Issue nº 81

Guilt and forgiveness

     During his pilgrimage to Mecca, a holy man was suddenly aware of God's presence beside him. He fell into a trance, knelt down, hid his face and prayed:
     'Lord, I ask only one thing in my life, that You give me the grace never to offend You.'
     'I cannot give you that grace,' replied the Almighty.
     Surprised, the man asked why.
     'If you never offend me, I will have no reason to forgive you,' he heard the Lord say. 'And if I have no need to forgive you, you will soon forget the importance of being merciful to others. Therefore, continue on your way with Love, and allow me to forgive you now and then, so that you do not forget this virtue either.'
     The story clearly illustrates our own problems with guilt and forgiveness. When we were children, we would often overhear our mother saying: 'My child only behaved foolishly because he got into bad company. He's a very good boy really.'
     And so we never took responsibility for our actions, never asked for forgiveness and ended up forgetting that we must also be generous with those who offend us. The act of forgiveness has nothing to do with feelings of guilt or cowardice: we all make mistakes and it is only by occasionally stumbling that we can improve and progress. On the other hand, if we are too tolerant of our own behaviour - especially when this hurts other people - we become isolated and incapable of correcting our path.
     How can we drive out guilt, but at the same time be capable of asking forgiveness for any mistakes we make?
     There are no easy formulae, but there is good sense: we should judge the results of our actions and not the intentions behind them. Deep down, everyone is good, but that is irrelevant and will not heal any wounds we might inflict. Here is a beautiful story that illustrates precisely what I mean:
     When he was small, Cosroes had a teacher who helped him to become an outstanding student in all his subjects. One afternoon, the teacher punished him severely, apparently for no reason.
     Years later, Cosroes acceded to the throne. One of his first actions was to summon his former schoolmaster and demand an explanation for the injustice he had committed.
     'Why did you punish me when I had done nothing wrong?' he asked.
     'When I saw how intelligent you were, I knew at once that you would inherit the throne from your father,' replied his teacher. 'And so I decided to show you how injustice can mark a man for life. Now that you know that,' the teacher went on, 'I hope you will never punish another person without good reason.'
     This reminds me too of a conversation I had over supper once in Kyoto. The Korean teacher Tae-Chang Kim was talking about the differences between Western thought and Eastern thought.
     'Both our civilisations have a golden rule. In the West, you say: 'Do as you would be done by.' This means that a loving person establishes a model of happiness which he tries to impose on all those he meets.
     The golden rule in the East appears to be almost the same: 'Never do to others what you would not want done to you.' This is based on an understanding of all the things that make us unhappy, including having to obey a model of happiness imposed on us by others - and that makes all the difference.
     In order to improve the world, we do not impose our own way of showing our love, we try instead to avoid making others suffer.'
     So show respect and care when dealing with your fellow man. Jesus said: 'You shall know them by their fruits.' And old Arab proverb says: 'God judges the tree by its fruits, not by its roots.' And according to a popular proverb: 'The beater forgets the beating, the beaten never do.'
     © Translated by Margarell Jull Costa