Self–Other Affirmation: A Path to Inner Freedom — Part 2 of 5
Based on a lecture by Professor Kim Joo-Hwan
Where do our stories of revenge come from?
Professor Kim begins his discussion of forgiveness by asking why it is so difficult.
He points to the many stories of resentment and revenge that we encounter throughout our lives:
“I will make you regret this.”
“Just wait.”
“Let’s see how well things go for you.”
“I will not let you get away with this.”
These stories provide frameworks that remain within us. When a situation activates one of them, we apply the familiar framework to a particular person.
Professor Kim gives comic books, animated films, and superhero stories as prominent examples. He mentions Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man.
The pattern repeats: there is a good person and a bad person; the bad person is powerful; the protagonist suffers, struggles, and eventually wins.
When we suffer in our own lives, this framework can lead us to identify ourselves as the protagonist. Someone who obstructs us or makes our lives difficult becomes the villain.
Within that story, forgiveness seems dangerous.
Professor Kim describes a familiar scene in which the protagonist initially spares the villain. The villain immediately attacks again, and the protagonist then kills them.
The lesson repeatedly conveyed by such stories, he argues, is that the villain must not be forgiven. We may even learn to think that the villain should be eliminated before having another opportunity to attack.
Actual people are not completely evil
Professor Kim acknowledges that harmful people and harmful behavior exist. There are people who bully others, and there can be harmful teachers, parents, and students.
However, he emphasizes that no actual person is one hundred percent evil.
The villains of a drama may be presented without any apparent room for forgiveness. Real people are different.
We have all hurt someone. We may have become angry, caused pain unintentionally, ignored someone, or made someone feel humiliated without recognizing it.
From the other person’s perspective, we may have been the harmful person in that situation.
Professor Kim asks us to recognize that the people we regard as bad are human beings like ourselves.
The person we cannot forgive as a spiritual teacher
Professor Kim asks the participants to think of someone they feel unable to forgive.
That person might be a family member, a parent, a friend, or someone else in their lives.
He describes such a person as a powerful spiritual teacher.
The question of whether we can genuinely forgive them provides a reference point for our practice. If the answer remains an absolute refusal, it reveals something that still holds us.
He contrasts this with someone who cannot identify any person they dislike or need to forgive. Perhaps they have only encountered kind people; perhaps they have not noticed their own responses. In his explanation, they have fewer opportunities to develop through this particular practice.
Someone who can identify many difficult people has many spiritual teachers.
Beginning with a more manageable person
Professor Kim does not ask participants to begin with the most difficult person.
If there is someone they feel completely unable to forgive, he suggests setting that person aside initially and choosing someone whose case feels more manageable.
They might think:
“I have difficulty forgiving this person, but perhaps I can try.”
The practice is to dissolve the resentment within their own minds.
One possibility is to consider that the person has a story we do not know. They have their own circumstances and their own inner experience.
If even that feels difficult, Professor Kim offers an unusual image: think about the person’s mitochondria.
He suggests imagining that their mitochondria may not have been functioning well, that they may have experienced inflammation and distress, and that difficult storytelling may have continued within them.
Even if forgiving the person feels impossible, perhaps we can feel a little more forgiving toward the mitochondria within their cells.
He offers this as a step-by-step way of loosening the refusal to forgive.
Forgiveness takes place within us
Professor Kim explicitly distinguishes forgiveness from reconciliation.
We do not need to speak with the other person or tell them that we forgive them. He asks participants not to approach the practice as an announcement to someone else.
He describes forgiveness as something closer to dissolving what is held within us.
A memory of the past may grip us tightly. Forgiveness involves freeing ourselves from that grip.
The more we forgive, he says, the freer we become.
The difficulty lies partly in unfamiliarity. We have many examples of revenge to imitate, but relatively few compelling examples of forgiveness.
Professor Kim contrasts the abundance of revenge stories with the scarcity of realistic, moving stories of forgiveness. Our storytelling habits are learned through imitation, and we have had fewer models for this particular framework.
Forgiveness in Christian teaching
Professor Kim then turns to the Bible as a collection of stories and teachings about forgiveness.
He presents forgiveness as a central teaching of Jesus and discusses the Lord’s Prayer.
He draws attention to the relationship between asking God for forgiveness and forgiving other people.
In his explanation, the prayer involves a commitment: we forgive those around us and ask to be forgiven in the same way.
He contrasts this with the request for daily bread, which is made directly. The request for forgiveness is connected to our own willingness to forgive.
Professor Kim emphasizes the significance of repeating this prayer daily. In his reading, forgiveness is a recurring commitment at the center of the prayer.
He also connects the teaching about offering the other cheek to this same orientation of forgiveness.
Self-forgiveness and what we hold against ourselves
Professor Kim asks participants to prepare to face the parts of themselves they cannot forgive.
Everyone, he says, has some aspect of themselves they find difficult to accept. It may be regret, a memory, or something they have pushed down because facing it directly is painful.
These unresolved aspects can pull us downward.
He briefly brings the participants back to breathing and the intention to forgive. The essential issue is what we continue holding and refusing to release.
Self-forgiveness means helping ourselves become free from those memories and assumptions.
He uses the expression “set me free” to describe the purpose of the practice.
A concrete question about freedom
To assess the practice, Professor Kim offers a simple question:
Is there anyone in my life whom I still hate or resent?
Rather than separately checking whether each of the six practices is developing, he asks participants to begin with this question.
He jokes that someone who has already reached a state of having no one to hate or resent does not need to attend the following Saturday’s supplementary session. He will recognize their attendance; they can rest at home instead of taking the bus.
If they are uncertain, they should attend and examine it together.
He then extends the question toward the future:
Can I imagine living without hating someone, regardless of what they may say or do to me?
For Professor Kim, this indicates that the framework of self–other affirmation is beginning to take root.
Protecting the happiness we have resolved to protect
Professor Kim challenges the assumption that living without hatred is impossible.
He asks whether spending a lifetime hating people might actually be the more difficult way to live.
He recalls the participants’ resolution in March to protect their happiness. If they continue hating someone, or if another person’s words immediately make them angry, how will they keep that resolution?
He describes the possibility of responding first with compassion: recognizing that, from the other person’s position, this may be the only way they can currently see us.
Within his account, this response prevents hatred from taking control.
He also distinguishes this aim from treating illnesses such as depression. He says that such illnesses cannot simply be changed instantaneously, while a change in the orientation of resentment can, in his view, occur in a single moment.
Movement meditation as an illustration
Professor Kim gives physically demanding movement practice as an example of a situation in which hatred can disappear from awareness.
He mentions performing three thousand bows over six or seven hours. He also refers to repeating a movement called unsufor seven hours.
He describes a point at which all that remains in awareness is the burning sensation in the thighs. Thoughts of the person we hate are no longer present.
He uses this illustration to explain that movement meditation can bring about a state in which resentment is absent.
Love as forgiveness in advance
Although forgiveness is difficult, Professor Kim places it first when discussing the order of guided practice. It connects with the other practices.
He explains this connection through love.
Love wishes for someone’s happiness and health. Viewed through forgiveness, love also means that the person has already been forgiven in advance.
He describes an orientation in which the other person’s wrongdoing does not bind us to hatred.
We know that human beings cannot be perfect. We recognize that we are among those imperfect human beings. Having forgiven ourselves, we extend the same orientation toward others.
Professor Kim makes an important distinction here: a person’s actions may still upset us. We may not feel happy about what happened.
He explicitly says that the practice does not mean cheerfully enjoying a serious wrong. We can be hurt or distressed while remaining free from hatred and the wish for revenge.
Turning toward the future
Professor Kim describes revenge as looking backward and paying something back.
Forgiveness turns toward the future.
He connects forgiveness with giving and giving in advance. He also discusses word forms related to perdonare and pardon, drawing attention to their relationship with giving.
In discussing the character 恕, he interprets it as recognizing that another person’s mind and our own mind are alike. He connects this recognition with the foundation of communication.
Forgiveness, in his explanation, is a decision that the past will no longer bind us.
Decisional and emotional forgiveness
Professor Kim distinguishes two types of forgiveness.
Decisional forgiveness involves making a decision in the present: choosing to forgive. He describes this as a relatively cognitive process and an easier starting point for training.
Emotional forgiveness involves releasing resentment at the level of feeling. When we encounter the person again, the familiar anger no longer boils up in the same way.
He says that emotional forgiveness has greater effects, although decisional forgiveness is easier to use as the starting point of practice.
Forgiveness, revenge, and health
Professor Kim describes forgiveness psychologically as a cognitive and emotional process that removes chronic hostility, compulsive rumination, and the harmful consequences associated with them.
He presents resentment and the desire for revenge as especially harmful and strongly activating for the amygdala.
He links forgiveness with cardiovascular health, sleep, stress hormones, and physical health. He places particular emphasis on the harm of withholding forgiveness from ourselves.
Continually finding fault with ourselves, blaming ourselves, and hating ourselves are, in his description, signs of weakening mental strength.
He also refers to the involvement of emotion-regulation networks and networks concerned with understanding other people’s minds.
Revenge, meanwhile, is associated in his explanation with the reward system. A revenge scene in a drama can produce a thrill or a feeling of satisfaction.
He distinguishes that temporary reward from the more settled happiness and comfort he associates with forgiveness and compassion.
Returning to an unburdened state
Professor Kim does not present freedom from hatred as a condition reserved for exceptionally virtuous people.
He describes lifelong hatred and resentment as harmful states that do not fit the way the brain should function.
In his account, when the mind is left free from these interfering habits, prefrontal activity increases and greater happiness becomes possible.
If being alone with ourselves produces increasing irritation, he attributes this to learned patterns and the repeated retrieval of painful memories.
He therefore presents forgiveness as a return to an unburdened state: a way of freeing ourselves from the storytelling that keeps hatred alive.
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