Self-Forgiveness: Crossing Boundaries

"Self-forgiveness is a stance of hope, of freedom." Forgiving Yourself by Beverly Flannigan

Continuing consideration of the value and practice of self-forgiveness, author Beverly Flannigan writes about a topic few even think about, understand or practice. It is an important topic in most all spiritual traditions, certainly those who engage in actions for salvation, such as in Buddhism. She writes that "mistakes are harmful, rash, impulsive, foolish acts... a mistake is morally neutral... mistakes are errors." However she distinguishes mistakes or errors from transgressions, crossing boundaries as quite different. Unlike mistakes in which no harmful intention is made, transgressions often include malicious intent and are then not neutral. Most would think of those actions to be just wrong.

Transgressions typically cross over a number of boundaries such as moral, legal, interpersonal, or social. They are not morally neutral because the intent is to deprive, to harm, to impair or injure, usually for a self-centered reason on the part of the perpetrator. Many communities observe specific prohibitions regarding transgressions; these prohibitions may be called different things, such as precepts, commandments, rules, values, but their intent is similar or the same: to observe and regard commitments, and the resulting responsibilities made by groups and individuals to one another.
They may also observe the consequences.  For example, a legal transgression may be stealing, assault, battery or throwing your junk out on an isolated country road. Communities set forth moral rules regulating the conduct of persons for the benefit of the common good, and the good of individuals; we expect to abide by them, even if we don't agree with their premise.

On the other hand, perhaps the most common boundary crossed besides legal boundaries are moral. Moral transgressions "between people are special kinds of wrong doings; they are special because when two [or more] persons form a relationship [or community], their separate ideas of right and wrong combine to form a new construct of right and wrong, unique to those two people." All manner of constructs may be forged; the net result is a working blueprint of the social relationship between the individuals. For this reason, breaking or violating these agreements typically results in a strong sense of grief for the other party[parties]."When people transgress moral agreements with friends, spouses, beloveds, they cross the barriers of their own ideas about right and wrong by lying, withholding, taking resources, so as to typically deprive the other[s] of truth, or other goods and benefits." Violations are often ultimately of a spiritual nature.

"The pain of non-forgiveness is rooted in your mistakes, transgressions, evil intentions, your own shortcomings and limitations." To forgive yourself and others is a stance of hope; it is a newness of self which results from the freedom to start again.

Found in Innocence

This article appeared here previously on July 2, 2009

"Innocence is a mystery greater than evil." James Hillman

Innocence in the soul suggests a state in which one exists unwounded by the every day challenges and trials of the world. Recovering innocence is to refrain from self cruelty or the equally prevalent cruelty inflicted upon others, to work and live in such a way as to gain in the strength needed to live a creative life. Spirit moves in innocence.

Innocence in adult life amounts to a renewal, a return to the essential elements necessary to the life of a Creator. It is more than unknowing; in this sense, innocence is not the least opposed to sophistication, or to its opposite, a childlike state of openness that finds itself needed in a maturity which is agile, and graceful continuity. If this is not in evidence, then the perceived maturity is not. Rather, it is simply a form of avoidance of without inherent value. Innocence is the vital element of all forms of play. Experience is key as the buddha taught. Children learn largely by experience.

Innocence is an often overlooked element of deep forgiveness as part of the restorative quality in the soul. Life's injuries are nearly unavoidable. However in deep forgiveness, over time, the wounds may be exchanged for the delights and joys of innocence discovered in shared experiences. Maturity need not mark or weigh us down with its cares or disappointments.

Another fertile area of life in which innocence makes its appearance is in love. In mythic terms, love and marriage are markedly different experiences for men and women. The god Eros gains in stature, in strength upon his marriage; yet in doing so writes Robert Johnson in his book She, "each woman in marriage must terminate her innocence and childlike naivety," a difficult, but essential experience for the mature feminine psyche. In the evolving process of maturity, a woman while not directly corresponding to her mate, influences and spurs his own development.

At different points in their parallel lives together, woman who most often bears the light in a man's life, finds that she has nothing to give to him--he simply just isn't looking, or able to look into the light she presents to him. While tangled with him, she may fear as a consequence, what she has then to lose. "There is something in the unconscious of a man that wishes to make an agreement" that she will not look too closely or too carefully at him; yet in maturity she does, and she must. Like the biblical garden of Eden, the pair in love find one another in innocence; their love experience is powerful. And it must be so to propel them into the experiences that comprise their shared lives. Yet as time unfolds, disappointment and disillusionment inevitably arise.

Ultimately it is only in forgiveness, in innocence, that the otherwise harsh judgements of one towards the other may be set aside for a return to the Beloved, to the innocence of the earlier garden of Eden, a paradise she may have feared lost.

Mahayana and Freedom of the Dharmakaya

"When bodhisattvas think of the Dharmakaya, how will they picture it to themselves?"
--General Treatise on Mayhayanism by Asanga and Vasubandhu
The writers of this important text as related by Suzuki in his book, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, answer this question-- what will they think/picture, by saying that, "They will think of the Dharmakaya by picturing its seven characteristics: free, unimpeded activity manifesting in all beings; all perfected virtues eternally in the Dharmakaya; absolute freedom from prejudice, both intellectual and emotional; spontaneous emanations from the will of the Dharmakaya; inexhaustible wealth stored in the Body of the Dharma, wealth spiritual and physical; purity without stain of onesidedness; earthly works achieved for the salvation of all beings, as reflexes of the Dharmakaya."

Asanga goes on to enumerate other characteristics of the Dharmakaya. He discusses its five forms of operation, its irresistible spiritual domination over all evil-doers, its method of destroying various unnatural and irrational methods of salvation practiced by: ascetics, hedonists, and Ishvaraism.He also mentions the ability of Dharmakaya to cure minds which believe in the reality, permanency and indivisibility of the soul-ego. Asanga ultimately seeks to inspire "those Bodhsattvas who have not yet attained to the stage of immovability, as well as those who are still in a state of vacillation."

Thus the freedom of the Dharmakaya is manifold (many-fold). According to the Buddhist view, "those spiritual powers everlastingly emanate from the Body of Dharma have no trace of human elaboration or constrained effort, but they are a spontaneous overflow from its immanent necessity, from its free will." That the Dharmakaya makes no conscious struggling gestures is to say that it is within itself, without diverse tendencies, one trying to gain ascendancy over another. It  becomes then, obvious, that any struggle becomes fertile for compulsion which is incompatible within the conception of the highest spiritual reality.

Absolute spontaneity and perfect (whole) freedom are necessary attributes when describing Dharmakaya. There can then, be no coercion, either external or internal. "Its every act of creation or salvation or love emanates from its own free will, unhampered by struggle which characterizes the activities of the every-day mind." This free will, which is divine, "stands in striking contrast to other, more earthly concepts of "free will."

As the Dharmakaya works of its own accord, "it does not seek any recompense for its deeds; its every act is for the best welfare of its creatures, for they are all its manifestations, and must know what we therefore need."

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