On Kṛpā as Forgiveness

A Radical Process

"We can't force forgiveness, but we can be willing." Tara Brach

A Personal Story on Forgiveness

Late 2018 was difficult. I got pushed out of a business that I helped co-found. I won't go into the whole story, but everyone involved, including myself, did not handle any of it in the best way. The name of the business still has part of my name in it. It took me a long time to forgive the other co-founder, their friend who was our employee, and most importantly, myself for what had happened.

I was so angry. Whenever I saw my name in the business, I would get angry. Every time I drove past their house, I was angry.

Then, one day, just a few years ago, while working with this theme of forgiveness, I realized I didn't want to be angry about that anymore. It served no purpose; it didn't help me and ultimately didn't even matter. I felt like a different person. My new work sustained me. My new community fulfilled me. And the past was just that, the past.

After that whole process, I forgave them, and most importantly, I forgave myself. A huge invisible weight was lifted. I even sent an email apologizing, and I've been okay with never receiving a reply because the apology was for me. (More on that in a bit.)

Importantly, my forgiveness doesn't equate to my agreement with our actions. Their actions hurt me. My actions hurt them and myself. But we're all doing the best we can at any given moment. One of my teachers, Christopher Hareesh Wallis, says (paraphrased):

People can't act any differently than they can in that moment, given their resources or lack of resources that they have access to.

I believe that, as hard and as difficult as it might sound, we always do our best given our life circumstances, biases, upbringing, saṃskāras, etc. It doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to improve or work on ourselves; it simply means that where we are is where we are. I could've stayed angry every time I drove past that street. I could've complained about losing a bunch of money, but instead, at some point, it didn't matter. My peace is what mattered.

On the Opposite of Forgiveness

As I've been thinking about forgiveness, it's helped me to consider its opposite: spitefulness, grudge, revenge, and anger, among many others. Then, consider how I feel about spite, resentment, revenge, anger, or any opposite of forgiveness. Do I want those qualities taking up space in my life as a person trying to live a spiritual life? Do you want to be a person who stays close to these qualities? I think most of us would say, 'No, of course not.' Peace Pilgrim, a spiritual teacher from the mid-1900s, said that we have to "work on relinquishing negative feelings" to progress on the spiritual path. Anger, spite, and so on are negative feelings that we need to relinquish to grow as individuals, wouldn't you agree?

Billy Joel said it best in his song Angry Young Man:

"I believe I've passed the age
Of consciousness and righteous rage
I found that just surviving was a noble fight.
I once believed in causes too,
I had my pointless point of view,
And life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

And there's always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he's never been able to learn from mistakes,
So he can't understand why his heart always breaks.
But his honor is pure, and his courage as well,
And he's fair, and he's true, and he's boring as hell
And he'll go to the grave as an angry old man."

I don't want to be an angry person. I spent too much time in my youth angry, and he's right in saying that life will go on regardless of who's wrong or right. There's a quote often contributed to the Buddha, which is likely not from him but is still very much in line with spiritual teachings, that says, "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." I've surely felt that with anger - my blood boils, my face gets red, my heart races, I'm warm. It doesn't feel good, nor does it motivate me to be a better person; so, instead, I can choose to forgive, let go of the hot coal with minimal damage, or I could decide to stay caught up in the narrative with my "fist in the air" while life goes on. We all have this choice.

Who is forgiveness for?

Forgiveness is for me when I forgive and for you when you forgive. Forgiveness is love to me from me. Forgiveness is love to you from you. And at some point, when and if we're ready, it's love to them, the person we forgave. With forgiveness, our heart softens, we open up more, and we break down some of the barriers we've built around our hearts that we conditioned ourselves to believe were protecting us. As Suleika Jaouad writes,

"Forgiveness is a refusal to armor your own heart - a refusal to live in a constricted heart."

Through the process of forgiveness, we move closer to remembering we are already our True, our higher, our most Divine Self.

We forgive for our personal growth. We forgive to stop the pain from the coal of anger. Ultimately, it all starts with forgiving ourselves first. We deserve the same care and tenderness from ourselves that we offer our friends when they struggle. Peace Pilgrim said, "You must learn to forgive yourself as easily as you forgive others" and then use all that energy previously spent on condemning yourself for improving yourself."

Take a moment and think if there's anything you haven't forgiven yourself for. Now consider how it would feel if you offered yourself the tenderness of forgiveness. Sit with that. Soften into that space over and over.

Forgiving Others

Now, forgiving others has its own challenges, but in some ways, it's much easier than forgiving ourselves. Since we know forgiveness is for us and our hearts, we don't necessarily have to communicate our forgiveness to everyone we need to forgive. Surely, there are people whom it would be helpful to tell we forgive them, but there are also people who may not benefit or even understand. In those circumstances, it's best to let the forgiveness be from your heart to them as if you are energetically sending them forgiveness. This practice is much like the Buddhist meditations of metta (lovingkindness) and tonglen (sending and receiving). In the former, you send love, support, and compassion to people, often including difficult people in your life, and in the latter, you breathe in the suffering of others, but neither are practices where you tell the person. These are energetic. These are to open YOUR heart. Because the only person you can change is you! And Peace Pilgrim says, "After you have changed yourself, you might be able to inspire others to look for change," but only after YOU do the work.

Back to that story I shared at the beginning, I sent the email; life went on, and I felt pretty free from that situation. Then, about two years ago, maybe two years from when I forgave everyone in that situation, I walked into a bar, and within seconds, the bartender started screaming at me. I was confused. I was scared. I didn't even recognize the person until they said something like, "I'll never forgive you." It turns out the bartender was the employee who was involved in my old company. I didn't engage. I immediately left the bar, totally shocked, knowing I could never go back to the bar. I was upset and sad that the situation had happened, and part of me thought karma was unfolding. It was the effect of my actions. I could've fought or yelled, but in this instance, I chose forgiveness. Martin Luther King Jr. said,

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a constant attitude."

Practicing Forgiveness

To be successful at forgiveness, it has to be a part of our core values, and I'm doing my best to make it one of mine. However, like anything in life, it's a practice and process. I'm working with forgiveness through the lens of kṛpā, a Sanskrit word meaning forgiveness, compassion, and kindness. Kṛpā is listed as a yama or value in a particular text of Kāśmīra Śaivism (also known as non-dual Shaiva Tantra). In these types of texts, the order in which a word is listed usually also denotes its importance. Kṛpā is listed as number 5. It's an important value to work with.

After you read this, I invite you to work with forgiveness in whatever way feels good to you. Here are some ideas that have helped me and are part of my process of working with forgiveness:

🫂 You might, through meditation, forgive, or if that's not available yet, send the idea of forgiveness to yourself, to someone you love, to someone you don't really know but whom you may have unknowingly "hurt" you, and when and if you're ready, send it to someone challenging to forgive. As mentioned earlier, this resembles a Buddhist metta or tonglen meditation. I've worked with these meditations for a long time, and in my experience, it starts as an idea of forgiveness or what I often say as "just words," but through regular practice, commitment, and intention, it slowly turns into something more.

🫂 For a more specific practice also rooted in Buddhist teachings, you can check out my friend Jacoby Ballard's book, A Queer Dharma. His chapter on forgiveness inspired me to work with the quality and ultimately forgive those people and myself in the story I shared above. In his book, Jacoby reminds us that while forgiveness is difficult, it is also exciting work. I highly recommend his book.

🫂 Contemplate, again through meditation, what it would feel like to forgive. Feel it. Embody it. And at first, even resist giving words to what it feels like to be forgiveness, to hold forgiveness dear to you, and what it feels like to be forgiven. How would it feel if God told you, right now, you were forgiven for everything, no strings attached? How would you want to show up in the world? Would it be angry or spiteful, or would it be with kṛpā, full of compassion, kindness, and forgiveness? After the contemplation, you might journal about the experience and these questions because if you're like me, you may need a reference the next time something challenging comes up and you forget. 🙂

🫂 I try to start each day without worrying about what I may have 'done wrong' the day before. I know I make mistakes every day. I'm human. But I'm also willing to grow and change. I'm willing to acknowledge my mistakes but also not let them weigh me down. In my favorite philosophical essay, Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson says,

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

I have kept this quote near my nightstand for over 10 years and read it daily to remind myself not to be too encumbered with my old nonsense.

🫂 Lastly, when you're ready, just forgive. When you are tired of holding on to the coal, when you're ready to soften your heart in a particular circumstance or all circumstances -- forgive yourself, anyone, everyone. The only person that has to know is you. Again, forgiveness is for you!

Final Thoughts

Take a breath. You deserve that breath. Forgiveness is a heavy topic. We almost didn't use it as our theme of the month because it is challenging to talk about forgiveness in a few minutes before a yoga class. It isn't easy to talk about forgiveness in general. Hell, as we know, it can be difficult to forgive.

There's one last point I want to cover related to this topic. I'm always cautious not to spiritual bypass. You can pick up hundreds of other books or read posts daily that talk about everything being love and light, but I always want to be real. The fact is life does not always seem like love and light.

Kṛpā, meaning compassion, kindness, and forgiveness, might sound like we have to agree with other people's actions that harm us or others, but it does not. While our forgiveness is for us to help our heart soften, it doesn't mean we have to approve of our or the other person's actions. In the story I shared at the beginning of the essay, I did things that were wrong, that I'm not proud of, and so did the other people. I don't agree with any of our actions in that circumstance, but I know that at that time, I couldn't have handled it any differently, and I know the same is true for them. In his talk on kṛpā, which inspired this essay, Christopher Hareesh Wallis said,

"Forgiveness does not mean approval."

With all that being said, I'm currently working on forgiving all the people I know and love who voted in a way that is harmful. Forgiving them and being compassionate to them has been incredibly challenging. Every day, more disrespectful things are said and done by people in power towards my community, trans and queer people, and others. I will never agree with their actions. I will still stand up and fight against hate. But I will work on doing it with kṛpā, with compassion, and with forgiveness because I don't like the way my body feels when I'm caught up in the opposite of those qualities. I've been there too many times, and I know it doesn't serve me.

What situations are you working with forgiveness on?

❤️ With all the love,

Lee