Forgiving Germany and Japan

No, Thomas, you haven't missed a thing. 

Even enlightened self-interest requires the forgiveness of something. A U.S. president (John F. Kennedy) could not have begun a speech in Berlin saying "Ich bin ein Berliner" had not Germany been forgiven for being our enemy. 

On the other hand, the Nuremberg trials are ample evidence that not all was forgiven of the Germans, insofar as vengeance was a major motivating component thereof. 

In contrast to those trials, the Marshall plan was not vengeful against Europe as I perceive it.

Where forgiveness is ONLY self-serving, of course, then it isn't really forgiveness after all. True forgiveness is unconditional.

I can recall no report, in all of the recorded history of which I am aware, of unconditional total forgiveness having ever occurred between countries, nations, or other political groupings. Forgiveness between countries is always for some portion of the totality of their grievances.

As a potential precursor to the eventuality of such a report in the distant future, however, South Africa has made some headway with forgiveness between politicized groupings within a country. So has Australia with reference to its indigenous population.

The nature of forgiveness is like the nature of love. Love that has a reason has a season. 

This is why, with one exception, as soon as I can remember the reason I have forgiven, I haven't really forgiven. The one exception: it felt utterly like the right thing to do. 

All other reasons for forgiving have a season, and forgiving for a seasonal reason is itself the reason why some people find themselves having to forgive the same thing over, and over, and over . . . only to sooner or later realize, in each instance, that actual forgiveness has yet to take place. 


Forgiveness and accountability

I did not mean to suggest, Greg, that the Nuremburg trials were unforgiving per se, only that they were so to the extent that they were conducted with blameful (and therefore unforgiving) vengeance. 

True forgiveness not only frees the offended from the punishment of mental anguish, it frees the offender to receive due justice that is untinged by blame. Note that the dictionary definitions (any dictionary) of "responsibility" and "accountability" do not contain the concept of "blame". When holding someone responsible and accountable for wrongdoing, blame is always optional, being neither essential or integral to the objective.

Perhaps the greatest code of justice untinged with blamefulness was that of the Japanese Samurai, whose code of justice forbade killing in anger. It was deeply understood by the Samurai that anger is an uncentering force that prevents focussed action and behavior, which accordingly makes one more recklessly vulnerable in combat.

While not all Samurai soldiers lived up to their code of justice, such was their code in any event. Thus, on one occasion, when a master was killed by a rival master's Samurai bodyguard, the dead master's own bodyguard went forth to do Samurai justice by taking the killer's life. He found and engaged the killer in a sword fight, and was about to deal a lethal blow when his adversary spat in his face. This so angered the avenging Samurai that he had to sheath his sword and withdraw, to resume his mission of justice after his anger had subsided.

The ideal of focussed consciousness untinged by blame is epitomized in this 14th century Samurai prayer:

I have no parents, I make the heavens and Earth my parents.
I have no home, I make awareness my home.
I have no life and death, I make the tides of my breathing my life and death.
I have no miracles, I make right action my miracles.
I have no tactics, I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.
I have no armor, I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.
I have no castle, I make immovable mind my castle.
I have no sword, I make absence of self my sword.

To have this prayer be my own, I would amend it by replacing the word “make”  throughout with the phrase “allow . . . to be,” which more accurately translates the original Samurai understanding of the prayer. I would also add one more line:

I have no guidance, I allow the being of who I truly am to be my guidance.

As I understand the Samurai code of justice, it is also acurrate to say that I have no enemies, unless I allow unconsciousness of my own true being to be my enemy.

There are many who say that such a code is impossible to live up to. These same people also tend to say the same thing about the Golden Rule. Poet Robert Browning's response to such assessments was: “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?” 

Initially, forgiveness may be beyond my grasp. Yet I can exercise methods for reaching forgiveness, such as Dr. Luskin's H.E.A.L. method, and keep doing so until "something clicks," after which forgiveness comes more and more naturally to me.

Learning to forgive is indeed like learning a new language, which some (including, no doubt, the author of the Samurai prayer) would call the language of the soul.  

If humankind was universally literate in this language, there would be no courses in forgiveness. In the meantime, so long as our own increase of this literacy is served by such courses, each of us can learn to be one less person who is forgiveness-illiterate.


Defining blame

You have reminded me, Gregory, that "blame," like all words, means different things to different people, and that I have not been precise about what blamefulness means to me.

As I have come to understand the dynamics of blamefulness in my own psyche, blaming consists of assigning to others causal responsibility and accountability for the way I feel, think and act about something that has happened (or hasn't happened). My hard thoughts and feelings, as well as their consequences, are thereby made to be someone/thing else's fault, and therefore not of my own doing. 

In the meantime, the nature of my psyche is such that only if another's brain were hooked up to my body just as my own brain is could s/he be causing me to feel, think, and act as I do.

Blaming is denial of self-ownership - the equivalent of straddling an earthquake faultline while insisting, "It's not my fault."