On Forgiveness
Enemy
One who manifest malice or hostility toward you,
One who oppose the purpose and interest of your enemy.
Someone said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Someone asked, "Why should I love my enemy? He is my enemy,
So why should I love him as myself?
You are disturbed because of someone else,
Someone is disturbed because of you.
Even if you can forgive your enemy,
You cannot forget him anyway.
Who are your enemies?
Why do you feel that they are your enemies?
Where do they come from?
The enemies are there because you are protecting yourself against them.
The enemies are there because you can feel them as your enemies.
Nothing disturb unless you think it disturbs you.
So the enemies are your own creation.
It is better that you do not choose to create your enemies
Than do decide to forgive and love your enemies.
You're choosing and deciding, after all, are things you do.
~By Sang-Bong Lee
(A distinguished member of International Society of Poets)
*Excerpt from "The Dawn of Inspiration, Memories of Tomorrow."
Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
~ (Mt.5: 44, Lk.6: 27, 35)
So Christians go on trying to love and forgive their enemies?
But the concern for self is so deep-rooted that whatsoever you do,
You do for yourself1x
Like as religious missionary is serving poor, ill, diseased people?
And his or her service is sincere,
But deep down he (or she) is concerned with himself (or herself),
Because this service is just a method to reach heaven.
To tell the truth, whatever you do
Your enemy is there in your corner,
Hurting you on, providing hatreds through out your life.
Even if you can forgive your enemy,
But you cannot forget him (or her) anyway.
For the opposite of "resentment" is forgiveness,
Recognized by centuries of spiritual persons
As "the endpoint of human life."
Forgiveness is "given," and not only in English;
The French say "par-donner,"
The Spanish "per-donar."
That is because: "Forgiveness belongs to the divine."
It is God's act: something other, something that is not ours;
And unless we can acknowledge this,
The word is only 'A noise we make with our mouths.'
Forgiveness is not ours to give, but ours to receive.
We cannot create it; we can be certain only that it is beyond us,
In the sense of beyond our control,
Beyond our ability to will it into existence.
Then Peter came up and said to him,
"Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?
As many as seven times?"
Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven."
~ Matthew 18:21-22.
Peter's question seems to say,
"Please give me a rule so I don't have to keep dealing with this.
How can I know when enough is enough?
I want to know what to do instead of having to come to terms with the whole history
Of our relationship."
Jesus' response to the question says in effect,
"I am unwilling to give you a way out of a continuing relationship to your brother."
"The harder I tried to forgive, the more I seemed to resent," was a frequent description.
Forgiveness does not come easily, but it does, apparently, come suddenly.
"Serene" persons-those who had suffered victimization but who now harbored no resentments-described not a specific act of forgiving, but rather a discovery of themselves as having forgiven.
Realizing this, they stopped "trying to forgive " and instead "just sort of let go";
And then, after varying intervals of times, came the astonishing discovery that
The resentment had disappeared, that they somehow already had forgiven1x
That's the why forgiveness is spiritual:
It is one of those realities that cannot be "willed," that becomes more impossible
The harder one tries to will it.
Forgiveness, in fact, becomes possible only when will is replaced by willingness;
It results less from effort than from openness.
A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting
A friend who had shared the ordeal with him.
"Have you forgiven the Nazis?" he asked his friend.
"Yes."
"Well, I haven't. I'm still consumed with hatred for them."
"In that case," said his friend gently,
"They still have you in prison."
~ de Mello, Heart of the Enlightened, P. 107.
When you are open, the whole existence has become your friends,
When you are closed, the whole existence is inimical to you.
Now, do you understand?
~ By Sang-Bong Lee, Ph.D.
(Philosopher & Poet)
*All rights reserved and copyrighted 2000.
*Printed here by permission of Sang-Bong Lee.
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