Tag Archives: forgiveness

Recently a question was asked about understanding of forgiveness from a Ch’an perspective. An aspiring Ch’an adept would learn soon enough that this is a totally meaningless question. For instance, the Diamond Sutra would ask, “Forgiveness from what and for whom?” From this realization forgiveness is a useless platitude. Even within the Catholic Confessional the priest “absolves” one from sin, but the actual “forgiveness” needs to be done by oneself, to be able to forgive oneself; absolvement implies totally erasing it—as if it was never there to begin with. The forgiveness factor is a personal thing for the apparent person—in this sense it’s a release from guilt and nothing more. So in actuality it’s a “skandhic-thing”. Yet we know that when the skandhas are disbanded there was really no-person in the first place. Hence, what need forgiveness? read more