เมื่อเราไม่ให้อภัยใคร อกุศลจะฉวยเอาความไม่พอใจนั้นมาเป็นประเด็น ซ้อนภาพของคนนั้นไว้ในใจซ้ำแล้วซ้ำเล่าเพื่อเหนี่ยวนำพลังงานบาปเข้ามาบั่นทอนชีวิตเรา ทางแก้คือรู้เท่าทันกลไกนี้และให้อภัย เพื่อไม่ให้สิ่งเหล่านี้ถูกหยิบมาเป็นประเด็นได้อีกWhen we withhold forgiveness, the unwholesome seizes on that resentment, replaying the image of that person in our mind again and again to draw in more unwholesome energy that wears our life down. The way out is to recognize this mechanism and forgive, so it can never be used as leverage again.
Our teacher's own teacher once taught: when someone upsets us over something, and years pass — three years, five years — yet we still remember and haven't forgiven them, that resentment flares up every time we cross paths. That is us keeping that person as a "prisoner" locked inside our own mind. It clutters the heart with prisoners, makes it hard to organize our thoughts, and surfaces during meditation.
The Prisoners We Keep Locked Inside
The teacher explained that, in truth, it isn't we who remember — it's nature that remembers. Once it has seized the mind, it finds reasons to bring certain people to mind, overlaying images of those who once upset us — still images, moving images, complete with a voice recounting their wrongs — to keep drawing in unwholesome energy continuously. The longer we withhold forgiveness and stay fixated on this person or that, the more material we hand the unwholesome nature to work with.
Craving and Aversion: The Tool the Unwholesome Uses
The Buddha taught that we should eliminate the world's pleasure and displeasure — meaning craving-attachment and aversion-grief. Craving-attachment is the delight that leads to greed; aversion-grief is the sorrow that leads to irritation and anger. Withholding forgiveness falls squarely under aversion-grief: every trace of displeasure becomes something the unwholesome nature can use as a foothold for resentment and ill will.
The Mechanism at Work When We Withhold Forgiveness
When the unwholesome nature takes hold, it overlays a pattern of body, feeling, mind, and mental objects from realms lower than the human one, dense with greed, aversion, delusion, lust, and hindrances, in order to press our elements down. The wholesome nature works the opposite way, overlaying a pattern from realms higher than human to lift the mind. Every time we refuse to forgive, we hand the unwholesome nature another opening to replay that grievance again and again, accumulating it into a completed sphere of demerit, stored away and waiting to be placed on our life's timeline.
The Way Out: Let Go of Pleasure and Displeasure, Rest in Equanimity
Our life is governed constantly by the law of karma delivering results, and , which pushes us to create new causes using whatever pleasure or displeasure those results produce. This is why the Buddha taught: monks, you should clearly know body, feeling, mind, and mental objects, in order to eliminate the world's craving-attachment and aversion-grief. When pleasure or displeasure arises in any moment, we need to recognize it and gradually let it lessen, resting instead in equanimity. Otherwise we keep generating new causes without end. Forgiving, then, releases both ourselves and the "prisoner" we've been holding — so the unwholesome nature can never use that grievance against us again.