Peter Prasad's Blog: Expletives Deleted - Posts Tagged "meditation"
Forgiveness: A Meditative Moment
Years ago I was running a meditation class for drop-in students. I remember this young woman sitting in the class for the first time. I was leading the group through a visualization of addressing people that had hurt you in the past, and forgiving them.
“After all, you are still here. You have survived. It’s no longer necessary to keep carrying forward all the memory and pain of how you were treated. Just visualize them, forgive them, and let it go,” I said.
Well, this young woman leaped to her feet and blurted out, “No way!” She then stormed out of class. Obviously I had hit a red-hot nerve. The rest of us shared an awkward moment and continued to sit in silence working on the meditation.
As a visualization, the practice is like watching a piece of movie film burn up under the heat of the projector lamp. At first the scene is bright and vivid. Then it goes brown at the edges and suddenly just melts away. A slower process is to watch the scene dissolve from bright colors to black and white to faded brown and then disappear into space. Both work.
What we are trying to do here is release the energy stored in the memory by no longer holding on to it. Emotionally, one is no longer invested in this event or waiting for justification, resolution or satisfaction. One has simply forgiven its happening, the people involved and just letting the energy go.
We practice this approach a lot in Buddhism -- dissolving our past so we are no longer invested in it. It helps us more fully be in the here and now. This method can be applied to a variety of events, people, or memories.
A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, this same young woman returned to class. I looked at her and nodded in recognition. She said: “I had no idea I had so much energy stored in that memory. It was hard but I went home and did what you suggested. It has taken a few weeks, but now I do not even remember that guy’s name.”
She smiled, bright and beautiful. I smiled too.
(Excerpted from Prasad's Zen series, as yet unpublished).
“After all, you are still here. You have survived. It’s no longer necessary to keep carrying forward all the memory and pain of how you were treated. Just visualize them, forgive them, and let it go,” I said.
Well, this young woman leaped to her feet and blurted out, “No way!” She then stormed out of class. Obviously I had hit a red-hot nerve. The rest of us shared an awkward moment and continued to sit in silence working on the meditation.
As a visualization, the practice is like watching a piece of movie film burn up under the heat of the projector lamp. At first the scene is bright and vivid. Then it goes brown at the edges and suddenly just melts away. A slower process is to watch the scene dissolve from bright colors to black and white to faded brown and then disappear into space. Both work.
What we are trying to do here is release the energy stored in the memory by no longer holding on to it. Emotionally, one is no longer invested in this event or waiting for justification, resolution or satisfaction. One has simply forgiven its happening, the people involved and just letting the energy go.
We practice this approach a lot in Buddhism -- dissolving our past so we are no longer invested in it. It helps us more fully be in the here and now. This method can be applied to a variety of events, people, or memories.
A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, this same young woman returned to class. I looked at her and nodded in recognition. She said: “I had no idea I had so much energy stored in that memory. It was hard but I went home and did what you suggested. It has taken a few weeks, but now I do not even remember that guy’s name.”
She smiled, bright and beautiful. I smiled too.
(Excerpted from Prasad's Zen series, as yet unpublished).
Expletives Deleted
We like to write and read and muse awhile and smile. My pal Prasad comes to mutter too. Together we turn words into the arc of a rainbow. Insight Lite, you see?
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