Forgiving is a Necessity

-


White Roses in the Author's Garden

A human being uses many of the planets resources just to live. Humans in prehistoric times began clearing forests for agriculture and then cleared some more to cook that food. Modern humans may not depend on wood fire but make use of many other chemicals substances that harm the planet. The conclusion is that just through the process of living we tend to damage the planet as well as all life that lives on it. An ecologically sensitive human can minimize this damage but not eliminate it.

Aside from the damage to the world at large, humans also end up causing harm to other humans, even near and dear ones, at times intentionally and at other times inadvertently. Small perfectly reasonable actions of ours, at times produce harm, sometimes grave ones to someone we love dearly and any human may realize this through introspection. What is the consequence of all this? A person who believes that his or her intelligence is about the highest one in the universe and there is no intelligence higher than that may ignore all this and move on with a modern philosophy, the past is gone, forget about it; and when sometime later a brick falls on his head he may put it down to bad luck. However there are others who believe that the human intelligence is just a tiny portion of an infinite universal intelligence that brings all actions to account. Every action has an opposite reaction. Some call it God’s law, some retribution, others karma and some merely as a universal balancing and educating mechanism. 

What can a human then do to mitigate the adverse reactions of his adverse actions? Reflecting on ones actions and repenting for wrong ones while resolving not to repeat that helps. On this path of repentance there is no forgetting about the past and living in the moment. Time has to be set aside for this past. Some adverse actions of ours may get mitigated by our good deeds. Thus a person who helps in forestation efforts and planting trees helps to mitigate the damage caused by the trees that have been cut down to produce his food or the carbon dioxide and methane he has added to the atmosphere through his breathing and the cow pharts that produce his milk. Meditation by mystics attempts to cancel their good and bad deeds for which they may be separately rewarded or punished by Nature.

Aside from what has been described, a powerful mechanism that is available to all of us is to forgive those who have wronged and harmed us. When we do that, we set up a similar reaction of being forgiven for our own wrongs. True it seems hard to do that when someone has willfully and intentionally harmed us but then those who trust in the Universal intelligence leave any consequences of that to the Universe while forgetting about that wrong on their own part. They do this for they own well being and not as an act of generosity or goodness. While forgiving may be seen as a noble act by many, for a spiritually enlightened person it is a necessity required for their own peaceful existence in the universe.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Birds to Telepathy

-
Image
  Sparrow by  Laitche T he house that I live in presently was built in stages  beginning in 1991 during  vacations and sabbaticals in my career. By 1995, the ground floor of the house was more or less complete except for some finishing that continued later. In the center of the roof of the living room was a hole meant for a center light. To hide the protruding wires a small round plastic sheet covered it with another circular hole in the center of it for the light. A similar one existed in the front porch of the house. I lived in the house through most of 1995 with frequent visits of three or four days to Delhi. At this time a pair of house sparrows occupied the porch roof cavity and made it their home. There were no complaints about that since it was not intended to fix a light there in a hurry. Sparrows are cute little birds anyway and I often leave seeds out for them in the garden. Sometime later the female of the pair moved into the living room cavity and began
Read more

The Palash Tree - Magic of Medicinal Herbs and Flowers and Back Pain

-
Image
The Palash Tree Flower B efore modern medicines became prevalent, humans treated many ailments with flowers, leaves, roots and barks of plants and trees. Ayurveda,  an ancient Indian medicinal science, makes use of many herbs and plant materials without substantial extraction of active ingredients as modern medicine does. The idea is that additional compounds in a medicinal or edible plant is an organic whole and a part of life that supports other life.  The complimentary compounds appear to play a useful balancing role whereas individually extracted and isolated compounds can be harmful. A modern example in wide use as food is sugar, a pure chemical isolated from the juice of sugar cane. Indeed there is no food or herb that does not contain a compound or two that could be from mildly to extremely dangerous if isolated and consumed but is beneficial as a group with other compounds. That is the reason why alcohol distilled from a natural fermented fruit juice and then dilu
Read more

Spirituality and Evil

-
Image
Albert Einstein   " A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”   Albert Einstein I t is so much nicer to talk of beautiful things that exist on our lovely planet that it is really a pity that I had to write this post that touches on something that to me is evil. Nevertheless I have written it because if an evil is ignored it is difficult to eradicate it. The evil I am referring to is about the denial of freedom of belief and imposition of beliefs on people and that is something even the followers of the greatest of religions on earth have not been free of though they have done so much g
Read more