Breaking The Dark Cycle of Revenge

It was Mahatma Gandhi who astutely observed that, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” His philosophy of nonviolence and forgiveness stands in stark contrast to the principle of retaliation often associated with the phrase, “an eye for an eye”, which has its origin in biblical texts and ancient legal systems, such as the Code of Hammurabi.

This concept of retributive justice, where the punishment matches the severity of the crime, was exposed by Gandhi to be morally bankrupt by strongly highlighting that such a system of revenge ultimately leads to continuous escalation and inevitable destruction, leaving no one unharmed.  Thus, revenge and retribution constitute a non-virtuous descending spiral – signaling the sad decline of a society.

Revenge is akin to a runaway carousel of callousness and uncaring that keeps us, in Buddhist terms, chained to the Wheel of Rebirth and held captive inside the cell walls of pain and suffering. It appears that much of our world is presently caught up in this maelstrom and that its prevailing narrative is hard-coded into many aspects of our present culture. If we are unable to end this dark cycle of revenge and belligerence we may well be doomed to go round and round, incarnation after incarnation, inside a closed loop of hatred until either the whole field collapses or a sudden revelation causes us to see the Light of Day – with a real change of heart and change of course.

At Meditation Mount, we strongly believe that only an introduction of the refined soul qualities of compassion and loving kindness into all of our relations will dislodge this imprisoning circle and shift and lift it into an upward-moving spiral of virtuous growth. The Agni Yoga teachings offer us further insights:

“The co-workers must remember the first law, which affirms the first step - the expulsion of feelings of personal vengeance, for the feeling of revenge is a powerful manifestation of the unscrupulousness of selfhood. For the sake of personal vengeance the co-worker may give up that of greatest value. When a co-worker forgets, due to selfhood, the affirmation which he must forge in his spirit in order to forget Service, the harm may become indelible. Primitive man lived and believed in vengeance, but the consciousness has broadened and man can no longer dwell in such black concepts. He who knows the meaning of Karma can understand that a man takes revenge only on himself.”

~ Fiery World III, sloka 56

“Vengeance is justly condemned by all Teachings. The original wrong itself may be but little realized and even unintentional, yet vengeance is always thought out and consciously intensified in the heart. Vengeance is like a megaphone for the wrong; therefore its harm, in the spatial sense, is very great. Vengeance only slightly resembles indignation. Indignation, like an impulse to threaten may pass quickly, but premeditated acts of vengeance widely poison the atmosphere.

~ Heart, sloka 87

Every two months throughout each year, as part of a rotating cycle of Creative Meditation, we focus on one of the three Principles or three Pathways of Soul-guided living and at present (from June 21st until August 20th ) we are working with the potent Principle of Unanimity.

This Principle affirms that all life is inter-connected and that each person and each aspect of Creation constitutes an integral and intimate part of the One Life. If each one of us is truly an expression of the One Soul and we ‘live and move and have our being’ inside a coherent and unified field of Creation, then revenge would clearly be seen as a selfish, senseless and short-sighted reaction belonging to an earlier, unenlightened and disconnected period of human history. If the Principle of Unanimity were to be deeply understood and fully lived as a daily practice, then it would be impossible to exact revenge and cause harm to anyone or any creature. The choice is ours to make.

Mother Teresa was one who fully understood and lived the Principle of Unanimity. She stated with great power and simplicity, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” 

How we relate to each other and experience life is typically colored by the lens through which we view our existence on Earth. Those who feel justified to exact revenge on their fellow sisters and brothers, may see themselves living and confined inside a Courtroom where they are constantly being judged by others and therefore feel a need to defend themselves and make accusations whenever there is any perception of wrong doing.

Inside this conditioned reality, it is all too easy to appoint oneself as jury, judge and executioner and justify any acts of revenge. “They had it coming to them”, is a phrase we often hear. It is not up to us to judge and, in fact, the Law of Karma meticulously tracks and takes care of all our unskilled behaviors and limiting beliefs by employing them in designing a customized course curriculum supporting our personal growth: lifetime by lifetime. We create our own reality by how we think and behave each moment.

Those, who no longer are driven by a need to retaliate and are not easily triggered by others, likely find themselves living inside a Classroom setting where a supportive cohort of humans learns and grows together utilizing the lessons that the many challenges of our unskilled behavior and unredeemed patterns create.

The difference between living in the punitive world of a self-declared Courtroom or

the supportive atmosphere of a shared Classroom is clearly reflected in the nature of

the questions posed in both these arenas.

In the Courtroom there are typically three basic questions to be asked and answered: 1) What happened? 2) Who is guilty? 3) How shall we punish them? In the Classroom the three questions awaiting our response are: 1) What happened? 2) What did we learn? 3) How will we do things differently next time?

The Soul’s hope is that, over time, we will understand that, “We reap what we sow” and are able to course-correct as a result of this ‘aha’. Thus, in a Classroom what ‘we have coming to us’, invariably arrives in the form of needed and self-invoked lessons rather than through any pain or punishment inflicted by an external source.

As we grow in awareness and evolve, we eventually reach a higher point of spiritual attainment and self-realization and are able to graduate summa cum laude from the School of Life. Once liberated from the gravitational pull of self-centeredness and separation, the natural urge of the Soul is now free to give of its love and wisdom in service to the Greater Good. When this enlightened state of consciousness becomes the dominant characteristic of what it means to be human, revenge rapidly becomes a receding shadow tied to a distant and painful past.

Whether it is road rage on a crowded California freeway or one nation state flexing its muscles and attacking a neighbor, revenge and retaliation take on different forms, but at their core is contained the same toxicity that poisons and pollutes the ethers.

The fact is that we are so much more than how we are presently behaving as a species. Breaking the dark cycle of revenge and replacing it with a beneficent flow of love from an open heart is of paramount importance if we are to build a healthy society that invites and encourages us to manifest our true inner nature – one that the Greek philosophers described as the Holy Trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

In the words of an Ancient Prayer:

Lead us from darkness into Light

From the unreal to the Real

And from death to Immortality.

Ending the caustic cycle of violence at both a personal and planetary level requires our immediate attention and whole-hearted engagement as it truly is a matter of life and death for the human family at this critical moment in history. Let us not forget that it is Love, not hate, that is the portal to a new and better world for all.

Michael Lindfield

Meditation Mount,

Board President