A devotee of the Lord does not want to see another person suffer. He feels he has no right to judge or inflict pain on anyone. When this humility mixes with compassion, feeling for the suffering of others, forgiveness arises.
In the tradition of bhakti (devotion), humility, forgiveness and compassion are inherent within bhakti. This means that wherever bhakti fully mamifests there must be humility, forgiveness and compassion.
When we look for justification for our resentment, it is helpful to look at how willing we are to get back at another. When we judge another it says more about us and our need to judge than it does about the person we are judging. Similarly, our need for revenge says more about us and our need to get back for what was done to us than it says about what the person did to us.
When we come to a higher stage of spiritual awareness, forgiveness will be an automatic and natural response to hurt and abuse.
This understanding can help us reflect upon our current level of spiritual consciousness. We should not only evaluate our spiritual standing by external criteria, i.e. how well or how often we perform specific practices, but we must also look at our attitudes, and our responses to challenges, to better understand how we are progressing spiritually.
No comments:
Post a Comment