I have fun translating between religions. Here's something I wrote and posted in another forum yesterday.
As Rava, the Talmudic sage, would say, “Those who ignore the impulse to get even, all their sins are ignored in the heavenly record.”
Not Zen...yet. First I'd like to translate this into Buddhism, then secularism, and finally see if there's any way to find it's accordance with Zen Masters' teachings.
In terms of Buddhist philosophy, what is being proposed is noticing the arising of some sort of karmic passion for vengeance and deliberately not acting on it. This in turn does generates far less (if any) karma than acting on the impulse. 'all their sins are ignored in the heavenly record' seems to correlate well with 'not generating bad karma' as well as generating some merit (in order for other sins to be erased). Of course, there isn't any entity recording this as there may be in Judaism...nevertheless, concepts of 'generating merit' or 'karma' seem to be records. Ultimately of course, we must address these concepts on the experiential level, and that's where we begin to enter secularism (for lack of a better word)
In terms of secularism, some people say 'what goes around comes around.' Experientially, when we feel we've been wronged, we want (or even need) to correct that which has wronged us, sometimes harshly. To correct the wrong for our sake and for the sake of others ideally leads to a better life for us and for others. 'Better' being measured in materialist and mental/emotional frameworks. To not overreact is pretty essential to not cause further harm. Yet at this point it's worthwhile to investigate and see if any reaction at all is necessary. Even further than that, sometimes not reacting in vengeance when it's expected, fundamentally changes the entire nature of a relationship, emotional environment, cultural pattern, or even the world. That seems like an impact on par with 'all their sins are ignored in the heavenly record.' One secular interpretation of 'heaven' would be a utopian society that through effort can be attained. Another interpretation is on the personal, experiential level, where one experiences complete freedom from suffering. (Nirvana in Buddhist terms).
Finally, a Zen connection. I'll use case 97 of the Pi Yen Lu with this, which was brought to my attention by a comment by u/negativegpa. This is Gregory Wonderwheel's translation:
97 The Diamond Sutra’s Belittled and Despised
The Diamond Sutra says, “If one becomes a person belittled and despised, indeed the person’s previous life’s karma of wrongdoing has responded by falling into evil paths. According to the present life, because the person is belittled and despised, the previous life’s karma of wrongdoing as a rule becomes extinguished.”
A loose interpretation of the phrasing points to the experience of losing any need or impulse to attain vengeance or correct wrongdoing, as the experience itself is self-correcting. There are deeper meanings and other aspects of this case, but they fall outside the scope of our current subject. Feel free to discuss those or anything else in reply. I wrote this mostly freehand with very little planning, organizing, or editing. It's late at night and often upon rereading something it loses whatever sense it originally had, so I refuse to read this before clicking submit. However, I wouldn't be submitting this to the appropriate forum if I wasn't open to questions.
Final point which I had started out with but didn't get down- Zen Masters don't teach 'don't retaliate' which is the essence of the pasted quote. To the contrary, there is discussion of the 'mirroring principle' (or something like that). Someone posted about it recently though I can't find it currently. I think it was Foyan quoting Xuansha.
Submitted May 16, 2019 at 09:28AM by AbjectEntrance http://bit.ly/2JQBd07
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