#3 - How To Forgive To Break The Cycle Of Oppression

In this episode, we reflect on what Buddha means by, "To understand everything is to forgive," and what it implies about forgiveness and healing when we are hurt by other people, our government, and ourselves.

So today we're going to talk about forgiveness. And that topic has been on our mind, because it was the main theme of a book we read by Lisa See. The book is called The Island of Sea Women. And it basically tells the fictional story of a historical event, which were the experiences of a free diving anarchist community in an island off the coast of Korea called Jeju Island. And the island experienced through its history, basically, very atrocious events, very disturbing events, although the characters deal with this idea of forgiveness throughout the story. But it's very soothing, because in real life, this island itself has had to deal with that question, especially when you consider or when you think about what was done to them in all these decades. And their oppression, the history, at least in this story, starts during the Japanese occupation before World War II, followed by the actual World War II, and then that was followed by the Korean civil war. And that was followed by sort of like this long period of silence because they were not even allowed to talk about the oppression that they experienced. But we're not going to focus too much on the story, we're just going to use that sparingly to make the examples that are the points that we're trying to make. But before we go into that, perhaps we should talk a bit more about what our idea of forgiveness was, before reading this story, or before challenging the idea of forgiveness.

Right. So prior to reading this book, I think a lot of what I knew and practiced about forgiveness stems from someone having to apologize first. And of course, coming from a Catholic background, you know, every year from grade school, all the way to high school, we all had to do with the Sacrament of Confession. So from there, you know, it kind of just ingrained in my mind that I had to apologize first for my sins, and then I will be absolved of my sins, and being absolved of my sins means that God has forgiven me, it starts from a clean slate, I am a so-called brand new person. And of course, I kind of felt like it was maybe problematic, just because I could just do the same thing again and again. And I could just go to confession, and then I will be forgiven again. So it really it didn't really seem like it was going to be like it didn't seem like the process of this sacrament, or this idea of apology and forgiveness necessarily meant that, you know, things were gonna get better, because I could just do it. Someone forgives me, we're back to square one or back to a clean slate. And forgiveness in my mind only happened after someone apologized. And if someone did not apologize to me, why would I forgive? Because in my view, I would just be giving them a pass. That just means they could continue bullying me, oppressing me, hurting me. So it was out of the question. If I didn't get an apology, I will not forgive. How about you?

Yeah, just to react. So when someone asks for forgiveness, you're expected to actually, you're actually expected to say I forgive you. But by saying that, it sort of implies that what they did to you is okay, right. And just by saying that it's okay, sort of has that connotation that it's okay to repeat it again, right? Maybe just to share personally, like, when people have done things wrong to me, I think I am known or people know me or I've done it many times in the past where I haven't been able to find forgiveness. And that seems to be interpreted as though I am holding a grudge against people. I think that comes from you know, this idea that you know, forgiveness of your our definition of forgiveness, where it's this sort of this like moment where we say, Okay, what had happened, you know, the person feels sorry about it, and so you can now move on from it. And it was always very difficult for me to move on from things that other people had done because I think part of that hurt comes from this place where I had opened myself or trusted that other person. And so it's very difficult for me to after being betrayed to like, open myself up to them again. And so perhaps that's where people interpret like my guardedness for, you know, holding a grudge. I think those feelings of holding a grudge, I mean, I'm not going to say I actually hold a grudge. But I'm not also going to say that I don't have feelings of resentment. Because I do have those feelings in the sense. And I think that comes from the idea or the connotation that forgiveness doesn't have to do about you, yourself, it more has to do about the other person making amends, or them correcting, or them doing action that would somehow like I guess, satisfy you or any kind of any kind of arbitrary like requirements that you're like sort of coming up with. And as a way to frame forgiveness, or as a way to look at forgiveness in a general sense. I don't think those things are very helpful, because everybody suffers in different ways. And everybody sort of could come to peace in a different way. And having this perspective, where it's always about the other person, you're always very dependent on how other people act. And so you finding peace is always like, it's not in your it's almost like it's not in your control, so to say.

So there are two things I want to say. The first one is that when you're saying that, how we were taught to forgive is to say, Oh, it's okay, right? We're raised in the Philippines, I also had that I guess, Filipino idea of, or the Filipino, maybe version of child rearing, when the kids fight, and then you have a kid that says sorry, as the injured party, I have been told, you know, by parents, my yayas that, hey, this person already said sorry. So you should forgive. I think that very much ties in with what you said that it's very dependent on what other people do and not like on you and what you feel. And I almost feel like in that scenario, like your feeling of hurt is not even acknowledged. And then the other thing that I wanted to say is that in your second example, when it comes to resentment, this is something that I've thought of as well, that being forgiven means that the relationship will go back to normal. So if this person betrayed you, they apologized, and you forgive, that means, okay, you'll be best friends again. And I don't know how feasible that is for everyone. Because if you can't trust this person anymore, right, and you still see things that make them not trustworthy in your eyes, it would not be wise to make the relationship like it was before the injury.

I want to just give a brief example or like, I guess, put this in a political context. You know that this like Christian idea, forgiveness is part of our culture. Because when there are really bad atrocities that happen, usually you can hear slogans have this kind of rhetoric that says, These are crimes that were committed that were so bad, we should never forget. Right? One of the slogans that is used against Martial Law is never forget that kind of is in line with the idea, forgive and forget, because the saying is forgive and forget. And that's what everybody is used to, then we cannot forgive, at the same time, forget. And I think that's something that we shouldn't do. And I think that the process of forgiveness doesn't mean you're forgetting. And I think when we start to tell each other, that forgiveness actually means, acknowledging and recognizing what had happened and remembering it, then people can more easily accept forgiveness, knowing that the crimes, or what has been done to them, will not be forgotten.

Right. I think since we have tapped into politics, maybe now would be a good time to go back to some of the atrocities that we read in The Island of Sea Women, because I feel like listeners who just heard that and know exactly what you're referring to with the Martial Law atrocities, there would be that knee-jerk reaction of, These guys don't know what they're talking about or like we are insensitive to the victims.

Okay. Well, first of all, to give some historical slash geographical context of Jeju Island, it is almost halfway between Korea and Japan and so historically, the island has always been used as a military staging point for invasions. And invasions can be either from the mainland, on to the Japanese Archipelago or from the Japanese Archipelago onto the Korean slash Chinese mainland. And these kinds of invasions, you know, these stretch back hundreds of years through like the Mongols, and like the Japanese, you know, Shogunates and stuff like this. But until, you know, recent history during the World Wars and the Korean civil war, it still played a very similar role. And ironically enough, or I should say unironically enough, until today, one of the major protests that's happening on this island is a construction of a US nuclear naval base. So what were the atrocities that were done on this island? It's the quote unquote, usual fare of military occupation and collaborators. The people who are the most slimy are the ones who are in a position of power, and they use their authority to oppress people. But what was really shocking that had happened on this island wasn't crimes committed by the Japanese, it wasn't even crimes committed directly by Americans, it was actually crimes committed by South Korean soldiers. And during the Korean civil war, the island was labeled as a communist, sympathizing community of the North. And with this rhetoric, they basically justified a policy, which said any islander that was caught or found inside a five-kilometer radius outside I should say, on the interior of the island, and the five-kilometer radius is from the shoreline inwards, that is the safe zone. And past five kilometers inland would be the dangerous zone, and everybody in there would be automatically categorized as insurgents, and the military were given shoot-on-site orders. And so what had happened was, you know, the military would go through villages and literally killed hundreds of villagers shooting them on site. It was so bad that I think the statistic is, one out of every five people on this island were killed during maybe five- or 10-year periods, something like this. You can imagine how chaotic and how disturbing that is. And you can also imagine the relationships that were destroyed because of these events. And these are relationships that were destroyed because families turned on each other, friends turned on each other, bonds and trusts were broken. And it was nonsensical, right. And it being nonsensical is one of the worst things you could experience, especially when you're trying to process or deal with why or how a close family member, a loved one basically was killed senselessly. And you can imagine how difficult it is to find an explanation and therefore find forgiveness. So I was talking about how, you know, it's so difficult to make sense of it. Right. And I think that's a good place to start when we're talking about forgiveness. Because somehow I think forgiveness has to do with making sense of what had happened. There's this really wonderful line in the book that will strike anybody who reads it, maybe you can say the line because I know it struck you particularly.

Okay, well, I think we should cushion this by saying that Lisa See did not pen the line. It's a character who says it quoting Buddha. And the line is to understand everything is to forgive. When I read that line, I started crying. Of course, I don't really want to, like spoil the personal journeys in the book. But that struck me at the time of reading it, because, yeah, I was going through a rough spot, I would say like when I was reading the book, maybe around halfway through, because the book has a lot to do with friendship and female friendships at that, I started remembering a lot of the pain and the hurt that I had to deal with, from my female friendships in high school and college and so on. And I think for a lot of those relationships, you know, I did not get an apology. I just felt like I was I was just hurt. That's it. Very much like the protagonist in that regard, and hearing that line of, you know, understanding everything, it pushed me to think of the reasons why other people did things that ended up hurting me whether or not it was intentional. And I think that's quite interesting. Because usually when we forgive, we just say, either it's okay, or I forgive you. And then we sort of kind of just figure things out from there. And I feel like our wounds are still open, we are still vulnerable, the same way, maybe the other person is still open and vulnerable, and may be inclined to do the same thing again. And the interesting part about the idea of understanding everything is to forgive is that the process of understanding everything also involves understanding what caused the pain, or what caused another person to commit the injury, and how to prevent that from happening again. And I really love that idea. Because I think it fixes that loophole that we were talking about earlier of, you know, how do we make sure it doesn't happen again, and the types of you know, forgiveness, that we were practicing, probably most of our lives was not about understanding everything, right. And the other thing that I want to mention about the idea of understanding everything is to forgive is that you also look inward. What did you do, that could have pushed someone on the edge, for example, I think by thinking of your role, maybe you know, in the in the relationship, or in the, in the whole situation, you kind of remove the line between the oppressor and the oppressed. I think a lot of the times, when we think of forgiveness, at least in the Catholic sense, we like to say I forgive you, right? So you are the one who hurt me, and I'm the injured party, therefore, you owe me. That's kind of like an underlying thing. And maybe that's why other people who are really guilty and you know, want to fix things, they probably atone for something, maybe for the rest of their lives. And I kind of looked into this in the Buddhist perspective. And they don't say, I forgive you, precisely because they will they don't want to draw further boundaries between people, or hierarchies between people. And that's why it's quite interesting in the book, how the characters phrase it is, have you found forgiveness, or I have found forgiveness, because somehow for the Buddhists, and I don't know how they came up with this conclusion that forgiveness is about us. It's not about other people. It's not about repairing the relationship. It's about you, healing from the hurt, and the resentment that you carry.

So to forgive is to understand everything. What your interpretation is, is that it's almost like understanding, maybe not really the events that had happened, I think it's more about how did it come to be that this person who hurt you chose that action? Or did that action and the circumstances around it. And of course, a big part of that includes your own actions that you were doing. And it actually also includes because it says everything, to know everything, right? It's actually almost impossible really, to know everything like, because the actions that this person does is a reaction to the circumstance. And it's also a reaction to their entire life experience up to that point, right. So how they were treated as kids, how they might have been hurt, how, maybe how maybe what you did is similar or reminded them of something someone else had done to them before. And so all of those things, that is the everything that culminates in the tragedy of them hurting you.

Can I add also, I think it also has to do with, for example, the systems that are in place that may or may not rule our lives entirely. So for example, I talked about the female friendships from school. So I was from a Catholic all girls school, and I thought it was just my school, but a lot of Catholic all girls schools are also very competitive, very cannibalistic, and female friendships are often very hard for everyone. There's a lot of bullying. I mean, we all know about the mean girls. So when you kind of interrogate that, we can think of it as okay, you know, maybe they're being bullied at home, which could be true, but we can also think of it as maybe something is wrong, for example, with the system at school that makes other girls bully. And if you are the one who is being bullied, there's no escape for you. And it happens, you know, year after year, every month, every day of your life, right? Like you're getting bullied. So I think that's one. And then going back to the book, obviously, it's the state, right? We saw it, change hands from the Japanese, to the Koreans to the Americans.

So it means understanding all the circumstances. And it's almost kind of impossible. I mean, to really understand or really know everything. I think, in a more practical sense, I think it's more about getting this deep sort of empathy, or perhaps perspective, to try to see if you were in their shoes, and you your life is exactly the same as their life, right? Could you understand why they acted that way, forming that deep empathy is not something that can be, you know, simply told to you or explained to you, and in one day, it's not going to happen by the two parties sitting down and then telling the other party, this is what I was thinking, or it's because you did this, or whatever. And so this process of knowing or understanding everything, slash the process of forming this empathy for the other person can take time. Right? It can take a lot of time, and with this perspective, and this saying, you know, to know, everything is to forgive, doesn't put any kind of like requirement of urgency, requirement of time that it needs to happen as soon as possible for harmony, right? The only thing that they're saying is, as long as you can come to form an empathy, for understanding why those were the decisions that were made, then that's how you find peace. And so finding empathy doesn't mean you know, sitting down, listening and having to accept what the other person's excuses are, it might not even be possible for you to like, seek it out and find it, it might almost be serendipitous, or a matter of like grace from God. I don't want to say that, but let's just say serendipitous, that perhaps you have some life event, or you come across stories that are similar to what you're what you've went through, and basically getting new perspectives. And that I think, is how you form that empathy.

I also want to add to what you said, and you know, we kind of started this conversation by saying that for us with how we were raised, forgiveness was a reaction or an effect of someone apologizing. And now that we've framed forgiveness in the Buddhist perspective of being a more personal journey of you understanding what has caused you pain, I think this also means that forgiveness is something that you have to do. Forgiveness is, I think, in a way, or maybe another way to look at it, is that it is or it should be unconditional. I don't want to say it is unconditional, because it is hard to forgive. Right? I think the process of understanding, you know, to have this empathy or compassion means that it's something that we should all do so that we can at least carry less and less pain until one day we are fully healed.

Yeah, so it's different. We touched on it lightly, at least when we're comparing between the Christian forgiveness and Buddhist forgiveness, where Christian forgiveness has to do with like communal, communal harmony, Buddhist forgiveness is actually quite selfish in a way, because it sort of says or implies that, first and foremost, the only person who benefits I mean, not the only person who benefits first and foremost, the person who should benefit the most, from your forgiveness is yourself. It's your own peace, and why it's so valuable and important that you find forgiveness and you find peace, and it's not for the other person that they might change. It's not for our like, it's not for society at large, so that they may learn the lessons and no one will be hurt again. First and foremost, the number one priority is your own peace. To me that is very compelling to say that this is sort of for your own benefit. With that said, this kind of forgiveness, which is you know, very personal. I think it's more authentic and more true. And by being more authentic. That's how you get sort of real peace and real harmony. And that's how then it extends past the self to the relationship to the relationships that you have to the community that you're a part of, and that's how it becomes communal.

I also kind of want to touch on this. I haven't super fully formed in my mind, but I do see maybe a relationship or a connection of sorts. So when we talk about forgiveness and it being for the self and finding that true forgiveness, right and finding that authenticity, and that healing that eventually extends out, in theory, it comes across, as you know, you kind of share that peace with other people. Because since you've fully understood or understood as much as you could about, maybe you know how this thing, this pain will not happen again, will not be passed down or passed on. It's quite interesting how that contrasts with our notions of justice. Maybe we can't have a conversation on forgiveness without touching a little bit about justice, because when someone has hurt us, we kind of want them to prove that they won't do it again. So the way we have kind of processed that is through punishment somehow. And I don't know if our justice system works that way or even works, period. But certainly, I think there's that element in the old version of or not old version, but in the maybe Catholic, Christian version of forgiveness, there's that sense of, you have to pay for all the things that you've caused for all the people you've killed, for example.

Yeah, you have to suffer as much as the suffering that you've caused. Exactly. Yeah. And what's funny is that the people who you know, cause suffering, I mean, so far, we are talking about forgiveness of other people. But people who cause suffering also can't find forgiveness for themselves. We were talking about this idea of forgiveness being very selfish, right. And it also applies to people that have committed bad things, and they feel bad about hurting others, and they don't forgive themselves and they live with regret their whole life, not understanding maybe what caused them or what were the circumstances that led to you know, them doing those things. In the story, the story showed how these communities dealt with tragedy and crime. I don't think there was any example of how justice was served in the punishment sense. When people died in this story, it's followed by scenes, the funeral scenes, and these communities aren't Buddhist, but they're actually shamanistic. So they have a community shaman. And the shaman in the story takes on the role of like the inner muse, almost of the community and the individuals that make up the community. And when I say inner muse, the inner soul and the role of the shaman in the story is to have this and maybe in real in real life, I should say, inspired by real life, because the story was really well-researched. The role of the shaman is to actually be the person that has deep empathy for everyone in the community. And trying to understand what everybody's troubles are, how she was able to the Shaman was able to do this, like healing process was by acknowledging publicly and by acknowledging, I mean, just literally saying out loud, the thoughts that haunt the members of the community, and literally just saying out loud, saying, I know you blame yourself of your mother's death, because you did this and that, and they're not giving any judgment, but just saying, I know you blame yourself. And sort of having that statement, those thoughts out in public, right, out with everybody in the community, and these are people that you care about. Somehow that was a big part of the healing process. And side note, the way she was, the shaman was able to make the acknowledgment of these thoughts so palatable, was through the shamanistic rituals, which were absurd. So she basically you know, would have drank potions or you know, basically go on a trance, go on a trance, part of this ritual is, you know, I guess making what is so difficult to say out loud, but necessary to be acknowledged, a little bit more excusable. And in a way it's also separating the person of the shaman, her ego, because she's actually a, you know, a real person, with the role of the shaman, which is this person who has that deep empathy for everybody in the community. So usually, you know, when Christians look at shaman shamanistic cultures, we just see their rituals and compare it with our own rituals and say their rituals are absurd, right? Because, you know, we talked about this previously, where how like Christian communities or I should say, Christian perspective takes the rituals very literally. When we commune the body of Christ, the wafer, we actually believe it is the reincarnated physical body of Christ. So when we have that perspective, and we bring it over to other religions and other like religious practices, and we see the shamanistic rituals as like this absurd ritual, we only look at skin deep, and we don't actually see the real purpose for why they have those rituals. And those real purpose is to make what's really difficult that has to be said, more palatable.

I want to briefly touch on what you said about the self blame, because I think that is also part of a lot of the pain that people carry, you know, even as injured parties, right? In certain cases, for example, let's say rape, sexual harassment along those lines, it's easy to also blame yourself, maybe because you were so vulnerable, right? You didn't know any better, right? Or, you know, because you're just trying to make sense of everything. Not only do you get stuck in that self blame, you also start maybe pointing fingers, right? Like, why did my parents leave me with this person? So you're right, like, part of finding this forgiveness, and, you know, at least in the book with all these rituals, there is also that acknowledgement of a part of you blaming yourself, for what has happened to you. So having said that, I think, you know, since we've gone through some of the things that have happened in the book, I think it's time we go back to the Martial Law question, the #NeverForget that we see and hear a lot.

Yeah, sure. We can talk about that. So how would this apply? You know, because we brought up you know, Martial Law and Martial Law is something everyone in the Philippines has sort of had to deal with, even if you're not born in that era, it's something that up to today is something we're always talking about. And right now, having elected the son of the former dictator, it's definitely on everybody's minds right now. So how does one look back into history? And see all the real atrocities that had happened, right on all these real abuses that had happened? And how do you move on from that? How do you forgive what had happened and say, this won't happen again, because we understand the circumstances that caused all of these things that had happened. And so we go back to this idea, right, the Buddhist saying, to know, everything is to forgive, sorry, to understand everything is to forgive. And in this case, we're talking about like historical events, it would be almost impossible to really understand historically, all the events that had happened that caused all these atrocities. Like it's not just historical events, it's also personal events, because these were carried out, I mean, these orders were carried out by real people, right. And when I say the orders were carried out, it's not even like Marcos directly ordered these things to happen. It's more on perhaps, how policy was interpreted. And as it went down the ladder, so to say, it's interpreted by the people who are in charge, and then misinterpreted again, by the people under them, and so forth, until you get to the last person on the line, who did the actual killing and the circumstance of that person. Right? So we're actually dealing with more than history, we're dealing with just human, I guess, the chaos of humanity. That sounds so vague or whatever. And it's almost like, Okay, how are we ever going to like, find or know everything to find forgiveness.

Maybe I should use the events that happened on Jeju Island, instead of using Martial Law years as an example, because I'm not an expert in Martial Law. I haven't read on it recently. And I don't want people you know, to sort of get lost in the example and instead focus on I guess, the message I'm trying to say. And that is that when we look at atrocities that are committed on behalf of the state, we should sort of always remember that we shouldn't really blame, not that we shouldn't blame the people involved. It's more on. It's not about the people involved that caused these atrocities, right. What I mean by that is, you could have put sort of anybody in those positions, in those shoes, and the outcome would have been probably very similar, right? When you start to think of it that way, you start to criticize or critique the position and not the people. Usually when we discuss history, we're always fixated on the people behind the events. And by fixating on the people we're also fixated on like, I guess their circumstances maybe what led to that point that they would do such thing, etc. But more often than not like these atrocities are committed by hundreds and 1000s of people that we couldn't understand every single one of their positions, right? Whereas rather, we could actually look at the atrocities being committed by the authority or the position that those people were able to inherit. So instead of saying, it was the Koreans that did this, it was the Japanese that did this. It was the Americans that did this. It was the Marcos cronies that did this. I think what would shine a better light or give a better perspective is to reframe it as this is what the state has done. This is what authority has done. And so you can now simplify it or remove, oh, it's because they're communist. Oh, it's because you know, it was Martial Law or democracy, right? All of these things are irrelevant, because what we're really talking about is abuse of authority, or coercion from the state. And when you understand it, that way, it starts to make a lot more sense. It also gives you the peace, knowing that, to not repeat this, again, it's not about changing the people, it's about changing the position, or I should say, minimizing, or removing completely the authority that people have. And that authority, what makes it so dangerous, is that the position is able to justify violence and coercion, usually, under the premise of it being better for everybody. But what does that mean for people who want to find forgiveness when it comes to the Marcos era? And maybe I'm projecting by perhaps I'm projecting my own opinion too much here. But I think it means knowing or understanding that it's not about the people that you're putting in. And we really don't need to be squabbling over this family doing this or that family doing that, this administration being corrupt, and that administration being corrupt, and you realize they're all corrupt. And no matter what person or what family or what background you put into these positions of power, these positions that are able to justify using violence on people for the greater good, then you know what needs to be done so that this doesn't happen again.

I think that very much ties in with this idea of healing. Because, like I said earlier, oftentimes, when we think of forgiveness, we have certain demands for this right? I think very much in this situation with Martial Law and the Marcos family, what people want is maybe an apology, and accountability. And I understand where that is coming from. And I think people believe that there has to be an apology and accountability for this whole thing not to happen again. But it's just easy to, you know, put out the press release and say sorry, right. But if the system does not change at all, then that sorry, that faux accountability doesn't mean anything. Those are just words printed on a paper, right? It's still not the system changing, or you know, being destroyed. I also want to add this idea of or maybe to kind of push more this idea of personal healing, or what justice might mean. So we just watched Better Call Saul. And there's an episode where there is a dad talking to one of the gangsters and one of the gangsters apologizes to the dad or shows his sympathy for the dad because the dad has lost his son from gang war from yeah, from the gang war. And the gangster who is talking to the dad says something along the lines of he will make sure that the people who did this, did the killing, are going to pay and justice will be served. And the dad says, You gangsters and your justice. It doesn't mean anything to him, because his son is gone. them killing each other does not bring his son back. And that I think very much reflects where we are here in the Philippines when it comes to Martial Law and all the other, you know, political killings that are happening. We always demand this sort of justice, this accountability, this public apology, but it doesn't stop.

Yes, it doesn't stop because you're actually just perpetuating the same cycle that caused the injustice to happen in the first place. So what you're doing basically is making more injustice, right? You're making more coercion and more violence on the party that did the violence. And so you're just perpetuating this cycle of hate, right? Hate and violence. The funny thing is justice is another way of basically saying it's excusable to use violence because it's for the greater good, right? It's for a purpose that would benefit society. What's most ironic is that the people who benefit in that justice being served is almost never the people that felt the injustice done to them. You know, you sort of have like the usual example of like a big pharma company getting fined for, you know, crimes that they've done. And yet, the fine that they pay is collected by the state. And it's not given to like the people who were hurt by these pharma pharmaceutical companies. That's a good example of how the justice that's served actually benefits only the people who are committing the violence to serve that, to act that justice out. So when all of this, like, for example, all this COVID stuff is done, are we going to blame the people in charge? Oh, it's because Fauci was so evil, or in this Philippine context, it's because who is the Department of Health? I don't reme mber. Duque. Could be Duque. There's another one, Dr. Edsel Salvana. And these are sort of the doctors who are part of the COVID regime here. And do we say, oh, it's because these people were the ones there at the wrong time at the wrong place, and that's why we also had to suffer this way. No, it's not, it's actually the position and the state, that was the one that did this. And so we can remove ourselves from that personal pain that we feel towards individual people, and instead, understand what happened and really, actually do something about it, or know how we can avoid this from happening again.

Well, I will say, I agree with you with what you said about the systems that are causing it. And we should look at the systems and not focus too much on the people or the labels. Somehow I feel like the act of forgiveness involves as well, since we're talking about the Buddhist perspective of forgiveness, it still involves detachment, detachment from the idea of this person hurt me, detachment from the idea of I keep getting hurt because of this and that person.

Or my life today is like this because of what had happened.

Yes, we need to detach ourselves from those ideas and try to get a better scope maybe or a bigger scope of the things that are causing this because people's actions don't happen in a vacuum. A lot of our actions are responses to the things that are in place in our lives. And like we said earlier, it is difficult to forgive, it doesn't happen right away. And it can take years to forgive. But I think because forgiveness should be unconditional in the Buddhist perspective, part of it means, I think, also doing our best so that the time of us finding forgiveness comes a lot sooner than later or never.