Guilt | Ajahn Brahm

Guilt – by Ajahn Brahm Summary We are taught to forgive so that we can free ourselves from the past and move on to happier times. Guilt only makes you unhappy and makes you do bad things. Talking about forgiveness creates peace and prevents guilt. You can't be happy if you don t think you deserve happiness. Guilt comes from judging, from treating someone as if they're inherently bad. Guilt is a by-product of revenge, you don't need it, and there's a way to get rid of it. Punishment seldom works and often does more harm than good. Instead, try to acknowledge your faults and learn the 'AFL code' of Buddhism, which is to ‘Acknowledge’, ‘Forgive’ and ‘Learn’ from your mistakes. Transcription (Robot generated transcript – expect errors!) Okay. This evening's talk, I've got another request. People always give me requests about the talks, which is great because it means that I can aim the talk according to people's wishes. And the talk this evening is on guilt. Do you feel guilty for what you've done this last week? What have you been up to? Some monks can read minds. Do you want to head for the door quickly? It's amazing that even though there are some monks who can read minds and all these great monks I used to live with in Thailand that some of them could read minds, they're great. Actually, when it happens that I'm just going to go off the off the off the track of guilt for a moment be because I was telling one of the young visitors to our monastery who wants to become a monk he was having trouble with lust. So I told him the occasion when Ajan Chah read somebody's mind once. This is why you got to be very, very careful traveling with great monks because sometimes you do that. And that was that time. I was in the back of the car and Ajan Chah was in the passenger seat being driven somewhere in Thailand. And in the back seat, together with myself, was a young American novice and a more senior American monk. And halfway in the journey, Ajan Chah turned round and he looked at this young American novice and said, which was translated into English as, you're thinking about your girlfriend and this poor American novice. His jaw dropped almost to the floor. Ajahn Chah had been reading his mind. And at one of the most embarrassing moments, it was true. He'd been thinking about his girlfriend. And so a Genshaw laughed and said, doesn't matter. We can fix that. And some of you know what's coming, and said, what? How can you fix that? And he said. Look, you're in Thailand and your girlfriend is in the United States somewhere. It's a long distance away. Why don t you ask her to send something of hers? Something personal, something which can remind you of her. So anytime you feel lonely, you can look at that or get that out and remember her. It when I was translated, this American monk said is that allowable for a monk to do that? Can you do that? And I just oh, yeah. That's okay. We're compassionate. This is like modern Buddhism. And he decided to get interested. And so did we. We wonder what Ajan Shah was up to. And the next thing Ajan Shah said in Thai the American monk the translator just burst out laughing. It was really hysterical laughter. It took him about five minutes to calm down and actually translate what Ajan Shah had said. And Ajan Shah said, yeah, you can ask her to send something personal, something of hers. Ask her to send a little bottle of her shit. Then whenever you miss her, you can always open up the little bottle and you can think of her. That's my girlfriend. That s a Jad char. He really got down to the point of things. And that can work for nuns and their boyfriends as well. This is not gender specific. It s truth. Why do you ask for some of her dress or some of her perfume or some want to get something which really reminds you that s mug s sense of humor? It but the point was that sometimes people read your minds. Are you ready to have your minds read? When I used to go and visit these great monks, I was afraid because I thought maybe they catch me thinking about things I shouldn't be thinking about. One of the amazing things, though, about being around such great people was you felt so safe. And that if they did point out something to you, it wasn't to punish you or make you feel bad. It was actually to help you. Because there was no idea of punishment in Buddhism. Doesn't matter if you're messing around and doing silly things. You weren t being punished for it. And this actually is part of the difference in Buddhism with the West Western ways of thinking when it comes to punishing people for doing bad, or rather punishing yourself for doing bad, which is what we mean by guilt. There was actually no real place for guilt in Buddhism. There's remorse, but not guilt. And the difference between that remorse and the guilt is that remorse is there to help one grow, to learn someone doesn't make the same mistake. But guilt is there to punish oneself, almost like revenge against oneself, as it is that we want to punish other people to get revenge. They hurt me, therefore I'm going to hurt them back. I'm going to give as good as I get. They deserve to be punished for what this terrible thing they did. How can they do that to me? I'll teach them and. And that sort of attitude, which happens in many places in the world. You notice how that creates so much pain and so much difficulties in life. I remember reading in the newspaper about people going through divorces. You know, how much we want to punish each other. It s his fault, it s her fault. I m going to get back at him. What does she think she s doing? I remember this divorce which was going on in the US. This lady, she had the key to his apartment still. So she went in there on the weekend knowing he was away, and she picked up the phone and she rang, I think, England, London on the automatic timer time. At the first stroke, you'll be 02:10 and 30 seconds and the next stroke could be ten plus two and 40 seconds. And she left the phone off the hook all weekend. So this was his phone call, which went on for about 48 hours and cost him about $5,000 in those days. Just out of spite. And that s actually sometimes the way we think to each other and think just what a sad mind that is. You re doing that just to hurt somebody because you think they ve hurt me, I ve got to hurt them back. But that same attitude of like, revenge was actually pointed out by the Buddha so many times. Hatred doesn't cease with hatred, ill will harm doesn't cease with more ill will and harm. If someone's harmed you and hurt you, treated you wrong, treated you badly, then we got, like in Buddhism, we got Karma. Karma will sort it out. If they've done something really mean and horrible to you, you don't need to punish them. Karma will sort it out if you're a Christian, God will fix it if you're a Muslim, so the Allah will fix it. So you don't need to be the fixer to teach them a lesson. And if you don't believe in any of that, if you're a psychologist, you know, they'll be have to be in therapy for years for what they've done to. So sooner or later it gets back to them. So you don t need to be the punisher. That s why we have this beautiful, like compassion where a forgiveness doesn t matter what a person has done. Your job, your part of the thing is actually to forgive and let go and let karma, let therapy take its toll and sort out the thing. And that's the same with yourself as well. We look at ourselves some times and we treat ourselves even harder than we treat others. I've done something wrong, therefore I need to be punished. That's what guilt is all about. Punishing oneself for someone's done in the past. As I've mentioned before, that the guilt we know is a word which comes from the law. When somebody has committed a crime and they're found guilty, what happens next? Sentencing. Punishing. Penance. And that's been part of our Western legal system for a long time. As soon as guilt comes, next thing is penalty. Penance, punishment. And unfortunately, that doesn t work because what happens if someone has done something wrong and they get penalized or punished? All it really teaches them is, number one, not to get caught again because it's not really telling them why they should be doing that in the first place. What the reason is, why. That is a law, why you should do these things. There is a very important part of like training somebody, as in training yourself. This is a great tip for mothers or fathers, a great tip for bosses or for adverts of monasteries. And it's a great tip for you, the boss of yourself, especially in your meditation. It comes from the Chinese Art of war. It's the story of the general who had perfect discipline in his army, in his regiment, much better than any other general. And the emperor wanted to find out what his secret was. And the secret was I only tell my troops, my soldiers to do what they want to do. That's why they always follow my orders. But. Imagine that with your husband only telling him what he wants to do. Then he ll always do what you do, what he s told. Or telling your child, your son, your daughter, only telling them to do what they want to do. Then they ll always do what they re told, won t they? They'll be the perfect son and perfect daughter. You can tell your friends, oh, my son, my daughter. He always does what he s told because I only tell him to do what he wants to do. Now, of course you think that must be stupid, but there's something more profound in that saying. How can those soldiers want to get up so early in the morning? Because discipline in an army is very strong. How can they want to go and train hard all day, go on long marches? How can they want actually to go into battle and fight and get wounded? How can anybody want to do that? And the point was, what the General was really pointing to was inspiration, motivation and. He d motivated his soldiers actually to want to do this out of patriotism or whatever. It was a motivation came first inspiration, teaching, encouraging. So when it came the time that he asked them to go into battle, they wanted to with your child. When it comes to time to them to clean up their room, if you motivated them, encourage them, inspire them, think, oh, wonderful, I've been waiting for you to ask me to do that. What a wonderful thing. Now, they'll always follow orders. You got to motivate, give them the reason why to do good. Punishment hardly ever works. And same with yourself. When we do make a mistake punishing ourselves, does that really make you any better? Does that really help you not make the same mistake again? Or does it? Put you into denial. I didn t do that. It wasn t me. It was somebody else. He made me do this. I remember when I went to visit my mother in England some years ago. I saw in the newspaper there was this televangelist, I think, Jerry Falwell, and he d been sort of all this firing brimstone about you have to be a good person and leaving Jesus and all this sort of stuff. And he'd just been caught with a prostitute. He'd actually been cheating on his wife. And I heard about this and I asked my mother to turn on the news and I saw him in there. He said, the devil made me do it. The devil made me do it. Just did, nigh, you did it. Don't blame anybody else. And that but isn't it the case that so often we sort of when we have guilt or when we have this guilt as part of our response to our mistakes, so often we just blame somebody else and. We re actually we re not really getting to the heart of things. Punishment just makes us actually push the blame onto somebody else s his fault, is her fault, it's somebody else s fault, it s the government s fault. This is all part of the guilt thing and the punishment thing. So instead of having that, there s another way of dealing with these things in Buddhism, this is traditional Buddhism from 26th century is of when there's a mistake made. There's what we keep calling in Australia, the AFL code. Acknowledge, forgive, learn the AFL code. What we really mean here is that there's no punishment involved. There's no sort of trying to beat someone or give them a penance or make them wash the dishes all week because of what they did there's. Acknowledge, first of all, and acknowledging is half the battle. When is guilt so often because of the fear of punishment and the fear of guilt, we just don't even acknowledge what we've done. Sometimes you can't even see it. What have I done? Why me? One of the prisoners I used to go and see in jail, he told me he only robs houses, he doesn't rob people. You see how we, like, shift it away from actually what we're really doing, sort of well. So they were poor, they were rich, I was poor. Why not? So it's not actually lifting the burden. This is what happens when we have this punishment business. We don't even acknowledge what's actually happening. So in Buddhism, we have the idea of, like, acknowledging our faults, bringing them up to the surface, not through fear, because it's fear of the punishment. Fear of what will happen is actually what stops us acknowledging the truth of what we've done them. It's marvelous when you have people you can go to and you say, I've made a mistake, I've done something wrong, and you know, they're not going to punish you, they're going to understand and. Then you don't fear going up to a person and telling them, acknowledging to them so often there's too much fear. At least in a family. We should have enough love and trust, which is part of love, to not fear each other. So if you've made a mistake and done something wrong, you can go up to your partner and expect to be understood, good, I've done something terribly, terribly wrong. This is what I've done. And not to expect to have punishments, because when there's punishment, there'll always be fear. That's why we don't open up to each other. This is what would always happen with monks, like a gencha. You go up and say the stupid things you've done. And he'd usually he wouldn't punish you, he'd laugh. He'd think, what amazing, wonderful, funny thing this was. Then he'd tell everybody in the next sermon and make everyone else laugh as well. That little stupid things. I remember once I went up to his hut once. I was just learning Thai. And it s a very poor monastery in those days and I needed some soap to sort of wash myself and the word for soap in Thai is something like saboo and the word for pineapple is SAPO. And I got them mixed up and so actually when I went up to Agenda, I asked for a pineapple and he looked at me and said, what do you want a pineapple for? And I said, oh, no, to wash myself. And he cracked up laughing, almost fell off his off his seat. He told everyone else, these Western monks, especially him, bam Wang, so he likes washing with pineapple. So instead of telling you to go back or punishing you, whatever, he just made big joke about it and it was just so funny. And I learned the difference between soap and pineapple as a result. So first of all, it's like acknowledging bring it up to the surface and. And it s important thing to be able to do that. So much of the pain of our life, the mistakes of our life, we hide. We can't tell anybody about that. That's why we have, like, confessors people we can go to, who we can tell these things to, knowing that we're not going to get punished, know that it's not going to be to our disadvantage, just people we can open up to. Monks and nuns are like that. You can go and open up to monks and nuns. And usually they don't tell anybody, but sometimes we do, because I remember one of these stories, this lady who was dying of cancer, and very often that sort of when they're dying of cancer, they want a bit of help about how to die. And monks are great at knowing how to die. We died many times, so we're pretty good at it. So I was helping her how to die and giving her a bit of counseling. And one of the things we do as like as a mug, as a counselor, I asked her, what's the worst thing you've ever done in your life? It s a great thing to ask that question if you got that trust between you. What s the worst thing? What s the worst thing you ve ever done in your whole life? What is it? It s very hard sometimes. You wouldn t like to tell anybody, but she s about to die. So she told me. I actually promised her I wouldn t tell anybody, but I Veken that promise. I told thousands because it s a very funny story. It s actually quite sweet and quite moving. I thought it's really nice because after a while I got it out of her. She said that once she kissed somebody else's husband. I said only once. She said only once. I said no for about 65 years. Said that's not bad. That's the worst thing you've ever done, kissing somebody else's husband when he actually she said that, and it came out and I sort of laughed and I wasn't sort of giving her some sort of penance or punt penalty. I could see she had so much relief because she was so afraid of that. But. That it was something terribly, terribly wrong. That she was hiding that inside of herself. And it was part of her she would never acknowledge and never be at peace with. And as soon as she acknowledged it by telling me straight away, it was a sense of, like, forgiveness. There it was, realizing it wasn't that bad, what she d done. And she could let go and be at peace so she you could die peacefully. This is what happens sometimes. There's some things inside of us which we've suppressed, beaten down. It's those things we feel guilty about. And sometimes the guilt is so deep inside of us, we're not quite sure why we feel guilty. We haven't even acknowledged the reason why. But guilt was built up over the years and we feel basically guilty, but we're not really sure why. It. The problem is, once it's guilt there's, the punishment there. And that punishment is not wanting to be happy, not deserving happiness. Why should I be happy when I feel so guilty? And this is the big problem. Why aren t more people happy? Happiness is out there. Why not be happy? One of the main reasons why people aren't happy is because they don t think they deserve to be happy. Once one of the nuns not the nuns here, this nun was only visiting, she was talking to me about her meditation. You know, we talk about very deep meditation here, get into bliss states, wonderful states, most extreme happiness you could imagine. She got so close once, and I was sort of talking to her about her meditation, giving her some instructions, and she said she got so close, it was like the doors were completely open to her. But she couldn't go further because the thought came up, I don't deserve such happiness. And the doors to deep meditation closed straight away. And that was a symptom which I ve come across with so many other people in this in this world. Happiness is almost right there for the taking. And something deep psychologically inside of us think, I don't deserve happiness, therefore I m not going to take it. It can t be right. Happiness comes to our door knocking and we don't allow it in because of guilt. And that's so sad. So sad that it's great to give a talk on guilt, acknowledge what you've done wrong, build it up to the surface so you haven't got this suppressed sort of backlog of fear and punishing oneself. One of the friends, Buddhists, I haven't seen him for quite a while now, but he told me that he was brought up in Sydney and you know, that Sydney to being on this beautiful bay and all these inlets. He was playing with one of his friends who lived next door on a Pierre. Just for a joke. As boys being boys, he pushed his best friend into the water. Unfortunately, the boy drowned. He d killed his best friend. He was only about six years old or five years old at the time. And he had to face the next door neighbors, the parents of this young boy who he'd killed. And he felt so terrible seeing the pain he'd caused, seeing the deep imagine, like losing a sort of five or six year old son. And he couldn't get away with that. He was next door and seeing just the pain for so long after, he felt terrible. He had all this amazing guilt inside of him, even though the parents told him, look, it wasn't your fault, you didn't mean to kill him. It was just boys playing, that's all. But he couldn't let that go. And because he couldn't let that go, he never did well at school, even though he was a very intelligent man. And he could never really have a good relationship. Why? Because he thought if he d done that to somebody else, he didn t deserve to be happy. He didn t deserve peace, he didn't deserve joy. He punished himself for years. That s why he didn't do well at school, didn't have a happy school time at all. But he said once that it came, the time he was 16 or 17 or something, and he just realized, almost like an insight and understanding came to him. He didn't need to feel guilty anymore. He understood what guilt was really about and how it was like a cancer eating at his happiness. It didn't help the boy who died. His guilt didn't help the parents. It certainly didn't help himself. It just made one more miserable person in the world, one more maladjusted student in the school. And so he managed to forgive himself, understanding the reason why. It was for the happiness of himself and the happiness of everybody else to let go of guilt. It was the most compassionate. Worthwhile thing to do. And it s important that we remember that. Because sometimes we think, oh, I must feel guilty if I forgive myself, that won t help anybody. We think I ve got to punish myself as a service for the rest of humanity. But please understand, it doesn't help anyone by you not being happy, by you punishing yourself. Who does it help? Who does it serve? What purpose does it fulfill? You certainly don't become a better person. Guilty people have so much unhappiness inside of them because they're punishing themselves, they tend to do bad things again and again and again. A lot of times we do bad things because of unhappiness. Because of unhappiness us, we say terrible things to others. Because of unhappiness, we do cruel things to others. As a happy person, can you ever speak ill of another? Of another? If you're happy, you can only help and be kind to others. Look, every time you ve done something mean and spiteful, how do you feel? Where s that come from? It's all come from unhappiness inside. That s why I understand when someone s spiteful to me, they're mean to me. If they're cool to me, I think, poor thing, they must be suffering today. I never think of what they re saying. I think of where they re coming from. I don't really think of what they're doing to me. I think of the pain which must be in their heart. They can do something like that because I know you can only do mean things when you're unhappy. And this is what happens through guilt. You make yourself more unhappy so you make yourself do more bad things and you get guilt upon guilt upon guilt. You're always doing bad things and stupid things. So instead of guilt we have acknowledging bring it up to the surface what have you done? And then forgiving forgiving is giving yourself an amnesty. But first of all you have to acknowledge that's why in Buddhism. For the monks. If ever we break any of the rules of monks, all we do is go up to another monk and we just say, I've done such and such a thing. I've had a cake in the afternoon, not supposed to eat in the afternoon. And all the monk would say, I acknowledge that. Do better next time. Share it with me. Don't say that. They don't say that. No, we're very good monks. What we actually say this is even the time of the Buddha, the people actually tried to kill the Buddha. And these assassins came up to the Buddha. They were sort of paid by somebody to kill the Buddha. When these assassins came up with their swords, I mean, a Buddha is just such a kind, soft, beautiful person. You can't beg yourself to kill somebody like that. When they came up to sort of try and kill the Buddha, they sort of got all softened and got all woozy, and they sort of said, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even thought about killing you. And what the Buddha, they actually asked forgiveness, just, I'm sorry. And all the Buddha did was say, anyone who acknowledges their faults. Ask forgiveness and aspires to do better next time, because that's called growth. That's how we grow in Buddhism. That's how we grow in psychology. That's how we grow as human beings. We acknowledge, we forgive and try and do better. We learn from it. So all these people who were trying to kill the Buddha, the assassins he just for gave them he didn't DOB them into the police and get them arrested. He just acknowledged their faults forgave them. Said, like, learn from this. Understand what it's like to want to kill somebody and what's happening. Don't punish yourself, but learn from it. Somebody asked me today that just 15 year old son got caught for stealing. Please don't make him feel guilty about what he's done, because guilty make him feel really rotten about himself. Think he's, like, hopeless and useless and a bad person. If he thinks he's a bad person, he'll become a bad person. You know that story about those I keep on saying about those two types of school children? Two classes very quickly, two classes of kids? Gave them the same exam at the end of the year, split the classes into two separate classes. The person who came first came in one class. Second and third went in the other class. Fourth and fifth went in the same class as the kid who came top. They split the children up into two equal classes. They gave them equally capable teachers rooms in the school with equal resources, made everything equal as possible, except for one thing. They called one Class A and the other one Class B. Even though they were absolutely equal from the exam, they just gave them a different name, class A and Class B. And it was only the head mistress, and a couple of psychologists knew this. So even the teachers for one year, they were teaching some children children in Class A. And they assumed that Class A was the top half from the year's exam. So they taught 30 of those kids as Class A kids and they taught the others as Class B kids. The Class A kids were told by their parents oh, you've done very well actually. You've been so lazy. I don t know how you ve done so well, but never mind. Here s some extra pocket money. The ones in Class B do better next year, otherwise or else. The parents treated half the kids as Class A and half the kids as Class B as if Class B was the worst. And even the kids began to think of themselves as class children or Class B children, to the point where after one year they gave the children an exam again. And as you would probably surmise, the children in Class A did so much better than the children in Class B as if they were indeed the top half. It was a very, very devastating experiment done in educational psychology against the idea of streaming. When actually you do stream kids into Class A and Class B, they actually become Class A kids or they become Class B children. Which is why, if you re guilty, you feel that guilt. You become that offense. You become a Class B person. This is why judging and that s was where guilt comes from. Judging. Really. It can be so mean, so destructive of people s growth and happiness. What we do here is actually okay, you've made a force, so what now? Learn from it. Grow from it. And even if a person has actually stolen as a kid, please acknowledge that. Make sure that child knows what they've done. But no punishment. Forgive. I remember reading this story, another story of a Buddhist who was actually growing up in the United States some years ago. Many years ago, he'd lied to his father, and his father was dragging him to the bathroom to beat him with the razor strap. And. And the boy was just confused. He d lied. He d made a mistake. But why was his father going to cause so much pain to him? Fortunately, his grandfather was in the house his grandfather thought was going on and told his father, the grandfather s son, stop. Don t do that. And the father said, this is what you used to do to me when I lied. I'm doing it to my son now. The grandfather said I was wrong. Go away. He sent his son away. The father of this boy is about to be whipped. Sent the father away and took this little son and just gave him the big, biggest hug of his life. And the two of them cried. And he never lied to his father again. That is a way to learn. You don't need to whip people, to beat people, to punish people. He knew he d made a mistake. He needed to acknowledge, have forgiveness and learn from this. That's how we learn. My own father would told me. I remember this. He was a great man. He was very poor. The old joker used to say that we'd always leave our door open hoping that some burger would come in and leave us something. He's really poor. Remember, actually, that there was one when I was very young. This was part of my family folklore that we used to have these open fires in England because it was very cold. Had a pound note on the shelf above the fire and the draught caught the pound note and it flew into the fire and burnt. My father sort of tried to reach out and save it and burnt his hand. My mother burst out crying because money, a pound note, meant so much to them. But my father told me once, he said, son, if you want something that bad, you want to steal it, don t steal it. Ask me, I ll buy it for you. When I realized how poor he was, and I realized he would do that if I wanted something that bad, I was willing to steal it. He said, Don t steal it. I ll buy it for you. When he told me that there s no way I was ever going to steal it, actually, I stopped wanting things because I knew he couldn't buy it. But I realized if that's how important it was for him that I wouldn't steal. I would never would. That's how we learn, because we learn just what it does to other people when we make mistakes, how it hurts others. Which is why all morality, all goodness and bad in Buddhism, it's very, very simple, just really to the heart. Keep it simple, keep it truthful, and keep it easy to understand what ethics is. They know they have professors of ethics who write all these big books and what the Buddha did, he just cut right through all of this and said, if it hurts another person and it hurts yourself that's bad, don't do it. If it hurts. We know what hurts and harms. If it gives happiness, if it helps another person or helps oneself, that's good. That's basic of ethics. So all we really need to do if we've done something bad, we notice how it hurts others if I stole how it would hurt my father, how it hurt my mum, how it hurt the owner of that goods who I stole it from I know how much it hurts I acknowledge that I understand it. How can I ever steal? How can I ever hurt myself and hurt others? How can I really hurt the people who love me? What are we really doing there? We're following that great general in the Chinese army you motivate, inspire, encourage, teach people why one shouldn't do these things not through punishment we understand I don't want to hurt anybody I don't want to hurt myself that's where ethics come from. We're motivated and encouraged never, never to want to hurt another person, encouraged wanting to help another person, because helping another person, being kind, being compassionate, being generous is happiness. Hurting is depression, is unhappiness. So when we understand this, we don't need to use pan to actually to teach people. We use acknowledgments, understanding, learning. When we're learning, we don't actually be goody goodies because we're afraid of getting caught. We're actually goody goodies because we understand why one shouldn't actually harm another person. It says on that statue the teachings of the Buddha that which is good to avoid, that which is harmful, to cultivate the mind. This is a teaching of all the Buddhists. We do this because we want to bring happiness into the world and happiness to ourselves. We want to sort of somehow heal the pain in the world, to stop the suffering in the world. This is actually how we do it. So we start with ourselves. Whatever we ve done in the past, acknowledge it. Don t sort of hide it and think it didn't happen. Face it courageously, not fearing you're going to be punished for this. Acknowledge it and then take this huge step of faith and forget. Give no punishment. It takes courage to do that because it goes against the culture of the west. Forgive just like that. Grandfather forgave his grandson is about to be beaten. Absolute forgiveness. Far more effective. When one gives that sort of forgiveness and learning, we understand the stupid things we've done. There's no need for guilt anymore. We have remorse. We're sorry what we've done. But we use it as a learning to try and do better next time. Can't you see that's? The way we become better people. We actually free ourselves from the past. And that opens the door for happiness to us. We realize we don't need to be punished anymore by the little boy who pushed his best friend into the water. The insight, the understanding, the enlightenment came up. I don't need to punish myself anymore. It's all right that I'm happy. When it's all right that you're happy, you find you can have relate relationships with other people in this world. Open ones. You can be open yourself up to other people because you don't fear of opening up these black corners of your heart because you're afraid of punishment. You can say these things to other people and you can be accepted with kindness and love. You know, you don't need to be told off, retelling yourself off for years. You need forgiveness, acknowledgment forgiveness and learning that way that we don't have to stop ourselves enjoying this world, enjoying happiness. So instead of actually allowing sort of guilt to keep on going on in our community and giving it as our inheritance to other people and thinking you have to feel guilty about this, do you feel bad about this? Do you feel bad about this? And only allowing a person off the hook if they feel bad about it. I was actually saying this in a law lecture in the law school in UWA a couple of years ago. I say that as a Buddhist, they get in big trouble, even bigger trouble than others if they get sort of sentenced. Because one of the things which the judge is taking into consideration is whether you feel guilty or not. Imagine some no Buddhist has done something bad. That's how we've let that go. See, you don't feel remorse an extra couple of years. Really unfair. But the point is, we can give forgiveness, forgiveness to ourselves. And sometimes a way to do that, if you have got something you feel very guilty about, you don't need to go and even see a monk or a nun to tell them. Just tell yourself, Bring it up. Acknowledge what you've done. Think about it. Make it clearly conscious, and then do an act of forgiveness by saying to yourself, whatever I've done by body, speech or mind, intentional or unintentional, which has hurt or harmed somebody else, I ask forgiveness. S and I give myself forgiveness. I will learn from this. I will use it as what I call like dung fertilizer for the garden of my heart. I will grow from this. I will learn from this. And that way you can use all those experiences, all those mistakes, to become a better human being, not a worse one. We want more happy people in this world, not more miserable ones. We don't need to punish people. Punishing people by putting them into jails. We all know that jails don't work, but. So don t put yourself in the jail of guilt. Give yourself that freedom to let go of the past. So whatever you ve done in the past you know, one of the worst things which I did in the past may have seemed silly to you, but as a student trying to get a few extra pounds that help with my studies, I started setting encyclopedias from door to door. Children encyclopedias. It was all just based on a bunch of lies, basically. And I went out selling these encyclopedias and the worst thing which happened was I sold one and there was this poor little family, they just had like a child. I was taught to do this by the sales reps and make them feel guilty if they don't buy this encyclopedia. Make them feel like they're depriving their child of a decent education. Make them feel like they're rotten parents if they don't buy this book. And this poor family were just so soft and had their first child and I tricked them basically into buying this book. Oh, I felt so guilty after that for years I felt bad about that. I felt guilty I d done something rotten and bad. You know what happened? I told that here in sort of Nalamara about ten years ago and someone came up to me and said I don t know if it was you, the chances are it wasn t but when I was small a person came round my house saying encyclopedias to encyclopedias. My parents bought one and that was the best books I ever had. I love those books. I feel so good after that I've been torturing myself for years and years and years thinking I've done something really terribly wrong and actually it turned out it might have been even good. Have you ever done the same? So acknowledge and forgive and learn from these things so you don't need to feel guilty about what you've done in the past. If you're going to look at the past, look at all the good things you've done in the past. Why is it that when we look in the past we always think about the bad things we've done, the awful things we've done, the terrible things we've done and. If you're going to actually look in the past at all, how about looking at the good things you ve done, the wonderful things you ve done in the past, the beautiful times you ve had together, isn t that make more sense, creates more happiness? You don't just learn from mistakes, you learn from successes as well. When we talk about the law of karma as Buddhists, too many people think that the law of karma is I've done something bad, therefore I've got to be hurt. It's always a negative side of karma. So you're having a bit of a headache and you think, I must have hit somebody in my past life, someone has robbed my house, therefore I must have been a thief in my last life. I owe them back. Why that? When we look in karma, even as budhists, we always think about the rotten things which happen. We try and find the cause for the unfortunate things which happen in life. But it's too few people. They look at the law of karma in Buddhism and thinking, I'm happy, I've got a nice relationship, I'm having a wonderful time today, and thinking, oh, yeah, that's because of my good karma and. We can learn even much more from happiness than we can learn from pain. We learn the causes of happiness. I m well fed today. Had a good meal. That must be because you've been generous to starving people in previous lives. That s why you're well fed now. You deserve this. You're living in a nice house probably because you've helped homeless people before. You've reasonably healthy in your body because you've cared for sick people. All of these things which you've done don't just look about the causes for your illnesses. Look at the causes for your health. Don't just look at the causes for your misery. Look at the causes for your happiness. And and then you don't just avoid doing bad things. You put a lot of effort into doing good things. The causes for happiness in the future. This is actually when we understand that it's not just guilt looking upon the bad things we ve done in the past. How about looking at the good things you ve done in the past which have created happiness now? The things you're proud of, the good things which you ve done, which created happiness, prosperity, harmony, peace in the world, or at least in your world. Look at those. Look and praise yourself for it. In Buddhism, we don't think of punishing people for their faults. We certainly think of praising people for their successes. It's completely opposite of guilt. We feel good about ourselves for having been good people, done a good thing, being kind, being generous every time been generous because of Buddhism, I haven't just thought, okay, forget about that, otherwise you get proud. Every time I've been generous, I've thought about it. When I thought about it, remembered it, it makes me feel happy and makes me feel good. Why not? Don't you want to feel happy? Don t want to feel good? So you look upon your past and look upon all the good things you've done and celebrate them. The old saying flattery gets you everywhere. So about flattering yourself say what a good person I am. Why not? Because mostly you are a good person. People, you're much, much more good in you than bad when it comes down to it. But why not sort of focus on the good? Instead of feeling guilty about the bad? How about praising the good? So we acknowledge the goodness and we celebrate our goodness and we learn from it. What's that? The ACL code. Was there anything ACL? I don't know. Anyway knowledge. Celebrate and learn. Learn to do it again. And that way we become happier, more peaceful. More progressive people. We understand that mistakes are our growing pains. It s how we learn in the world. We have to accept mistakes, allow mistakes, learn from mistakes and don t carry our mistakes like a ball and chain around our heart for the rest of our life. The doors of the prison of guilt are always open at any time. We can walk out and it's only ourselves. Keep those gates locked and refuse to walk out. That's why it takes courage and faith to forgive ourselves to let go. That's why we have these little ceremonies, little forgiveness ceremonies, to be able to say to yourself whatever I've done now or whatever the door of my heart is open to me, I forgive, I let go. Come and be at peace with myself when you can let go in those little ceremonies in your heart. Forgiveness ceremonies. You're free of all that pain which stops you growing. Guilt again is like putting a rock on top of a flower. You can't grow. Forgiveness is taking that rock off so you can grow to your own delight and for the happiness of others. So be careful of guilt. Understand guilt. Understand that it's part of our character which is being conditioned, and it's not a skillful conditioning. Use the code acknowledge, forgive, learn. Use that on other people as well, so you don't punish others. Acknowledge, forgive, learn. And that way you'll find you're creating happiness in others and you're creating happiness in yourself. Letting go of the guilt means you're free to be happy. And this is what I wish for others? Surely it's what you wish for yourself. So whatever you've done in the past, you are all forgiven. Everything. And that forgiveness goes from now and into the future. That's what sometimes when people ask forgiveness, I say, you re forgiven in the past, present and the future. So don t have to ask forgiveness ever again. Isn, t that wonderful? It's called efficiency. So that s a little talk this evening on forgiveness, the end of guilt. Acknowledge, forgive and learn. May you all be happy and may you all give yourself permission to be happy. That makes me happy to see you happy. So has anyone got any questions about this evening's talk? Yeah, one. Come up very quickly. Okay, well, first of all, let them acknowledge what they're doing. Take them aside. What are you doing that for? Because what's the point of actually going to university is not to learn how to cheat. It's actually actually to learn how to actually get that knowledge so you can take that into the workforce, so you can actually be empowered and. And getting other people's information is not going to empower you at all. So tell them why they shouldn't teach, why they shouldn't cheat, rather why they shouldn't cheat. Find out so that you're teaching them the why. And obviously you got your responsibilities and duties as a teacher. There's rules you have to keep. So if they cheat, they have to do the exam again, or they have to fail them or something, whatever. But don't just punish them and just leave it at that. Try and explain and motivate them so they don't do it again. Unfortunately, our system, it rewards people who pass exams rather than people who learn what the exams are supposed to be testing. And that's one of the faults of our system. It'd be great if we sort of know. We used to have this graffiti at Cambridge that exams kill by degrees, it said. It's very neat little saying. And it does sometimes. That s why, I mean, it s better this time when there s like continuous assessment and sometimes electorates assess you because of the whole work you ve done throughout the whole year. And it's not just on one exam. So it s harder to read, to cheat. But if you do find it, they ve got to take responsibility for that. You got your laws and what you can do, if it s at all possible to turn a blind eye, if it s at all possible, and just tell them, look, please don't do this again. This is why I'm putting myself on the line here by so turning a blind eye. I'm not doing this out of weakness. I'm doing this. I could fail you just straight away. So why did you do this? You're here to learn not to cheat. See if you can actually find a different way than always, just the same way of just punishing stuff like that. That's what I would do anyway. Well, this come to a place like this for a start, because you hear people actually go up and say it's all right not to feel guilty. And it s allowable. It s not against the law to forgive yourself. And the more people go out there and say that, it s encouraging other people to give forgiveness because sometimes people say, Can I do that? Is that right? Will things get terribly, terribly worse if I forgive all these things? That s the fear. The fear that things will go terribly, terribly wrong. And the more it s encouraged to forgive and the more you see forgiveness happening like I was encouraged by my teachers. You do stupid things and say silly things and they'd be really idiots sometimes. And all they would do, they never punish you, they just laugh. It's a big joke. You're giving them happiness. And so encouragement is a way to overcome that fear. Obviously, there is what we call in Buddhism double guilt. You're guilty and you feel guilty about feeling guilty. And that usually happens for people who come here because they think ajam. Brahm says you shouldn't feel guilty, but I feel guilty. I feel bad about feeling guilty. That's called double guilt. And then some people have treble guilt. They feel guilty about feeling guilty, about feeling guilty, and it just goes on and on. A complicated mind. So at least get rid of the double triple guilt. If you feel guilty, just feel guilty. Acknowledge the truth of yourself and then just find at least some of the ordinary things to forgive and just chisel away at the lesser offenses and see other people who've also forgiven. You've been a murderer and you've forgiven yourself. You've actually raped somebody and you've forgiven yourself. You can do that. And that encourages people. It's possible, and it's good, and it's conducive to the growth and well being of the whole society. Unfortunately, we got a very revengeful society which doesn't like forgiving at all. That's where the problem lies. We are afraid to forgive, terribly afraid. It's got to be positive forgiveness. Have you heard me say before? Not just for forgiving and just allowing it to happen. It's acknowledged forgiving learning. The learning process is part of it. But forgiveness has to come first before you learn, when you're still punishing, you're still denial, afraid, never facing up to what's happened.