Revenge or Forgiveness?
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| A person is considered still further advanced when he regards honest well-wishers, affectionate benefactors, the neutral, mediators, the envious, friends and enemies, the pious and the sinners all with an equal mind. |
For many, the first option might seem to be the most satisfying. After all, it provides immediate justice. It allows us a chance to see the other party suffer and that can bring us some level of pleasure. Seeing people suffer for the wrongs they have done makes us feel that justice was dealt. What would the world be without justice? Revenge, or “an eye for an eye” approach is becoming the predominating mood in society. We want things quickly, including our justice. We’re running out of patience for just about everything. When the signal turns green, we need the person in front of us to move immediately. We need our computers to boot up faster. During rush hour, I try to be the first one out of the subway car so I don’t have to wait behind all the people going up the stairs. In reality, I probably save myself only about 60 seconds. It’s a little scary to imagine the lack of patience our future generations will have.
It’s important for us to analyse the kind of impact a culture of revenge can have on our society. There is the risk of us becoming completely intolerant of each other. We are already becoming so intolerant that it’s scary to think about what it will lead to. We hear about it all the time in cases of road rage where people will tailgate, cut each other off and even run another person off the road because of a slight offense.
Revenge doesn’t always involve hurting others on a physical level. It can also lead us into actions where we want to bring harm to another reputation, career or family members. It can drive us into a sick mentality of wanting to cause pain to others. Ultimately, we run the risk of becoming the same kind of person that hurt us, or possibly even worse. We end up becoming that which we focus on most. Filling our mind with anger, hate and vengeance deteriorates our consciousness and brings us into a dark space. It’s important to understand that such emotions and feelings are very stressful and can deteriorate our physical health.
A story is told of a missionary priest who
had been living alone on a hill attacked by robbers on one evening; they beat
him up and took away with his possessions. As they were getting out, they saw a
bowl of food under the table and decided to devour it before they left. Seeing this,
the priest rose with difficulty and said ‘hey! That food is poisoned! I have a
problem with rats so I keep that poisoned food to kill them! U can have some in
the kitchen near the stove’. The Thieves were shocked and stood aghast looking
at the priest who was now bleeding profusely. Surprisingly, they left the
property they had looted and with one accord carried the priest to a nearby
hospital that was 2km away and left him at the gate where he was later picked
up by the security guards and treated till he got well.
This teaches us on the
virtue of forgiving our enemies by doing to them good deeds even at
loggerheads.
Forgiving is hard. We have such a hard time letting go of the hurt that others have caused us. In some cases, it can take years for the pain and bitterness to go away. In more extreme situations, it may stay with us our entire life. It’s not possible to forget the incident or person that caused us pain. Hinduism suggests that the highest platform to exist on is the platform of compassion. Compassion means trying to adjust our vision in the following manner:
- Trying to understand the pain and suffering of the offender that is causing them to behave in hurtful ways.
- Seeing what lessons we can learn from the situation and how we might have contributed to it.
- Understanding that the soul inhabiting all bodies is pure and good but is being forced to act in irrational ways while stuck in the material world.
Forgiveness takes incredible amounts of strength and character. In fact, it builds character. We have to decide, if we want to live a life filled with vengeful and angry thoughts or a life in which we are trying to forgive, even if not always successfully.
Do you have this virtue of forgiving?
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