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[icarus]

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Guiltlessness on the Buddhist Path

Guilt is one of the greatest hindrances to our progress, both in the spiritual path and in everyday life. We have a strong sense of feeling unworthy, not good enough to make progress in doing the things we need to do. From the Buddhist point of view guilt is extra-strength egotism. By reducing the tendency to feel guilty, we can free our minds to be more alert, intelligent and agile.

Ah.

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah.

Actually, your long-learned guilt is no larger than anyone else's. It's just a habit like anything else.

So you chip away at the habit.

Don't feel guilty about that guilt - *grins.* People feel guilty because they want to do better and they think punishing themselves helps. But instead the guilt avoids the next step of doing something about whatever it is. The ideal is to bounce right off the recognition of "ooops" to the next step of fixing it, or doing something to make up for it.

Guilt is just magnifying the wrong waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of proportion.

Frankly, there is nothing that you've ever done that hasn't been - worse - by someone else. Even the greatest people make mistakes. And no matter what you've done, in your past lives you've done far worse.

Icarus

[wanderingscribe.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Much food for thought there.

I agree about the last part especially, but there's a part of me that just doesn't care. I want to be selfish and make it *my* mistake. I want to take all the blame and torture myself for it, simply because I've been the scapegoat so many years.

Good grief. I'm thinking way too into things now when I should just let sleeping dogs lie. This is what lack of sleep does to me, I guess. *g*