The Bearers of the Burden, Van Gogh
One day, the sage gave the disciple an empty sack and a basket of potatoes. “Think of all the people who have done or said something against you in the recent past, especially those you cannot forgive. For each of them, inscribe the name on a potato and put it in the sack.”
The disciple came up quite a few names, and soon his sack was heavy with potatoes.
“Carry the sack with you wherever you go for a week,” said the sage. “We’ll talk after that.”
At first, the disciple thought nothing of it. Carrying the sack was not particularly difficult. But after a while, it became more of a burden. It sometimes got in the way, and it seemed to require more effort to carry as time went on, even though its weight remained the same.
After a few days, the sack began to smell. The carved potatoes gave off a ripe odor. Not only were they increasingly inconvenient to carry around, they were also becoming rather unpleasant.
Finally, the week was over. The sage summoned the disciple. “Any thoughts about all this?”
“Yes, Master,” the disciple replied. “When we are unable to forgive others, we carry negative feelings with us everywhere, much like these potatoes. That negativity becomes a burden to us and, after a while, it festers.”
“Yes, that is exactly what happens when one holds a grudge. So, how can we lighten the load?”
“We must strive to forgive.”
“Forgiving someone is the equivalent of removing the corresponding potato from the sack. How many of your transgressors are you able to forgive?”
“I’ve thought about it quite a bit, Master,” the disciple said. “It required much effort, but I have decided to forgive all of them.”
“Very well, we can remove all the potatoes. Were there any more people who transgressed against you this last week?”
The disciple thought for a while and admitted there were. Then he felt panic when he realized his empty sack was about to get filled up again.
“Master,” he asked, “if we continue like this, wouldn’t there always be potatoes in the sack week after week?”
“Yes, as long as people speak or act against you in some way, you will always have potatoes.”
“But Master, we can never control what others do. So what good is the Tao in this case?”
“We’re not at the realm of the Tao yet. Everything we have talked about so far is the conventional approach to forgiveness. It is the same thing that many philosophies and most religions preach – we must constantly strive to forgive, for it is an important virtue. This is not the Tao because there is no striving in the Tao.”
“Then what is the Tao, Master?”
“You can figure it out. If the potatoes are negative feelings, then what is the sack?”
“The sack is… that which allows me to hold on to the negativity. It is something within us that makes us dwell on feeling offended…. Ah, it is my inflated sense of self-importance.”
“And what will happen if you let go of it?”
“Then… the things that people do or say against me no longer seem like such a major issue.”
“In that case, you won’t have any names to inscribe on potatoes. That means no more weight to carry around, and no more bad smells. The Tao of forgiveness is the conscious decision to not just remove some potatoes… but to relinquish the entire sack.”
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[…] that I ask you Is, show me how to follow you and I’ll obey. Teach me how to reach you, I can’t find my way. Let me see the light…Let me be the light. As the sun turns […]
[…] haven’t written or thought much lately about negativity. I dropped my sack of resentments a long time ago, or so I thought. But perhaps I merely traded that large heavy sack for a smaller […]
Trading for a smaller sack is good. Just keep at it until your sack is smaller and smaller. Eventually is will be very small. Suddenly, one day, it will be gone.
Excellent post. I may put up a link to it.
This is a wonderful post on holding resentments. I need to read it daily.
Occasionally I will think of a wrong done to me many years ago and realize that I have not completely forgiven the person who wounded me. I am at a loss as to why I still harbor resentments because I am well aware that by doing so it only hurts me.
I know this is a flaw in my personality and strive to eliminate it.
I think we harbor resentments because we can’t understand the other’s point of view and why they might have hurt us. Putting yourself into the other’s place is not always an easy thing to do. It took me a long time to realize how fearful the people who hurt me must have been, how deeply their fears had to run for them to do what they did, to the point of being afraid to even speak with me! Even now, I think about contacting them, but realize that if they were no longer afraid, they would have already reached out to me.
A while back (I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment) I wrote a post about “forgiveness.” I basically offered up the view that the word is without meaning–except perhaps in some religious context (and I am most definitely not religious).
I do believe it is possible to reduce and even stop thinking about negative stuff.
I spend almost no time thinking about hurtful things others might have done to me, but an inordinate amount time thinking about the hurtful things I have done. I often tell myself this is a waste of emotional energy, but then I reply to myself that these are burdens I created myself, and don’t deserve to lay them down. Sigh.
well, again, I would look at the fears — what were you afraid of then that maybe now you aren’t afraid of so you would do things differently? Even when I start to become angry these days, I realize how anger is tied to fear, and when we might lash out at someone in anger it is really just a way of trying to protect part of ourselves. Most of the hurtful things we do, or that are done to us, come from stepping over someone’s boundaries, the walls we set up to protect ourselves. We need to understand that those are different for everyone. My own are (or were) so unlimited, and some people’s are very very limited indeed. So it’s easy to cross people’s boundaries for me. I had to learn to reign myself in, and on the other hand, to also extend myself to seem more open and friendly so people don’t find me threatening. Before I seemed aloof but actually cared deeply, now I seem friendly but actually am more detached from the results of any interaction. Weird.