There's an old saying, "A stone once thrown cannot be recalled." That certainly applies when someone causes another person trauma; that person will often if not usually never forget the trauma regardless how good the relationship between the two people otherwise is. One can make amends, but it makes no difference—the memory remains, raw.
Our ego-mind never lets us forget something bad that happened to us. Rarely do good memories come to us unbidden. But bad memories do with frequency. It's the ego-mind's way of "protecting" us. And just like so many other things the ego-mind does with the idea of protecting us, it does just the opposite: it harms us.
Instead of fostering the knowledge that things are the way they are because it's just the way it is, that we experienced childhood trauma or adult trauma because it's just the way it was, the ego-mind reacts in a self-righteous way to anything that has harmed us and never lets that feeling go. And so we continue to be tortured by the memory and are never able to lead our lives in peace.
This is the exact opposite of the Serenity Prayer: "Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change—which is the way things are right now at this moment (and were in the past), and the courage to change the things I can—which is how I relate to myself and others, the thoughts I think, the words I speak, the actions I take." (The words in italics are my explication of the prayer.)
Our ego-mind does not want to give up the anger we felt at being traumatized, regardless what it was. That is an aspect of pridefulness, of a lack of humility. But if we are in touch with our true selves—our heart, the child of the universe within us, our divine essence, our Buddha nature—then there is nothing more important to us than retaining our natural state of peace; we accept the past, present, and future so that nothing offends and we will allow nothing to disturb our inner peace. To live our lives well is to be at peace and humble.
There is a line in an ancient Chinese poem that says, "When faith and mind are not separate, and not separate are mind and faith, this is beyond all words and thought." That is the essence of peace—faith and humility.
Our ego-mind never lets us forget something bad that happened to us. Rarely do good memories come to us unbidden. But bad memories do with frequency. It's the ego-mind's way of "protecting" us. And just like so many other things the ego-mind does with the idea of protecting us, it does just the opposite: it harms us.
Instead of fostering the knowledge that things are the way they are because it's just the way it is, that we experienced childhood trauma or adult trauma because it's just the way it was, the ego-mind reacts in a self-righteous way to anything that has harmed us and never lets that feeling go. And so we continue to be tortured by the memory and are never able to lead our lives in peace.
This is the exact opposite of the Serenity Prayer: "Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change—which is the way things are right now at this moment (and were in the past), and the courage to change the things I can—which is how I relate to myself and others, the thoughts I think, the words I speak, the actions I take." (The words in italics are my explication of the prayer.)
Our ego-mind does not want to give up the anger we felt at being traumatized, regardless what it was. That is an aspect of pridefulness, of a lack of humility. But if we are in touch with our true selves—our heart, the child of the universe within us, our divine essence, our Buddha nature—then there is nothing more important to us than retaining our natural state of peace; we accept the past, present, and future so that nothing offends and we will allow nothing to disturb our inner peace. To live our lives well is to be at peace and humble.
There is a line in an ancient Chinese poem that says, "When faith and mind are not separate, and not separate are mind and faith, this is beyond all words and thought." That is the essence of peace—faith and humility.
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