I’ve always tiptoed carefully

through any discussion of forgiveness with students.

Too complicated a process, I would think.

Too time-bound,

Too individual.

The heart is ready for only that which

The heart is ready for.

Not having the language or the willingness

To describe this,

To date,

I’ve mostly ignored it.

I’ve acknowledged forgiveness 

Simply as

A journey, an odyssey,

Too intricate to be taught,

Too delicate to be discussed,

Too tender to be talked about too much.

Today, in my last-ditch, I found myself trolling the internet, tired and played out and happy from traveling; life brought me to Jack Kornfeld.

I’m suspicious of teachers; I’m fussy and particular.  However, I have always known and trusted Jack’s authenticity, having seen him many a time at Kripalu.  He is an author, Buddhist practitioner and one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West.

Jack offers us three directions for forgiveness; 

-forgiveness toward ourselves for how we’ve treated another

-forgiveness toward ourselves for how we’ve treated ourselves

-forgiveness, as we are ready, in our own timing, toward another for hurting us

How might you practice using the three directions as a journey of forgiveness?  What would it specifically look like for you to practice?

To the extent to which we are able, may we turn our hearts in the direction of forgiveness—to self, to another, and to all.

~Aruni Futuronsky

I can’t wipe it away…but I can remember well…

inquiry for today~ what is delicate here? what is like glass- ready to break?

what did you push away?

Thanks Robert Frost

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought…
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope,
will recall as not too heavy the tug
of those albatrosses I sadly placed
upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,
yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,
and it brings strange peace that itself passes
into past, easier to bear because
you said it, rather casually, as snow
went on falling in Vermont years ago.

~David Ray