Anyone familiar with Italian opera or the plays of Shakespeare knows the terrible price paid for grudges, vendetta, and revenge. Under the sway of these emotions painful incidents linger in the mind, sapping our ability to find peace and happiness. The 18th century English poet, Alexander Pope, gave us the antidote: “to err is human, to forgive divine.” But finding a way to forgive without giving up our principles is often no easy task. In this course, I am going to address what forgiveness is and how to implement it.
任何熟悉意大利歌剧或莎士比亚戏剧的人都清楚积怨，世仇，复仇带来的惨重代价。在这些情绪的控制下，痛苦事件萦绕在心，削弱我们寻求安宁与幸福的能力。十八世纪英国诗人亚历山大·蒲柏给了我们解药：「犯错是人性，宽恕是神性。」但是寻找一个办法去原谅而又不放弃自己的原则常常不是个简单的任务。在这节课，我将谈谈什么是宽恕，以及如何实践宽恕。
【All people commit sins and make mistakes. God forgives them, and people are acting in a godlike (divine) way when they forgive. This saying is from “An Essay on Criticism,” by Alexander Pope.】
I’ll be speaking here about forgiveness where it most often is needed -- in the context of your every day personal life with family members, friends, co-workers, and business associates.
我将谈谈最经常需要宽恕的情景，它们发生在你与亲朋好友，同事和生意合伙人的日常个人生活中。
One of our challenges in understanding this process is that the word -- forgiveness -- is inadequate to explain a very complex concept. Forgiveness actually embodies three different things, each of which applies to different situations and provides different results.
对于了解此过程，我们的挑战之一是这个词，宽恕，并不足以解释一个异常复杂的概念。宽恕其实包含了三种不同的概念，每一种应用于不同的情况，得到不同的结果。
The three types of forgiveness are: exoneration, forbearance and release.
这三类宽恕是：免罪，宽容，释怀。
Let’s take each in turn.
让我依次说明。
Exoneration is the closest to what we usually think of when we say “forgiveness”. Exoneration is wiping the slate entirely clean and restoring a relationship to the full state of innocence it had before the harmful actions took place. There are three common situations in which exoneration applies.
免罪最接近我们通常提及「宽恕」时想到的概念。免罪是既往不咎，将关系修复回伤害行为发生之前的完全清白状态。免罪应用的常见情况有三种。
The first takes place when you realize that the harmful action was a genuine accident for which no fault can be assigned.
第一种发生在你意识到伤害行为实在是一场意外并不能怪谁时。
The second is when the offender is a child or someone else who, for whatever reason, simply didn’t understand the hurt they were inflicting, and toward whom you have loving feelings.
第二种是当犯错者是个孩子或某人，不管是什么理由，他们单纯不懂自己造成的伤痛，还有对那些你还怀有爱意的人时。
The third situation occurs when the person who hurt you is truly sorry, takes full responsibility (without excuses) for what they did, asks forgiveness, and gives you confidence that they will not knowingly repeat their bad action in the future.
第三种情况出现在当伤害到你的人万分愧疚，对于所做之事不找借口负起全部责任，请求宽恕，并给予你信心他们不会再明知故犯时。
In all such situations it is essential to accept their apology and offer them the complete forgiveness of exoneration. You’ll feel better and so will the person who hurt you. In fact, not to offer forgiveness in these circumstances would be harmful to your own well-being. It might even suggest that there is something more wrong with you than with the person who caused you pain.
在这三种情况下，接受他们的道歉，作出免罪的完全宽恕是必要的。你会感觉好些，伤害你的那个人也会。事实上，在此类状况下不作出宽恕会损害到你的身心。它还可能表示比起让你痛苦的人造成的，你自身的问题更严重。
The second type of forgiveness I call “forbearance.” And here things get a little more complicated.
第二种宽恕是「宽容」。到这里情况变得复杂起来。
Forbearance applies when the offender makes a partial apology or mingles their expression of sorrow with blame that you somehow caused them to behave badly. An apology is offered but it’s not what you had hoped for and may not even be fully authentic. While you should always reflect on whether there was a provocation on your part, even when you bear no responsibility you should exercise forbearance if the relationship matters to you.
宽容是当犯错者表示出部分歉意，或在他们悲痛的言辞中夹杂着指责，即其实是你令他们干出坏事。道歉已经给出，但并非你所期望的，甚至可能并非真诚实意。你应当经常反思自己是否表现过激，即便在你毫无责任，你也应当尝试宽容以待，如果这段感情对你来说还重要的话。
Cease dwelling on the particular offense, do away with grudges and fantasies of revenge, but retain a degree of watchfulness. This is similar to “forgive but not forget” or “trust but verify.” By using forbearance you are able to maintain ties to people who, while far from perfect, are still important to you.
停止纠结于某次冒犯，结束积怨和对复仇的幻想，但保持某种程度上的警惕。这类似于「原谅但不忘记」或「信任但会核实」。通过宽容，你能够维系与远非完美却对你依然重要的人的关系。
Furthermore, in some cases after a sufficient period of good behavior, forbearance can rise to exoneration and full forgiveness.
而且，有时经过足够长时间的良好表现，宽容可以上升为免罪和完全原谅。
But what do you do when the person who hurt you doesn’t even acknowledge that they’ve done anything wrong or gives an obviously insincere apology, making no reparations whatsoever? These are the cases of forgiveness that are the most challenging. In my practice, I find this in such examples as adult survivors of child abuse, business people who have been cheated by their partners, or friends or relatives who have betrayed one another. Still, even here there still is a solution. I call it “release” -- the third type of forgiveness.
但当伤害到你的人甚至不承认自己做的事有任何错，或者作出显然缺乏诚意的道歉，也不打算补偿等等，你怎么做？这些是最难去原谅的情况。在我的临床实践中，我发现这些情况出现在经历过儿童虐待的成年人，被合伙人欺骗的生意人，或背叛了对方的好友或亲人身上。即便如此也仍有解决方法。我称之为「释怀」，第三种宽恕。
Release does not exonerate the offender. Nor does it require forbearance. It doesn’t even demand that you continue the relationship. But it does ask that instead of continuing to define much of your life in terms of the hurt done, you release your bad feelings and your preoccupation with the negative things that have happened to you.
释怀并不免除侵害者的罪责。它也不需要宽容。它甚至不要求你继续这段关系。不过它确实要求与其继续让已造成的伤害定义你的大部分人生，你不如释放掉自己的不良情绪并停止关注发生在你身上的负面事物。
Release does something that is critically important: it allows you to let go of the burden, the “silent tax” that is weighing you down and eating away at your chance for happiness. If you do not release the pain and anger and move past dwelling on old hurts and betrayals, you will be allowing the ones who hurt you to live, rent free, in your mind, reliving forever the persecution that the original incident started.
释怀有至关重要的作用，它让你卸下包袱，那压得你喘不过气，蚕食掉你获得幸福的机会的「无声税」。如果你不释放掉这些痛苦与愤怒，不走出旧日的伤害与背叛，你将允许伤害你的人毫无代价地活在你的心里，永远一遍遍地重现最初的事件导致的伤痛。
Whether you get there through your own efforts, through psychotherapy, through religion or some other method, release liberates you from the tyranny of living in the traumatic past even when the other forms of forgiveness, exoneration and forbearance, are not possible.
无论你是凭自己的努力，心理治疗，宗教信仰或其他方法，释怀让你从活在痛苦过去的束缚中解放出来，即使是其他形式的宽恕，免罪和宽容都做不到时。
Exoneration. Forbearance. Release.
免罪，宽容，释怀。
To forgive may be divine, but when we understand its dimensions we find that it is within our ability to do it.
宽恕或许是神性，但当我们了解其内涵，我们就会发现这是我们力所能及的。
I’m Dr. Stephen Marmer of UCLA Medical School, for Prager University.
我是加州大学洛杉矶分校医学院的史蒂芬·马默教授，为 PragerU 制作。
翻译：Mangosteen
校对：FungChuh
