If someone has hurt us grievously what should we do?

Transcript

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so if someone has insulted us grievously and we are hurt, then we keep thinking about the past so what should we do in such a situation we have to find the best way to resolve the past and that can be broadly three courses of action one is we forgive and end that chapter second is we forgive but we withhold trust and third is we forgive but take corrective action see often, I have a whole seminar on forgiveness I will just outline this in broad patterns many times the problem comes because we equate forgiving with trusting forgiving is for the past trusting is for the future if somebody has made a mistake in the past yes, I am not going to hold this against you I forgive you but if we lend money to someone and that person cheated us I may forgive you for that but that doesn’t mean I am going to lend you money again so when we equate the two then we feel we can’t even forgive but we separate the two I can forgive someone but I am not going to trust someone forgiveness can be given, trust has to be earned trust has to be earned so with this analysis we will look at three possibilities somebody makes a mistake but they are genuinely repentant and they are trying to reform themselves and we see in their overall life it is just a one off incident they are good people but at that time they did something wrong then we can forgive and just end that there is no need to hold that in their face for the rest of their life if it is one off incident, forgive and end it close that chapter second is if we forgive but then they keep doing the same thing again or we feel they may do the same thing again then we may be without trust observe the person what is that saying in English you know if you cheat me once shame on you no it is thrice actually fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me yeah it says fool me once I don’t know what is the first time if you fool me once, shame on you if you fool me twice, shame on me if I let myself become a victim again and again that is stupidity so why should I hurt myself in some cases we may have to withhold trust and watch that person and only if that person is reforming then we may repose the trust again now how that is practically done we have to see but it is in principle that we have to do what it takes to protect ourselves and third is that sometimes we may forgive internally but only in terms of emotion I am not going to hold this as a resentment against you but if you are doing the same thing again and again you will keep hurting me and you will keep hurting others so I will take action against you in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna in 11.33 tells Arjuna that they are your enemies, kill them kill those enemies and attain victory but that same Gita in the same chapter, 22 verses, this is 11.33 in 11.55 he says that one who works for me without animosity towards all living beings that person will come to me so Krishna is telling Arjuna, yes functionally they are your enemies they are enemies of Dharma, you have to fight against them but don’t have a revengeful mentality Arjuna did not fight the war to take revenge Arjuna fought to establish Dharma so sometimes establishing Dharma in our context may mean seeking justice may mean taking disciplinary action may mean taking legal action or whatever but we don’t do it with a vengeful mentality that means internally we understand this person has done this thing probably it was my own past karma because of which it has come but so in that sense we don’t hold that resentment against them but just not holding resentment doesn’t mean we give them the power to hurt us again so we have to see that I have a service in this life I have my Dharma and I have to do what it takes to do my Dharma properly so if somebody is hurting me so much that it troubles me physically, emotionally and I can’t do my duty then I have to take protective action I won’t do it in a vengeful mentality but I will do it in an intelligent way so forgiveness forgiving is not necessarily forgetting sometimes it’s like say if I have a wound and that wound is a raw wound right now so as soon as I touch it I feel pain somebody touches it I feel pain but over a period of time the wound heals sometimes the wound is bad it may be a scar say if you have a scar on the body the scar remains but the scar does not cause pain it is there because basically the mark of that wound is there but now it is internally healed just the external mark is there so like that once we process that hurt appropriately we forgive in terms of our inner emotion I am not going to hold this against you resentfully but externally we take the appropriate action so when we forgive in that way then after that, that wound may still remain but it will not be a raw wound it will be like a dried scar it is very difficult if somebody has hurt us to forget it completely but forgiveness creates a new way of remembering where we are not emotionally fixated they are just like yes I have a scar over there but I am not thinking oh why did I get this scar or this is so painful because the pain is not there so like that forgiveness basically frees us from the emotional fixation on the hurt and then we can move onwards in our life does that answer your question