Forgiveness

So this is titled "Forgiveness" but I'm not actually going to be saying anything in this post. If you want to hear my thoughts on forgiveness I think I articulated it well in Forgive a year ago. Today, I want to share a story, and the video I got the story is linked here, I'll simply be transcribing it, well, paraphrasing it, I'm not as formal as the guy in Dare to do. Motivation.

The Buddha was in an assembly one day, doing Buddha things when an angry man walked in thinking the Buddha was doing something wrong. The Buddha was drawing this huge crowd and people would sit with him and meditate. This angry guy was an avid businessman and his children were spending their time with the Buddha rather than doing business and making more money. This made him livid, he thought his children were wasting their time.

This man thought, "I'm gonna teach this guy a lesson." With animosity in his mind, he approached the Buddha. When he neared the Buddha his thoughts emptied, though the anger did not dissipate. He was shaking, unable to speak, he expressed his anger by spitting on the Buddha's face. The Buddha returned the act by smiling. The disciples were furious, however, the Buddha's presence didn't allow them to act this anger out. So the man, noticing that the people around him had not reacted, nor had the Buddha, we left before his anger exploded.

When he got home, the man couldn't get the Buddha's smile out of his mind. He was unable to sleep the entire night.

The next day the man went back to the Buddha and fell at Buddha's feet. "Please forgive me, I did not know what I was doing." The man said. The Buddha replied, "I cannot excuse you." Everyone around the Buddha was shocked, the Buddha was always compassionate and always accepted everyone, why didn't Buddha excuse this man? The Buddha noticed that everyone was confused. The Buddha explained, "why should I excuse you if you have not done anything? What wrong have you done that I should excuse your behavior?" The man replied, "yesterday, I am the one that came to this assembly and spat on your face, it's me, I'm the same person." To which the Buddha replied, "That person is not here anymore. If I ever meet the person whom you spat, I will tell him to excuse you. For me, to the person who's right here in this moment: you are wonderful. You've done nothing wrong." Thank you to Dare to do. Motivation for the video, I will link it again here. I hope you enjoyed