I'm glad I was able to illuminate a critical aspect of acceptance in my previous post, and I'm glad to see that leafstorm recognizes the value of it. I intend to respond to a few of the things they mentioned here.
Relevant posts:
Honestly, a lot of christians are bad at forgiving ourselves.
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We worry that forgiving ourselves is making excuses for our past behavior.
I believe you touched on this and touched on your recognition that this is not the case, but I want to address it for anyone with a similar mindset which might be reading this.
Not at all! You make excuses when you believe that what you did was justified or correct, and you are trying to further that justification to yourself or someone else. When you are forgiving yourself, however, that first requires recognizing that there is something to forgive yourself for, which in turns requires recognizing that you did in fact do something that your current self regrets. Therefor, when you forgive yourself, you are merely recognizing that a past part of yourself did something which your current self regrets, but you still love and understand your past self.
What's the incentive to do what's right in the future? Are we enabling ourselves?
The incentive to continue doing what's right, regardless of theology or philosophical approach to life, is the desire to see yourself and those around you happier. This is easier to do when you know for yourself that even if you mess up, you are able to forgive yourself. You are able to move on and try to continue improving the world around you. You know you won't get caught up in guilt for things you can no longer control, and you know that you have in fact learned from the experience and are significantly less likely to make the same mistakes again. No good can come from wracking yourself with guilt and dragging yourself down for your own mistakes. The single most positive way forward is recognizing the mistake, recognizing how you could do better moving forwards, and most importantly forgiving yourself. Dragging yourself down with guilt is only likely to drag those around you down with you, and solves nothing. You will be happier and others will be happier when you can learn to love and forgive yourself.
This, too, you touched on in your own response, but I wanted to chip in my 2 cents :).
There's only one point in charick's post that I have a concern with...
> Acceptance means loving yourself, including the version of yourself that have messed up
> in the past. Those are you too, and those were doing what you thought was right too.
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But we can't ignore the reality that humans do make decisions that we know are wrong when we
let our baser impulses (pride, anger, fear, greed, etc) override our conscience and our rational
judgement. If forgiving ourselves requires us to believe that we were doing what we thought
was right at the time, then we have to either rationalize away these mistakes, or leave some of
them unforgiven.
I disagree. One of the key concepts in Buddhism is that you are not separate from your emotions. You are not another entity. You are your happiness. You are your anger. You are your greed. You are your joy. You are your sadness. You are your fear, your lust, etc. These things are all you, and you are all of them.
When you do something out of anger, that is still you, that is you at a specific slice in time in a specific emotional state, but you nonetheless.
There was a key turning point that lead to the first buddha's enlightenment, and that was one simple phrase: "I am it." By this he meant that he is sadness, he is suffering, he is happiness, he is anger, he is his own impulsivity. He is all of the good and all of the bad that could effect him. And the same applies to us, we are humans just like the buddha. And while you do not have to agree with the things you did while you were angry, you do need to recognize that your anger is still you, and you should still see your anger and love it. Not love what it causes or what you do when you're angry, but love your anger for what it is. Love your sadness for what it is. See it, look at it, say "I see you. I hear you. What is wrong?"
A famous buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, said in one of his books, "You must look into your anger, your sadness, your fear, deeply. You must look into it and embrace it like a loving mother embraces their crying child." You, your anger, is doing what it is supposed to do. You can forgive yourself for getting angry, and you can forgive yourself for some of the things you might have done while angry, because that is still you, and you know that what you did at that time was a mistake. That is all that is required for self forgiveness. Recognition that it was a mistake, and the willingness to improve and grow.
Buddhism does not teach you how to reject anger, or run from sadness, or hide from fear. It instead teaches you how to look deeply into a situation and see it for what it truly is, so that sadness, anger, fear, etc never arise to begin with. Almost all of our negative emotions are manifestations of ignorance or greed. That does not mean we reject that part of ourselves. Those emotions exist as a part of us for a reason, our anger serves a purpose, a portion of who we are. Just as our fear and sadness do. Instead of rejecting these emotions, one should really strive to understand people and situations and misfortune and themselves and touch them deeply, and this deep understanding will naturally bring forwards less anger, less sadness, less fear, because we have less ignorance and less greed.
Truly understanding ourselves and others, and all the things that collectively make what we see as our "self" is absolutely crucial to loving ourselves. You might see that a situation made you angry. You might then look deeply into this situation, and see something you didn't expect. You might see that this situation makes you angry because of an expectation you have. Looking deeper, you might see that you have this expectation because of something that happened to you as a child, or something that deeply impacted your growth and understanding. Then you will see clearly, that this is not your fault. It is not the situations fault. It is not the person whom you are angry at's fault. You will see it was a result of things beyond your control. Then you can forgive yourself, and move forwards in life with an improved understanding. Next time you get angry over something similar, or start to get angry, you might be mindful of this new understanding. You might remember "oh, yes, I see my anger. I feel my anger. I understand why my anger is arising." Then you might proceed to comfort yourself, and your anger. This cycle of arising, understanding and growth can be extremely beneficial, and extremely conductive to self-love and self-forgiveness. And it will also help you to see deeply into others, and deeply understand others, thereby more easily forgiving others and better loving others around you.
I already had similar sentiments before I ever started studying Buddhism. What people need more than anything else in the modern age, I feel, is to understand themselves. And I mean truly understand themselves. And to try and understand eachother. With understanding comes insight, with insight comes clarity, and with clarity comes love.
-charick
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