Nowhere is so-called "right relationship" between forgiveness and accountability more clearly made than in the ancient Samurai code of justice, in which taking another's life is to occur only while one is in a centered and peaceful mental and emotional state. This rule reflects the Samurai understanding that an emotionally troubled mind prevents focussed action and behavior, and thereby makes one more vulnerable in combat.

While not all Samurai lived up to their code of justice, such was their code in any event. Accordingly, on one occasion when a warlord was killed by a rival warlord's Samurai bodyguard, the dead warlord'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 enraged the avenging Samurai that he had to sheath his sword and withdraw from the combat, to resume his mission of justice after his anger had subsided.

The Samurai ideal of experiencing emotion without being uncentered by it 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.

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

I have no guidance, I allow being my true self to be my guidance.

In keeping with the Samurai code of justice, it is also accurate to say that I have no enemies, unless I allow unconsciousness of my own true being to be my enemy.

Many say that the Samurai code was impossible to live up to. Such persons also tend to say the same thing about the Golden Rule. Poet Robert Browning's response to either assessment was: “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?” 

So long as forgiveness is beyond my grasp I seek to hold others accountable for their harmful or hurtful acts with a troubled mind and closed heart, rather than with a calm mind and an open heart, and I thereby perpetuate my distress. Yet I can exercise methods for reaching forgiveness, such as Dr. Luskin's H.E.A.L. method, and keep doing so until forgiveness is achieved. Each time I succeed in doing this, forgiveness becomes increasingly more natural 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 were universally literate in the language of the soul, there would be no courses in forgiveness. In the meantime, so long as our own increase of soul-language literacy is served by such courses, each of us can learn to be one less person who tends to be forgiveness-illiterate.