It has been well over a month since I last posted, which makes this topic seem appropriate. I am constructing this post backwards from what I usually do. For many of my talks, I usually write the blog post first and later construct a speech outline from it. This time, I gave a presentation first and am now adapting it into a blog post. We’ll see how well the experiment translates.
The Weight We Carry
What a waste! Have you ever looked back on a day, a year, or even a phase of your life and felt that? Maybe the most exhausting part is not the mistake itself, but carrying the feeling afterward.
Imagine carrying a backpack filled with every embarrassing thing you’ve done, every wasted hour, and every habit you wish you could undo. Repentance requires us to look honestly at what we’re carrying. Yet many approaches stop there, dwelling on the weight of the backpack and the burden it creates. Buddhism asks a different question: once you’ve examined it, why are you still carrying it?
Is there any way to eliminate these feelings, or will they always remain a nagging sensation in the back of your mind?
A common understanding of repentance includes:
- Feeling remorse
- Asking for forgiveness
- Stopping unwise behavior
The Buddhist approach also contains three elements, but emphasizes different things:
- Releasing remorse
- Offering forgiveness
- Transforming mistakes into causes for awakening
When I gave this talk at my Unitarian Universalist fellowship, I played a rendition of “It Is Well” for special music. I believe the ability to say this with conviction about everything in your past and present is the outgrowth of repentance. It is centered around skillfulness in mindset, action, and lifestyle, rather than necessarily doing what is “right.”
Repentance can operate in three dimensions, each of which is useful on its own, but the real power comes from using them together: awareness, transformation, and returning.
Awareness
Repentance in awareness is the most immediate of the three dimensions and focuses on mindset. It deals with remorse but emphasizes releasing it rather than clinging to it.
A down-to-earth example is mindful eating. I’ve had two different friends utilize this to deal with unskillful relationships around food and eating. It is astonishingly simple. No requirements as to what you can eat, when you can eat, or how much you can eat. However, when you do eat, you must slow down and become aware of every sensation—temperature, texture, flavor, color—as well as any thoughts or emotions that arise in the process.
My other friend found this approach a bit too abstract for their taste and applied it somewhat differently. They focused on tracking their food habits for a month. Every night they would write down exactly what, how much, and when they ate. No guilt for any of these, just tracking. They also detailed any emotions or thoughts they remembered experiencing during eating.
In both cases, these individuals developed a healthier relationship with food. Increased awareness helped them release unhealthy attachments to weight loss and rigid eating habits, while making positive changes more attainable because much of the self-judgment had been removed.
As for myself, although I have experimented with mindfulness in the area of food, it has never been a major interest. Weight loss has never been a goal of mine, and I generally maintain healthy eating habits. One technique I do use regularly, however, is consciousness focusing, which I’ve discussed elsewhere and may revisit in a future post.
Transformation
While awareness alone is incredibly powerful, it often requires a lifestyle shift to support lasting change. The second dimension of repentance is transformation, which is more long-term and process-based. The emphasis here is not simply learning from the negative karma of our past, but transforming it into positive karma.
One example from my own life involves a TV-show binging addiction. I developed this habit in my mid-20s but didn’t recognize it as such until I began experiencing major depression in my late 20s while attending medical school. One of the skills I learned and started applying in therapy was chain analysis.
Chain analysis has three components. First, create a list. Start with the situations, actions, and emotions that led to developing the addiction. Then include the thoughts, urges, and emotions experienced during the addiction. Finally, mark the consequences that result from it.
Second, pair each link in the chain with a specific skillful response. Examples might include:
• Take a walk outside
• Call a friend
• Practice urge surfing
• Splash cold water on your face
Third, apply this to present and future occurrences. When similar events or emotions arise, have this response list handy and immediately default to the appropriate skillful action. Since it is pre-planned, there is less cognitive load in trying to figure out what to do; instead, there is simply commitment and follow-through.
I have used this technique to successfully master a TV-binging addiction. Importantly, this wasn’t just a behavior change, but a change in desire and attitude, which affects all areas of life.
Transformation is rarely linear. Old habits die hard. The question is not IF unskillful habits will reemerge—but WHEN. My TV-binging habit still reemerges periodically, but I am practiced in giving myself grace and returning to those skillful actions more quickly each time it does.
Returning
The third dimension of repentance is returning. It is the moment-to-moment intention-setting practice that might be the most frustrating part of repentance. This cycling is a natural part of removing old patterns and establishing new ones.
Returning involves forgiveness, but it is more focused on giving forgiveness than asking for it, especially to yourself. Sometimes returning means moving toward a more skillful habit. Other times it means recognizing that a well-intentioned goal is not appropriate for the present moment.
As I blogged about a couple of months ago, I started a sleep challenge. Several days into the challenge, I began experiencing increased levels of depression and anxiety (unrelated to the challenge). This emotional load made the challenge much heavier than expected. I struggled under that weight for a few days before finally deciding this wasn’t the right time to do it and returning to the less optimized but more feasible sleep paradigm I had held previously. The new paradigm had been the right fit when I designed the challenge and will likely be the right fit again once circumstances change. At that particular moment, however, it was not what I needed.
More often, we are returning from a negative behavior or thought pattern. One simple practice we can use when we say something we immediately regret or engage in an action we thought we had forsaken is to employ a mantra from the Nichiren school of Buddhism: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
This translates to “Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra.” The Lotus Sutra is one of the most revered texts in the Buddhist canon; its central premise is that all beings have the capacity for full enlightenment.
By repeating this phrase, we intentionally reconnect with the conviction that awakening remains possible, even when we have fallen short of our aspirations. This is now one of my favorite default mantras, especially after engaging in behavior that I feel is less than skillful.
Insight
Freedom from regret is not only possible but realistic for those practicing the art of repentance. Repentance is not really about the past at all. It is about learning to wake up sooner and realizing that the very things we regret—the confusion, the suffering, the unskillful habits—are necessary conditions for wisdom and awakening.
As the late Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh observed: “No mud, no lotus.”
That is the heart of repentance.
Namaste.