I wrote last week about the Buddhist concept of not-self - so important on the path to freedom from suffering. I also referenced two community groups that were at odds about a particular hurtful and offensive action taken on one side against the others. There are attempts to move on in both groups but any attempts actually to reconcile have fallen on deaf ears and there is a process underway to cover over rather than repair and heal.
The Buddha taught often about Reconciliation. Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s good article in Access to Insight quotes these wise words from the Buddha’s teachings:
"These two are fools. Which two? The one who doesn't see his/her transgression as a transgression, and the one who doesn't rightfully pardon another who has confessed his/her transgression. These two are fools.
"These two are wise. Which two? The one who sees his/her transgression as a transgression, and the one who rightfully pardons another who has confessed his/her transgression. These two are wise."
— AN 2.21
"It's a cause of growth in the Dhamma and Vinaya of the noble ones when, seeing a transgression as such, one makes amends in accordance with the Dhamma and exercises restraint in the future."
— DN 2
https://accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/reconciliation.html
In those few short phrases, the Buddha outlines the essential ingredients to reconciliation - confessing or acknowledging the transgression or the wrong doing and agreeing that it was unskillful and harmful, pardoning one who has confessed or acknowledged a transgression, and seeing the process of making amends as a cause for growth in the individual and the sangha on the path to freedom from suffering.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu goes on to write:
Reconciliation — patisaraniya-kamma — means a return to amicability, and that requires more than forgiveness. It requires the reestablishing of trust. If I deny responsibility for my actions, or maintain that I did no wrong, there's no way we can be reconciled. Similarly, if I insist that your feelings don't matter, or that you have no right to hold me to your standards of right and wrong, you won't trust me not to hurt you again. To regain your trust, I have to show my respect for you and for our mutual standards of what is and is not acceptable behavior; to admit that I hurt you and that I was wrong to do so; and to promise to exercise restraint in the future. At the same time, you have to inspire my trust, too, in the respectful way you conduct the process of reconciliation. Only then can our friendship regain a solid footing.
This process usually includes a heart-felt apology. In my own family, apologies were few and far between and often to apologize meant to be wrong, to be somehow bad or less. Sometimes the wrong person ended up apologizing.
In our society, that tendency has been present as well. One discussion showed that there was a divide in that women were more likely to apologize than men, and worse, that apology put the apologizer in the “one down” position, inferior to the one being apologized to. Men were more resistant to apologize and assume the “one down” position than women. There was and sometimes still is a stigma of shame and wrongdoing that weighs down apology and robs it of its otherwise inherent capacity to bring reconciliation and healing.
In Buddhism, there is distinction made between feeling guilty and feeling remorse. Guilt is less helpful - it is more centered on the self than other, and includes harsh self judgments. Remorse places the change in feeling around the action. The person can feel remorse about the action and also wish not to repeat it, without feeling evil or wrong. Guilt can be debilitating. Remorse leads to uplifting intentions. It encourages making better choices in the future. It also helps purify by shifting perspective and resolve leading to a furtherance along the path that might not have been possible without it.
Last week I quoted the late Jack Engler, Harvard psychotherapist and early science-of-meditation pioneer, who said, “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.” Often the inability to acknowledge one’s own transgressions or harm to others results from a weakness or insecurity in the “being somebody” department, the psychological concept of ego. A person with a stronger sense of themselves can admit wrongdoing without bringing down the whole psychological structure. And paradoxically, that stronger sense of self can allow for a thinning or letting go of the “selfing” - the “I” making and “my” making I wrote about last week. That thinning of “selfing” is what makes apology possible - that allows the acknowledgment of unskillful or hurtful actions or words, that fills the heart with cleansing remorse and the desire to make amends.
And sometimes, sadly, reconciliation does not arrive, apologies are not forthcoming, and we may be left with our wounds and even a sense of shame for having been the recipient of harm. Forgiveness is the necessary step whether an apology is forthcoming or not. The forgiveness is not for the transgressor so much as for ourselves.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu again:
The Pali word for forgiveness-khama-also means "the earth." A mind like the earth is non-reactive and unperturbed. When you forgive me for harming you, you decide not to retaliate, to seek no revenge. You don't have to like me. You simply unburden yourself of the weight of resentment and cut the cycle of retribution that would otherwise keep us ensnarled in an ugly samsaric wrestling match. This is a gift you can give us both, totally on your own, without my having to know or understand what you've done.
The inner reflections of the one wronged also need to be deep and honest.
To prevent those in the right from abusing their position, he [the Buddha] counseled that they reflect on themselves before they accuse another of wrongdoing. The checklist of questions he recommended boils down to this: "Am I free from unreconciled offenses of my own? Am I motivated by kindness, rather than vengeance? Am I really clear on our mutual standards?" Only if they can answer "yes" to these questions should they bring up the issue. Furthermore, the Buddha recommended that they determine to speak only words that are true, timely, gentle, to the point, and prompted by kindness. Their motivation should be compassion, solicitude for the welfare of all parties involved, and the desire to see the wrong-doer rehabilitated, together with an overriding desire to hold to fair principles of right and wrong.
To encourage a wrongdoer to see reconciliation as a winning rather than a losing proposition, the Buddha praised the honest acceptance of blame as an honorable rather than a shameful act: not just a means, but the means for progress in spiritual practice. As he told his son, Rahula, the ability to recognize one's mistakes and admit them to others is the essential factor in achieving purity in thought, word, and deed [MN 61]. Or as he said in the Dhammapada, people who recognize their own mistakes and change their ways "illumine the world like the moon when freed from a cloud" [Dhp 173].
High aspirations indeed. And worthy of our reflection.