Understanding why should we forgive those who have hurt us?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, when we are seeking to forgive someone, the point is not so much whether that person deserves forgiveness or not. The point is that we deserve to forgive so that we free ourselves from our past and we free us, free ourselves for the future. So, is it self-centered? Well, it is not self-centered.
It is a form of self-care. Not forgiving is continuing to hurt ourselves. It is like carrying not just a heavy burden unnecessarily on our back.
It is like carrying a burning burden inside our heart. It’s a burning burden. It’s like a fiery, suppose we are carrying a thin bag filled with burning coal in it.
And we keep it held tightly to our chest. Some bags are like backpacks which are put on the back side. Some bags are put on the front side.
So, imagine this is a bag. It is strapped tightly onto our chest. And the bag is filled with burning coal.
So, holding on to vengefulness is like keeping that bag strapped to our chest. And why are we keeping it there? Because we are waiting for the right time when we find the other person, we will take the coal from there and throw it at that person. Well, we may or may not find that person.
We may or may not hit that person. We may or may not hurt that person. But we are hurting ourselves far more.
So, forgiving is meant to take that bag off our chest and throw it away. So, that is the primary purpose of forgiveness. So, relieving the past hurts us actually more than the past itself.
However, the past hurts us. Relieving the past hurts us more. So, just as when a person is bitten by a snake, the snake bite doesn’t actually kill the person.
The snake venom spreading to the body kills the person. Similarly, it is not that when people do, people abuse us, that hurts us. It hurts us, no doubt.
But what hurts us far more is the repeated recollecting and resenting what they have done to us. So, we need to move