Dear Ramji,
Please offer advice on why I should forgive. I recently lost my 15-year-old cat, who was like a son, and who passed away due to a critical condition that could have been managed if attended to promptly by his doctor. The doctor, an old friend, used to mock us for being overprotective and disregarded our concerns about the cat’s well-being.
Had he taken us seriously, the cat’s painful passing might have been prevented or eased. It’s hard to forgive this ex-friend for his insensitive attitude toward a living being. We trusted his professionalism and never expected such behavior. Sadly, we changed doctors too late, and it was only in the last 2 or 3 weeks of my cat’s life that we received proper care. The other doctors agreed that timely intervention could have controlled the condition. From the individual perspective, forgiveness is challenging, and feelings of rage, grief, resentment, and guilt weigh heavily on my husband and me. As peaceful individuals who value compassion and love as part of our daily life and dharma, this situation is exceptionally difficult to navigate.
Right Attitude
This one is on you, sweetheart. You have been listening to Vedanta for more than one year and are presumably practicing karma yoga. There are no bad outcomes for karma yogis. Subconsciously, you are angry at yourself for failing to recognize that although it is natural to grieve when a love object dies, one should never lose sight of the fact that what is born, dies. Small loves and big loves are subject to this rule. Yes, things attract and amuse us, but nothing was created for the enjoyment of specific entities. A single principle operates here, so the creative force is also the destructive force. To keep it simple, “The Lord gives and the Lord taketh away.” The lesson we all need to learn at some point is: joy is not in objects. It is the nature of the self. We let ourselves down when we fail to appreciate this fact.
Also, you seem to have forgotten that everything created by God belongs to God, not to you. In all of existence, there is only one copyright. Karma yoga is based on the idea that you are at best a caretaker and a contributor, not a creator. The duty of karma yogis is to appreciate the upside of every situation and manifest gratitude for the sake of yourself and others. Imagine how your doctor friend must feel now that you hate him. Obviously, you don’t like it either or you wouldn’t have written.
You benefitted from a from a long and happy relationship with one of God’s beautiful creatures. You trusted him with the care of the cat for a long time presumably. And he must be more aware than anyone of the shelf life of our furry friends. It’s wise to wean oneself as love objects approach their sell-by dates. I forever remind loved ones of my impending demise. Why should they suffer when I am in the hearts of everyone?
A certain degree of attachment comes with anything that gives pleasure—food, sex, and money etc.—but the emotions you describe are excessive and need to be managed properly. I noticed the absence of the word guilt in your list. If you were a dedicated karma yogi, guilt would have forestalled the resentment and rage. When you feel guilty you can’t blame someone else, particularly an old friend. Guilt means that you let dharma down, which is only as good as the support it gets from us. It’s not all about your feelings, Cindy. Yes, they seem real now but they are not real in any way. Just as life is life, cats are cats and feelings are feelings. Karma yoga is fear and desire management. It produces dispassion. If you feel this way over a cat, how are you going to feel when your husband dies and a doctor “mismanages” his care. God manages and God mismanages. What use is control?
Right Action
Negative feelings exist. They come when they come. The second part of karma yoga is offering them to Ishvara because they are on Ishvara, not you. How so? You don’t think “I will be angry now, and then observe feelings of anger, rage, resentment etc. arise. Anger is triggered by FOMO, fear of missing out on one of life’s pleasures, but it is difficult to admit that you feel this way because it contradicts your good opinion of yourself. So you look for a scapegoat, in this case your friend,, the (ex) doctor. Blame is another sign of low-self esteem, so once you have processed the loss of your cat it is likely that you will have to process blame unless you forgive yourself for blaming him. If you must blame,, blame God. It won’t be disturbed.
Karma yoga is knowledge of the zero-sum principle. If there is a downside there is an upside. Since we are also blessed with free will, we are free to look on the bright side. To whit: the cat’s love is Ishwara’s love, which is available in all mammals, so this situation offers the opportunity for JOMO, the joy of missing out. Be happy when objects come and when they go.
Or get another cat. Cat love is cat love. Or just be happy for all the other things in your life that give you happiness now, particularly your old ex-friend, the doctor, who can always appreciate your love. Perhaps he was trying to alert you to your excessive attachment. Even if he was insensitive, he couldn’t be otherwise, as he is just the product of his conditioning, as are all sentient beings. Nobody is devoid of love. Think of all the things he does love, including animals. Would he have taken that profession if he didn’t?
It is also likely that your love of the cat masks a lack of self-love. This situation may have been Ishwara attempting to bring this unwanted fact to your attention. Ishwara is a jealous God. It wants all your love, which is beautiful because love of God includes love of everything. What isn’t God?
You didn’t share the conversation with your doctor. Did he give the reason why he wasn’t medicating the according to your wishes? Of course, it is incumbent on doctors to follow the Hippocratic oath and relieve pain whenever possible. Anyway, I’m not a veterinarian so I can’t speak with authority on this topic, but if it was up to me, I would do everything within my power to relieve its pain. Since it was obvious that the cat was on its last legs, pain pills were probably a reasonable option.
Actually, the best course of action is to co-opt the suffering and put the animal down in a painless way before you enter the danger zone. There is more to this situation than the loss of a cat; the loss of discrimination of one of the four qualifying pillars for assimilating Vedanta.
Maybe this whole business is just cat envy. It just came to me that we love animals because they have a leg up on us, owing to the fact that they don’t think they shouldn’t suffer. So, are they suffering when they are suffering? Pleasure and pain are inevitable, but suffering is optional. Cats don’t have that option because they don’t have free will, but we do. Failure to choose that option is on us.
Forgive yourself, Cindy. And center your life around the teaching. Don’t try to conveniently fit the teaching into your life. Death, the creative/uncreator, sits mercifully on every shoulder looking for the right opportunity to reap us. It is not good or bad. It is just a fact. Respect Ishwara and thereby respect yourself.
Much love,
Ram
