Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.

Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

When we think about forgiveness, we automatically think about something that someone has done to us.

And I think right there is one of the first

problems is that we victimize ourselves we give somebody else the power to do

something to us to change our internal peace and when we look at the situations in our lives and our past as things

that have happened for us, not to us, but for us, for us to learn from, grow from, and move

on from, perhaps most importantly, then we're no longer

victims, then we look at what's happened and go, even the situation as terrible as it might be,

we can look at it as an opportunity for us to grow and we can be grateful for what that person

did for us, not to us.

And if there are instances where we need to forgive and we need to let go, then it's really

imperative to realize that we don't need to wait for the other person to

apologize to us in order for us to forgive them. In fact they don't even have to be

sorry. Forgiveness is a gift that you give yourself.

And so by deciding to let that go, you're liberating yourself. There's an old Buddhist saying about

staying angry with someone is like holding a hot coal with the intention

of throwing it at someone else, but you're the one who ends up getting burned.

And the beauty of forgiveness is you're no longer caught up in that story that they deserve any kind of animosity

from you or any that's why people tell me they hang on to anger they're like they deserve

it and it's like but you're not harming. You're harming yourself when you're angry.

That is toxic energy within you. And the most incredible feeling in the world is to let that go.

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