February 4, 2006
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On Love, Part 2
By J. Krishnamurti
Is forgiveness love? What is implied in forgiveness? You insult me and I resent it, remember it; then, either through compulsion or through repentance, I say, “I forgive you”. First, I retain and then I reject. Which means what? I am still the central figure. I am still important; it is I who am forgiving somebody. As long as there is the attitude of forgiving, it is I who am important, not the man who is supposed to have insulted me. So when I accumulate resentment and then deny that resentment, which you call forgiveness, it is not love.
A man who loves obviously has no enmity and to all these things he is indifferent. Sympathy, forgiveness, the relationship of possessiveness, jealousy and fear—all these things are not love. They are all the mind, are they not? As long as the mind is the arbiter, there is no love, for the mind arbitrates only through possessiveness and its arbitration is merely possessiveness in different forms. The mind can only corrupt love, it cannot give birth to love, it cannot give beauty. You can write a poem about love, but that is not love.
Is there such a thing as forgiveness when we love? What does it mean when we say we forgive someone?
Comments (13)
when we forgive some one it is the acceptance and in some cases the “forgetting” of the person(s) past actions. then after forgivness comes hope that the person will learn and change.
I forgive you for not visiting my blog.
haha – i reiterate princecharmingthefirst’s message.
I guess forgiving is remembering what someone has done but no longer holding resentment. Peace.
-Pilgrim of Truth
aww – right back at’cha.
love is actions of compassion, fogiveness and acceptance.
Whether forgiveness is self-centered or not – it is better to forgive than not to forgive
The one who forgive is almost always better off in the process of forgiving. Forgiveness opens the doors to be able to love again. It restores the connection and flow of energy between two people.
Krishnamurti often puts a twist in the angle from where he looks. I must get myself some reading from him.
Thanks for sharing.
So little real forgiveness these days…truely forgetting. Can a person truely forgive w/o God?
…one partner ideally feels indebted because of some action done to the other, something that could be considered a violation of respect. The “wounded” partner also recognizes the wrong, and is placed by consensus in a position of power and decision concerning the relationship. Who is more important, the self or the other person?
Forgiveness through this paradigm…appears to only cause pain (I’m not saying yet that pain is a bad thing). It’s a blow to the self, in one sense – it must be chastised or corrected in order to forgive. Yet it’s also a blow to the other person regardless of the result. It demonstrates a possibility of breaching the potential of love – one that must be corrected by what seems to be an act of grace from the wounded party.
And even the act of grace is…impure, arising from a mind that seems to want to hold on to both love and ego, and in the act of forgiveness has only made a value judgment.
What I want to know is, can a person truly forgive without a blow to the head?
To forgive is to love oneself. And that is not a bad thing. To not forgive is to retain poison. To not forgive does no harm to the person that is to be forgiven. It is other-neutral. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. And that is not a bad thing.
You are a foundation of good thoughts and lessons. Thanks of sharing your wisdom with us
I also agree “You are a foundation of good thoughts and lessons,” I so admire your postings that really let my mind take flight.
Thank You for praying for Allen, that meant so much to me…thank you.
In its purest form, love has no other emotions like jealousy, sympathy, resentment… like you’ve stated. But there’s no such pure form existing in this world, simply because of our own existence. Someone’s expression of love, or any other emotions, is tainted by the physical existence of that someone, his/her personality, character, cultures… It’s like looking at “pure love” through a glass lense. There are all sort distortions, meshing of pure “images” (pure emotions), due to impurities/imperfections of the lense.