Regret

An email from my mother got me thinking about regret. My dictionary says that regret is to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.) The Buddha would define it quite differently, though. He would say, I believe, that it is thinking of the past as if we could change it to something more desirable. The importance of this definition for me is the recognition of the sheer futility implied. We cannot change the past any more than we can write upon the ocean. Nothing is more ephemeral than the past, unless it is the future. There is no reality save what exists in this moment.

Intellectually, we understand this. The past has passed and will never be again. But there is something fundamental in us, it seems, that makes it desirable, imperative even, to relive our past deeds and characteristics as if to do so serves some distinct and worthwhile aim.

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past." —Anne Lamott

Perhaps most pernicious is the nugget of a poisonous idea that we deserve to feel regret and remorse for things we have done, said, felt, lost, or broken. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the saying goes, the coal can only stop burning when you drop it. This is essential: you do not deserve to be punished for your misdeeds. There may be some need on the part of the society to impose a penalty, but if you truly feel the wrong of what you have done in your heart, make what amends you can, and set out on a path that does not involve repeating the wrong, you have done the sum total of what it is possible to do. Anything else is not only masochism but a waste of your precious energies, which could be devoted to freeing yourself and others from the bonds of false belief, the highest calling it is possible to have. And what better antidote for remorse than this?

Here's a formula for you: if there is something you regret, face it head on. Acknowledge your fault wholly. Make what amends you can, if possible in a face to face meeting with the wronged person (if there is a person involved), otherwise in as direct a fashion as possible (eg, if you stole money, pay it back). Then LET IT GO. You have done all you can with this regret and it can no longer be of any use to you. I am aware this is far more easily said than done, but it is the intent that is most valuable. To see the regret for what it is, a vestige of an event far in the past that only has power to harm while you allow it, is to put yourself on the road to healing.

Not that grief, pain, and remorse cannot, to a certain extent, be healing in their own right. If we blithely passed over the death of a loved one or the end of a cherished bond, we would hardly be human. But to wallow in these as if the pain itself had value is an odd vestige of a time when we humans were required to be ever-vigilant and dwell on our failures because to forget them could be deadly. When a predator nearly caught us through an act of negligence, perhaps a momentary lapse, it was worthwhile to vividly recall the event. But we no longer live with that kind of threat and have the intelligence to learn a lesson without flagellating ourselves with it.

The Buddha said:

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. 

and 

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.

These are not casual ideas to be given lip service or to be hoped for and not practiced. Rather, these are at the very core of the teachings of the Buddha. We have only so much energy to divvy up among the many demands of our minds and bodies. To waste one more second on the past than to glean from it what lessons it has to give is to carry in our arms the corpse of one we loved. It is dead. To bury it is to do it the full honor it deserves.

Thus have I heard.