Resentment, like many strong and catalytic emotions, feels unnecessarily negative and complex sometimes. One may wish to be completely without it or so live with a particular kind of guilt. The feeling of resentment is deeply rooted in one’s centre, similar to a heartache, but much more subtle and numbing; it is despise mixed seamlessly with affection. Think of a Chinese finger trap: that more that one tries to unlock it by pulling outward, the tighter it would wrap around one’s fingers. Resentment has a similar mechanism. There is a desire to move outward and connect with the other, yet doing so drags one back into its all-consuming depths. This may seem like a character flaw, lacking the sufficient willingness to forgive, to love, to be the ‘bigger person’ or the ability to forget. However, again as with many seemingly strong and catalytic emotions, resentment may be simpler than it appears.
At the root of such an experience is a desire or a need, and the bridge to resentment is the belief that one is incapable of fulfilling such a desire or need. The resentment could then be directed toward another which one believes to be the reason why fulfilment is impossible. Perhaps one may have tried all the means that they have within themselves but to no avail; hence, they turn to some other person or being—that loved one, that an institution, God, whatever—and find them just as incapable or unwilling to do something about the problem. It might even be the case that the resentment simply goes back to the person themselves. Such is possible, for having found no ‘solution’ the problem persists. That is despite having plenty of ideas that one may simply get rid of the problem if one tries hard enough. We are taught to reconcile, to forgive, to love, to transcend one’s human tendencies for the sake of connection, but this is at times at risk of completely disregarding those human tendencies.
There seems to be a keenness to make gods out of the human experience. Such a compulsion can be noble, no doubt, but I think there is something essentially desirable in keeping what is human, human, in accepting desires and needs as something that inherently needs fulfilment, that can only be complete in themselves when they are addressed and not disregarded. While there is definitely more to ‘existence’ than just these fickle human things, the ephemeral is a constituent of the eternal, the superficial of the transcendental. To think of one as the other is blasphemous: when one starts to think of something mortal as divine, is that not an act of idolatry? And is it not the case that to see something as capable of transcendence, of having meaning and potency that can overcome the inherent good (hence it should be ‘overcome’ for the sake of this good), a way of divinising?
That is not to completely disregard the inherent divinity dwelling in all things created by the divine, but if all of one’s organs acts like the mind, then there would be no heart pumping blood nor skin to feel varied textures. By this, I mean: if one seeks to escape the individual by disregarding it for the sake of the ‘greater good’, the ‘One’, or ‘heaven’, then what is the point of those ‘higher order endeavours’?
In Buddhism, there is the concept of the No-Self. Initially, I imagined this to be a kind of transcendence from the ‘self’ or ‘ego’ that is ‘necessary’ to reach a state of heavenly liberation. That it is another conceptualisation of letting go of these human tendencies that is hindering the good from its supposed omnipotence—that by ‘not having a self’ we are able to be of this good fully. However, reflecting on the Dhammapada chapter on Oneself, the immediate verse says: “If one knew oneself to be precious, one would guard oneself with care. The sage will watch over herself in any part of the night” (DP 157). The chapter ends with a similar reminder: “Don’t give up your own welfare for the sake of others’ welfare, however great. Clearly know your own welfare and be intent on the highest good” (DP 166). I think this shows a clear image of the mechanism of transcendence of the human side: the highest good involves a self, specifically, caring and considering it as ‘precious’. Put this together with the idea of the Not-Self that negates the concept of a “permanent, everlasting, absolute entity” (Rahula, chapter VI), the consolidation is as such: take care of the fickle, human self, clinging not to the illusion that it would be possible to be a perfect, spotless version of you, and instead consider always the welfare of this impermanent, ephemeral, limited entity.
The ‘divine’, if we are to try to describe this concept in simple terms, is this “permanent, everlasting, absolute entity.” If God be truly God would not need a human attempt at protecting or perpetuating godly powers, which is to say that God remains God despite all the anger and resentment and hurt in the world. One can dwell so deeply in their ‘negative’ emotions and an absolute entity remains untouched, more so, the divine remains to be permeating all such experiences—the absolute is everything, in both the things humans consider good and bad. These things seem ‘strong’ and ‘catalytic’ only to us anyway.
I forgot to look up how to ‘solve’ a Chinese finger trap, if there is a way of ‘solving’ it at all that is. I think that maybe one possibility is to simply play with it for a while and then take it off once one has had enough. Similarly, there is a plethora of ‘ways’ of ‘resolving’ resentment, but I find that sometimes I just need to feel it for a while until it loses its charm, until I realise that love persists but the stronghold of resentment, like many other human sensation, fades away and then comes back, and then fades again, like waves on the ocean. The lovely ocean of the divine that allows for these waves to be is that which is everlasting; it also calls the human to surf along and watch its glimmer.
References: (maybe will put in the proper citations later haha)
- Jack Kornfield’s translation of the Dhammapada.
- Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught. 1974 edition.