Regret, remorse, recrimination. Here is the thing about deeply wounding another person: even if there was never an intention to do so, even if, in fact, the total opposite was genuinely intended, albeit in a deluded and misguided sort of way, the damage is irretrievable. It can't be taken back. You can't hit rewind, you can't go back and edit and if you are able to look at yourself in the mirror, you can't forgive yourself. Especially when you realize that as kind and charitable and loving a person you like to think you are, you have visited misery on someone who didn't deserve it, never asked for it and they will carry it with them always.
Sometimes guilt really is appropriate and earned and deserved. And when the shame is earned it feels like Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) described it in her poem “Iphigeneia in Aulis,”
Shame, scarlet, fresh-opened a flower, Strikes across my face.
I suck and I am going to hell and all the stuff I thought I had managed to learn I apparently did not. Other happy thoughts:
One should sit upright and meditate on the true aspect of all things. All sins are just as frost and dew, so wisdom's sun can disperse them
~Repentance in Buddhism
"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you what to do, then YOU DESERVE IT." ~ Frank Zappa
For all the evil deeds I have done in the past,
Created by my body, speech and mind,
From beginningless greed, hatred and delusion,
I now know shame and repent them all.
~Traditional Repentance Verse from "The Practices & Vows of Samantabadra Bodhisattva" (Avatamsaka Sutra, Chapter 40)
"Accept life, and you must accept regret." ~Henri Frederic Amiel, 1876
My karma is so FUCKED.
1 comment:
But here's the thing. The sting fades, lessons are learned, and it's all part of the road. You're on it. Stopping isn't an option, even if it was possible. We move on. We forgive ourselves. We accept.
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