When I want to know the deep meaning of a word, I usually dig into its origin. So I looked for the origin of to forgive in my It says to forgive comes from the Old English forgiefan. Huh? It does not help me at all. (Actually, I wanted to know what for means. Does anyone know? Anna, would you tell me what ver of the German vergeben means?)
So I turned to Chinese as almost all the Japanese abstruct words are loan words from Chinese, just as English borrowed many words from Latin.
The Japanese word for to forgive is 許す(yurusu). But this 許(xŭ) character means to allow or to agree in Chinese and does not mean to forgive either in the modern or classical Chinese. The ancient Japanese perhaps confused permission and forgiveness when they imported this character...
The most commonly used Chinese words for to forgive are 原諒 (yuánliàng) and 寬恕(kuānshù). In my dictionary, the former (原諒 yuánliàng) leads to the latter (寬恕 kuānshù).
寬(kuān) means generous or lenient and 恕(shù) means "to do to others as you do to yourself (推己及人)." Then in Chinese, forgiveness means "to be tolerant and do others as you would do to yourself."
Now I have a better understanding of forgiveness. It's the Golden Rule. We do not want others to hold onto their anger to us. We indeed want them to let go of their anger. Now I feel I have learnt how to practise forgiveness better than yesterday...
Tags: forgiveness, Chinese, ACIM, Golden Rule
2 件のコメント:
It's good that you are struggling with this notion. Remember when I was struggling with my "failure" in climbing, which represented a larger failure of self? You told me the struggle was good. Growing up Catholic, I had forgiveness issues for a long time because I always felt guilty. I finally let go of that when I realized that we manifest our own forgiveness, just as we manifest every other thing in the world. There is no outside force pushing down on us, which is how we feel when we need to forgive or to be forgiven. There are only future opportunities to do better. And even if you do not do better, you have to accept it. There is no good or bad; only easy and difficult things to accept. I found that the more internal conflicts I left behind, the more external conflicts I could handle, and the more I could invite other people into a heart I felt comfortable opening.
Thank you, Dave! You're right. You've reminded me of something I know but tend to be often unconscious about...
Thank you again!
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