Sometimes there’s an interesting synchronicity to things.

Yesterday, I was having a discussion with my 20 yr old daughter, who has been busy mending a broken heart. The first love of her life mistreated her, and she has worked her way through devastation, anger, sadness, emptiness, to pondering forgiveness. 

“What do you think about that, Mum?” 

“Well, I’m not so much on track with forgiveness, per se. It can be misguided, slightly naive, like, ‘all is forgiven, so go ahead and sink the knife in again’. Plus, it’s not your job to forgive him.“

“I feel like I need to forgive him.“

“Would it make you feel better?“

“I think so.“

“Then, by all means, do it.“

She was quiet for a while. We both were. 

Then I said, “I’m more in line with what we call in yoga, upeksha.“

In his translation of the Yoga Sutras, BKS Iyengar translated upeksha as indifference to those who are trapped in vice. He named it as one of the “healing vrttis”.  (I.33)

Tich Nhat Hahn expresses it as a kind of loving overlooking. It is one of the Brahmaviharas, or Divine Abodes, in the Buddha dharma.  

BKS’s “healing vrttis” are one and the same as the Brahmaviharas: maitri – loving kindness or friendliness, karuna – compassion, mudita – joy, and upeksha – equanimity. But, indeed, he does translate them differently.

As it pertains to my daughter, involved in the work of healing the wounds from mistreatment by a 19 yr old she gave her whole young heart to, I find BKS Iyengar’s translations very useful. I want my daughter to be safe. I want her to be free. I want her to be happy. And, thankfully, I no longer have little daydreams about kicking that boy’s shins, hard. We both need to heal, move on, love again. But wisely.  

Wanting her to be safe, I would not endorse that she lovingly overlook that guy’s choices, which continue to lead him towards mistreating people. We might say he’s stuck in vice, since he is not sowing karmic seeds of virtue. Nor would I ask her to have compassion for his faults, suggesting that she stick around waiting for him to grow out of it. Modern science now tells us that his boy brain won’t reach maturity until at least age 25. Modern vernacular says “30 is the new 20.“ In the meantime, are we to excuse bad behaviour?  

Nor would I expect her to extend even basic friendliness towards him. Not yet, not while those wounds are still tender. Loving kindness is out of the question right now, lest she fall back into his arms.  

And joy? While he has robbed her of joy for months, would I ask her to simulate joy, or suggest it is her job to actively look for joy? What kind of a mother ( or friend ) would do that? You’d have to be pretty self-righteous and insensitive to go that route. Common decency informs us better. No, I find small ways to help her experience joy again, make sure she has lots of kisses and hugs. 

But it may be possible for her to cultivate indifference towards him at this point. She would like to feel nothing. She wants her stomach to stop knotting up when she sees him. I want that for her. Nobody can be happy when their stomach hurts.   

Instead of “forgiving” him, when she catches a glimpse of him, she might take a few breaths, observe her physical sensations, take a step back, then say quietly, “I wish you well”. This relates to the very first precept of yogic action in the eight-limbed system, that of non-harming. The fact that she actively feels it is harming her to carry this turmoil indicates that she is awake, not trapped in avidya – spiritual ignorance. Her impulse is to love. He may still be ignorant years from now, or he might never come out of it. That’s not her business, or mine. She is my business.

Cultivating indifference gains her a bit of space. It neither nullifies her feelings nor his existence. 

In that space, she might notice the beautiful red and amber tree glowing in the October sun over the boy’s head. She may experience a moment of unbiased joy. (She is, in fact, already at this stage.) Maybe in that moment of joy, someone she knows walks up, and she says to them, “Look at that tree!” The two of them might stand there together, bask in its magnificence for a moment. The boy gets lost in his phone, head down, accepting likes. Look up, boy. Look up right now!

Today, I heard a wonderful program on the radio regarding forgiveness in the “Me too” era.  

It seems that there are many who put the onus of forgiveness on the victims of abuse. The show examined this from a few different vantage points – a rabbi, an author with a Christian background, a psychologist. All three made a solid case against forgiveness, as it pertains to our society expecting it from victims towards their abusers. Certainly this is wise action.  

I would like to throw flower petals on my friend who is a judge, and regularly spends her days listening to details of abuse that would turn my stomach to rot. Those intelligent warriors who work in the justice system to see that terrible harm does not slip by unaccounted for are the hero(in)es who walk among us.   

On down the line, we could mind our business appropriately. I won’t read the book, watch the comedy routine, nor eat the food of known abusers who are missing the perks of their celebrity existence. Just as with the boy who hurt my daughter terribly, and will hurt others until he himself has an epiphany, why would we give our attention to the abusers? For now, let’s practice upeksha, the healing vrtti, towards them, and give all our attention – ears, hands, hearts, dollars – to those who have been hurt.