Satya Robyn explores confession in Buddhist practice as compassionate remorse rather than self-punishment. A bodhisattva vow means constantly acknowledging delusion and harm, tasting regret mindfully, then returning to the world with renewed compassion.
Chapters
I was reading a book recently by Reb Anderson. I think it's by Reb Anderson, I couldn't find the book just now, but that's the name in my head, who was one of the abbots at San Francisco Zen Center after Suzuki Roshi and Baker Roshi. And it's a book about the deep meaning of the Bodhisattva vows and the precepts. When I was reading the section on the Bodhisattva vows, one line jumped out at me. It said, "A bodhisattva is always confessing." I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. What's that all about?" A bodhisattva is always confessing. And then he said, "A bodhisattva is always confessing because delusion is always present." present. An unenlightened person doesn't know about delusion. They think that everything— perhaps not that everything's fine, but they believe what they think. They don't see through the self in the same way. The Bodhisattva— delusion is always present, so there's always something going on, there's always some element of self. And confession here isn't a sort of beat yourself up. It's not get those chains that they use in some religious sects and flagellate yourself until you bleed. It's not wearing a hair shirt. Reb Anderson said the word remorse means to taste again, not tipping over into disgust, but that sort of tasting when you try a new food for the first time, and you're sort of a bit curious, and you go, "I wonder what this is like. I'll just try a little bit. Oh, it's a bit like this, and it's a bit like that," and a sort of considered savoring of it. So confessing is getting closer to the truth. The truth of what it means to be human, and the truth of how it is to be human in the presence of the Buddha. A while back, I had a bit of a bump-up with somebody, a bit of an argument, a bit of entanglement, and there was plenty of blame to go around. I didn't— initially I didn't really want to take any of the blame. I don't mean that in a hard way, but I didn't really want to say that it was anything to do with me that this had happened. And finally, after lots of nenbutsu, I reached a place where I go, well, actually, this bit of it I contributed to. I don't know about the rest, but here is what I did that was unskillful. So I made an apology for it. I was actually in the garden, in the garden Buddha, with the garden Buddha first of all. So I said, "Look, Buddha, this is what happened and this is my part in it." And even then I felt a relaxing and a lightness. And when I made the apology, I felt I felt clean in a way that I hadn't felt clean, and it sort of didn't matter how the apology was received. Because the thing about, about delusion, about not confessing, about not tasting things again and recognizing what's really true, is actually it takes energy to to lie to ourselves. It took some energy for me to believe that it wasn't anything to do with me that this had happened. And when I was able to go, "Okay, there, that's what happened," that energy was released and I, I was more with it again. And that— I was able to be more compassionate, more active in the world, all those things that we want to cultivate. So confession is like opening the dam to all this energy. It lets the river flow again until the next time we make a mistake. Of course, the danger is that it can tip over into disgust if we've got those sorts of tendencies. So this morning I was feeling pretty tired after a weekend of events and various people and different things and different things going on. And the cats woke me up at 5 o'clock this morning, and I really didn't fancy doing the work that I was supposed to be doing. I did some of it, and as the morning went on and the less work I got done, I could feel myself really beginning to judge myself. And this wasn't a genuine tasting of what had happened because I didn't really get interested interested in the causes and conditions that had led me into that place. I just had a superficial bite and decided, "Oh, well, you're a bit rubbish today." And when I was able to sit down and really examine the causes and conditions and say, "Well, actually, these are the things that have contributed to your tiredness, and the judging that you're doing and the saying— telling yourself," that you should be doing better, that keeping yourself engaged with work is actually making you more tired, it's making things worse. And in that exploration of causes and conditions, just coming to terms with what was real, I was able to move out of sort of turning my nose up at what I was tasting into, "Okay, that's what this flavor is." And again, there's a relaxation, permission to have a rest and approach the work again in the afternoon from a place of freshness. And this is the spirit of the Sangha Monna with its very highfalutin text that we've just read. It's about encouraging us to taste again our human condition, to taste it kindly. As Pure Land Buddhists, we can, we can receive the tenderness of Amida, we can receive the kindness of Amida, we can allow that to help us taste it in an open-hearted, non-judgmental way. Way, and to go, 'Oh, that's what it's like to be me. This is the causes and conditions. This is what's true at the moment.' It's a giving up of a denial, moving from ignorance into clear seeing, which releases all of this energy. It allows us to be compassionate again. It allows us to relax. It allows us to, as they say in the 12 ox herding pictures, which describe the journey for bodhisattva, it allows us to go back into the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
