to, just when I start to be like equanimous, calm, then this feeling of sadness, as if my heart was on the left side, but the right side was okay, was happy, but the left side there was this pain, and I tried to

it would go and then it would come back, it go, and then when it would go, and then the mind would settle calmly and silent, and very peaceful, but then the pain on the left side came up again, and I 6R'd, and I thought of this forgiveness, but I didn't know how to do it. I never did it, never heard it. And now, can you just give me a little bit of instructions when it happens in a meditation, that you go, and then at a certain point you stop, and then this kind of pain? It is something painful, and I think what it is, I think is that something that I'm regret doing when my son was really young. I didn't know how to deal with him. I think so, this is one thing that comes up.

Yeah. So in this case I would say it's not important for you to continue with the same practice and then experience that equanimity and then that sadness again. Rather, you just keep that practice aside for the time being and just do forgiveness practice in earnest. So in this case the instructions I gave were very simple, which is you start off with just saying these statements: I forgive myself for not understanding, and you just wait, and as David just said a little earlier, which is you don't control the process by directing it towards something, whether it was something to do with you and your son or whatever the situation might have been. Try not to bring it up on your own. Let it come up automatically, if that is the situation.

And so if it is, then you just allow it to be there, and you say, I forgive myself or I forgive this person, whatever it is, and you feel that regret starting to melt away. You don't try to make it go away, but you will feel it as you start to come to a deeper level of acceptance that it happened, and now I can move on, I can let it go, and I can move on. So, the short instructions, I think David, are also on the website on the damasuka library page, so I don't know if somebody wants to link it to the chat, or if it's there, we put it in. Yeah, so just set aside the regular practice you're doing now, and just do forgiveness for a little while until that sadness, that guilt, melts away. And when you were giving instruction, I tried to do it together with you, and I felt like crying, crying, crying, crying, but then I stopped it, because I want to listen to you.

And then when it happens, what do you do? When you want to cry? No, but you just cry and that's it? And that's it. It feels so good. You shouldn't underestimate the power of a good cry also. It's an amazing release. Really, try it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, must be. Yeah, because I didn't go on.

So I don't know what would be the end of the crime. You will find a lot of relief. Trust me, you will see a lot of relief. It's like as if you've just dropped a heavy load from your shoulders. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. It occurs to me that crying perhaps is a natural way to let go of emotional stuff instead of bottling it up. It's built in. It's like nothing wrong with crying. It's just, it lets go of stuff. It's healthy. It's healthy. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

There was... Oh, yeah, go ahead. This is completely off topic, but I'll talk about it anyway. There's that guy Osho. I don't know how many of you know him, but he was also by the name of Rajneesh. And he had a very interesting practice, a very interesting meditation that he would do. I'm not endorsing it, but I'm just explaining what the whole process is. Maybe you'll get some insights into it. It was called the Mystic Rose Meditation. Very interesting meditation.

and it was a three-week program where for one week, every day for three days, all you would do is laugh. You would try to bring yourself to some kind of laughter, think about something funny, try to imagine something funny, and just keep laughing, keep laughing, keep laughing for those three hours as best as you can. And then the next week, all you do is cry, and you would release all of this emotional baggage. So in the beginning you'd feel all of this childlike joy, and then you'd go deeper and you experience the grief, and you would take it out from the process of crying. And then the third week was just a week of silence, so three hours every day you would be in silence, just observing things as they are. So the benefits of a good laugh, the benefits of a hearty

belly laughter should not be underestimated, nor should a good cry. So that is why even Bhante would always emphasize, make sure you have a good time, make sure you enjoy yourself, stop taking things personally, stop taking them so seriously. If you laugh at the craziness of your mind and what brings what comes up, you will start to come into a level of awareness where you don't take it personally, and you realize, oh, it's just the mind. So laughter is very important, crying is very important, and silence, which is the ultimate fruit of this whole process, where you come into a level of quietude where you can see things as they are. Anyway, let's continue. Yeah, yeah. Let me address that. Honestly, I have no idea what Bhante was saying or the context behind what Bhante was saying. I can't speak for Bhante. If Bhante's long gone, so

if Umberto wants to speak on it, he can. But whatever Bhante said, first of all, we have to understand one thing: not everything Bhante said was necessarily always accurate. He was only human. Yeah. So if he said something, he might have said it in a larger context around something related to the Dhamma, but I don't think he was necessarily attacking people for their depression or whatever they were experiencing. He might have said it in a different context. What I will say about depression is that it's something that you don't even know you are in necessarily, because it's so deep, because it's so heavy, and depression can manifest in many different ways. You might not even be aware of it sometimes, and the only thing you can do is to try to see in the moment

Okay, here is an experience. I'm not experiencing joy again. I'm not saying everybody needs to experience joy all the time in the same way. Not everybody needs to be sad all the time or upset all the time, but there is a certain quality to depression that drains the energy, that drains the system, and the only way to start to let that go is by using certain kinds of therapies. If that helps, meditation doesn't need to be the cure to depression. I don't condone it, I don't accept that, because depression might be a symptom of something that's even deeper, right? So I think a person should see for themselves what seems most appropriate and go in that direction. Something that just is simply not being understood, call it ignorance, delusion, whatever. So yeah, I just, yeah, thank you for that. So I just wanted to unpack it. Yeah, I'll just say one more thing, which is, and this doesn't need a response, but it's just a comment you mentioned, which is compassion. I mean, that is really the mindset of somebody fully awakened: compassion and wisdom. These are the two wings

upon which the mind of somebody who is fully awakened exists, let's say, or functions, and compassion doesn't try to analyze, doesn't try to investigate it. It's just compassion for the sake of being compassionate. It doesn't even try to solve the other person's problems, doesn't try to be a savior. It doesn't try to say, I feel bad for you and I want to help you by taking you out of that situation. No, it doesn't do that either. It's just a recognition of the other person's suffering, and having true empathy, understanding for that person's situation, and being available. You can just be there as a presence. Some people just want to be heard. The majority of people just want to be heard and recognized, and doing that in itself is compassion. That's compassionate action. We don't always have to try to take on other people's problems. We don't always have to try to say, hey, if you thought about it this way, or maybe you should go this way, or whatever. No, sometimes it helps just to be there, and they just unload whatever's going on, and they feel better that way

and by us being compassionate, we don't take on whatever they're saying as our stuff. You understand that? We recognize it's their suffering, and we're allowing ourselves to be an open vessel, but okay, fine. Say what you need to say to me. I'm here. I'm lending you my full attention. Please go ahead. And that's always, that's sometimes all that's needed.

Perfect. I think sometimes people just want us to listen and don't tell us what to do. Just listen. And that's it. And it's enough. And then they hear themselves and they figure it out. - Yeah, there you go. - Daniela. - Okay, I'm listening and thank you very much for being here, and I'm saying hello to Anne and to John who I know from Kin's Sunday meetings. When you are in a situation where family continues to sort of goad you and upset you, and it's you have compassion for people who are intentionally setting you up.

Can you continue to be compassionate when, instead of confronting, continue to be compassionate to people who are continually trying to set you up for a reaction? And the reaction is hurtful. Their intentions are hurtful. And you know that it's intentional. It's not an accident. It's not ignorant. It's intentionally picking on something that would hurt you, and they do it in a good way, and it's effective. You continue to be compassionate because it's family. I don't want to drop them, but it's really hard to continue to be abused intentionally, and every time

Do you understand? Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying, and what I would say to that is, first we have to understand this from a karmic perspective, which is that what people say to us to instigate or to create a reaction out of us is their karma. It's their active karma, whatever they're doing, and how we choose to respond to that is our karma. So it shouldn't be about the other person. We don't want to give power to the other person, so to speak, control to the other person through our reactions. So being non-reactive, easier said than done, I know, easier said than done, but coming from a place of non-reactivity

is very beneficial, and sometimes all that requires is not compassion. It's not compassion at all. It's, yes, for a certain level, it's like, okay, I understand that they're suffering, and that's all them, that's all their problem. But now what you have to instill in your mind is equanimity. Yeah, okay. Coming back full circle to why I initiated meditation in my life in the first place. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Okay, great. Anything else from anyone? Are there any questions in the chat? No, just bunches of comments here and there. So

Hello, hi Jason, so good to see you. I'm so happy. So, the forgiveness meditation, you would not mix it? Then you would not say, in the morning you do half an hour of forgiveness, and in the afternoon you go to the normal meditation? You would just stick to it? Is it so? And would it be helpful, rather than one time, to do it longer, do it three times, half an hour or so? Yeah, yeah. So yes, this is a good point. I would not mix practices. I would just do forgiveness alone until you're ready to move on completely towards metta or any other brahmavihara, and better to do 20 or 25 minutes of practice three times a day or four times a day or whatever seems feasible than to do longer periods. Definitely don't want to do more than 30 minutes at a time when it comes to forgiveness practice, because it just loses steam after that. It just becomes very stale, and it's like you have to force it. 25-minute increments are probably the best approach to this

Okay, thank you very much. Okay, a question from the chat. We forgive something and it's kind of done for a little while, and then a month later it comes back, and we forgive it, and then it comes out. Well, how do we know when we're done with it? When there's no more emotional reaction to that memory, there's no more content that causes some

feeling of resentment, a feeling of anger, a feeling of hurt from that. I will just say, even in the sutras, the Buddha says the perfection of loving kindness is that there is no longer even an iota of ill will present in the mind, which means not even a single moment of mind thinking about that person in a resentful or angry way. That's the perfection. That means you have perfected loving kindness. Likewise with compassion, likewise with joy and equanimity. So with forgiveness, in the same way, you're done with that situation or that person or that incident or whatever, when there's not even a single iota of resentment, guilt, remorse, or whatever it might be. Okay. Perfect. Kashmira, thank you for your talk, Delson. I really, really appreciate it. I have a question where sometimes I do not understand

uh the tightness in my system in my body like let's say there is a lump in my throat or somewhere is it because of an unresolved issue in the past because i really don't have uh i cannot say i have an emotional thing all i know that this is something that is i feel right now but is it because of an unresolved past issue or is it really my body just not a physical condition uh so how do you can you help how we navigate through something like that yeah i think it's better that you check if it's a physical condition or not first

And I'm saying this specifically to you because we've had this discussion before in past retreats. So it might be, it might warrant you to actually check if it's a physical thing before we further investigate if there's an emotional or mental quality to that thing. Yeah. Just to follow up on that, is that in my last retreat, what happened was, after doing it, it was not a forgiveness practice, just the usual jhana practice, after, sometimes after coming out of a sit, my body feels like all the pain has just disappeared. And so I wonder if the same thing happens when you do forgiveness, or is it just that jhanas help release such good, all of your right kind of hormones and balance your system so you feel good? I don't know. Seems like both work to me.

Maybe it was giving you temporary relief, because we've heard stories of suttas where the Buddha had excruciating back pain, and he'd go into the fourth jhana for temporary relief from that. So maybe that's what it was. But in any case, I think it might warrant you to just check if it's not some kind of a physical situation. Okay, thank you so much. Okay, Ivan. Just coming back to this other meditation that you talk about, Brahma Viharas, not that I want to start doing it, all the other ones, but are they in the Dhammasukkah site?

Yes, they are. You would probably want to, when you're ready to do an online retreat or something, just look at the website and you'll see what retreats are available for Brahma Viharas or for forgiveness. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, we have retreats going on all the time, so feel free to sign up. Okay, I'll have a look. Have we come to the end of questions now? Looks that way. Looks like we're going to be sharing some merit here, right? All right. May suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless be. May the grieving share all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness.

May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu, sadhu. All right. I will see you guys when I see you, whenever that will be. All right, thank you very much for another... thanks for coming, everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.