“Skillfully Responding to Remorse and Regret” with Jean this Sunday at Minneapolis Insight

Dear Community,

Sunday 10am Community Practice & Discussion

From Jean: In the midst of so much harm being perpetrated by so many, I have been feeling remorse for the harm I have caused over the decades.  Ajahn Sucitto has provided me with valuable guidance on how to skillfully respond to this remorse and regret.  In response to a question on this topic posed at a retreat, he said: 

“When you’re in the grip of something, you can’t understand it.  You have to break the grip by getting down and bowing.  Bow to the Buddha.  Bow to the craziness of being a human being – the ignorance we’re infected with.  Bow to the anguish and the complexity of the human condition...In the presence of the Buddha, make a vow – I send forth good-will, compassion, and kindness to myself and others who have done wrong just as I have done wrong.  You have to lift it up, not just beat yourself up.  In order to make your stupidity useful, you have to learn how to use it to rise up.  The Buddha considered it great progress for someone to acknowledge transgression rather than endlessly blame themselves.  Acknowledge it from the heart in his presence and rise up.”

Elsewhere in an essay called “Sin, Sex, and the Inner Tyrant” he suggests that we take Angulimala, the serial killer who became an arahant, as our patron saint.  “He can certainly be said to have messed up and yet his murdering didn’t amount to an insurmountable obstacle to awakening.” What keeps us bound, Sucitto concludes,  is not the actions themselves but the “vague stuck mess” called “I am this.”

I don’t know about taking Angulimala as my patron saint, but I am inspired by the instruction to use our “stupidity” to lift ourselves and others up. There is, indeed, much anguish in the human condition, some of which we may have contributed to.  And we have a choice – we can stay stuck in a mess of self-blame or we can humbly acknowledge it as part of being human and use it as a catalyst for empathy and compassion for ourselves and others. This is freedom.

Please join us this Sunday as we practice the path together. Registration and Zoom information available here.

With mettā,
Minneapolis Insight