Samvatsari – the most significant day for Jains. The tradition on this day is for people to fast and devote to austerities. (If you know the Jain fast, it’s pretty austere)
In the evening there is a Pratikaman – guess the most significant pratikaman a Jain would do in the year. The fact that this ideal Jain has spent his/her last 7 days of Paryushan fasting and devoted to austerities, this pratikaman on the last eighth day would be a peak in his sadhana. After this pratikaman he/she will wish everyone around – young or small – Michchami Dukkadam!
Michchami Dukkadam, colloquially is taken to be “forgive me for any hurt I have caused knowingly or unknowingly”
The Pratikaman is also a practice where one essentially looks deeper, identifies any hangups/grudges and wrong doings and apologizes. The apology is in the practice, in the mind. But later if the person wishes he/she may also actually contact that person and apologize or make amends. There is also a general universal apology in case of unknown harm caused.
The scriptures that are read during Pratikaman – from what little I know – identify things for which one needs to ask forgiveness. While this includes other humans, it also very strongly includes – nature, environment, the crops you killed to eat, the water you use in daily lives, the bugs you may have killed, the bacteria that die all the time because you are alive and so on.. The right kind of significance I feel is not attached to this aspect of the whole practice. If you take it rightly it will make you live more lightly upon this nature, it will make you step more gracefully aware that every single step you take on the planet is killing so many bacteria – for which you need to ask forgiveness perpetually! Ideally this practice should put a person in a state of awareness and grace.
Walk and sit in such a way that even the very grass that you are sitting upon will bless you because you are sitting there, not curse you because you are sitting upon it. There is a certain way to do it. “How Sadhguru? Tell me, how will the grass bless me? Should I eat it?” Understand that between you and the grass, between you and the insect in the grass, there is not much difference in the cosmic scale. You are less than a blade of grass. What a blade of grass is for you, in the cosmic scale, you are less than that.
If you understand this every moment of your life, if you keep this in your memory, you will walk gently, you will breathe gently, you will exist gently. -@SadhguruJV
So I was wondering what I should do this paryushan. I am not an ideal Jain (hehe) so I thought of all the above and decided to look deeper into what is meant by all this ‘Sorry’ stuff.
One insight I had was that a lot of attention is given to ‘asking for forgiveness’ but not enough to ‘forgiving’ even though it is implied if you go to see. Asking for forgiveness is one side, the other side is forgiving. For most of us good/decent folks saying Sorry for any harm we may have knowingly & unknowingly caused is easy. There is no ego or hangup there (looking at it generically not any particular incident). If I look at a particular incident then my understanding asserts itself and says ‘No, but I was right here, I wasn’t trying to do anything wrong’ but even in that case I can always just say ‘I may have been right but even so If any harm came of it then I am sorry’.
The other side of this is forgiving. Anyway the people who say Michchami Dukkadam to you, they are asking you for forgiveness. Here is I feel a very crucial step to be made – one has to forgive the other. And then this forgiveness would need to be on a universal scale as well – you need to just forgive all and probably reach a higher state of consciousness at least for a brief period of time.
This insight makes the sadhana more complete.
The following para by J Krishnamurti is insightful,
Compassion, as love, is something which is not of the mind. The mind is not conscious of itself as being compassionate, as loving. But the moment you forgive consciously, the mind is strengthening its own center in its own hurt. So the mind which consciously forgives can never forgive; it does not know forgiveness; it forgives in order not to be further hurt.
So it is very important to find out why the mind actually remembers, stores away. Because the mind is everlastingly seeking to aggrandize itself, to become big, to be something When the mind is willing not to be anything, to be nothing, completely nothing, then in that state there is compassion. In that state there is neither forgiveness nor the state of hurt; but to understand that, one has to understand the conscious development of the ‘me’.
So, as long as there is the conscious cultivation of any particular influence, any particular virtue, there can be no love, there can be no compassion, because love and compassion are not the result of conscious effort. -JK Krishnamurti
I think forgiveness is at a different level probably an emotional level – where you don’t keep any hangups or any grudges. You just let go of those. Hence forgiveness would be closely related to compassion and universal love. Sometimes people mix it up and they make efforts to forgive – here there is danger, as it becomes a twisted ego thing. This is why I believe we need some gentleness in our lives – we need to be gentle with ourselves. Without necessary gentility & awareness we would do more harm when we try to do good.
Michchami Dukkadam.