“Why is that Buddha statue fat?”

Good seeds or bad seeds.

Which will we nurture?

Our future depends on the decisions we make today. We’ve got three basic directions to choose from—the good (smart) one, the bad (unwise) one, and the same one we’re now on. This last one is the easiest. This is the path where we go with our old habits. Easy choices here. They may be good habits or not-so-good ones.

The second direction—the bad or unwise one—also tends to be easy. And often fun. A double cheeseburger with onion rings instead of a grain bowl with beans and veggies. Fun! And the degree of “unwise”? It depends on the frequency of the choice.

The first direction—the good or smart one—is that grain bowl. Perhaps not quite the rush of pleasure like with the cheeseburger, but not the health problems or bad karma either. So, not the guilt. Not the worry. The good, and smart, direction is the hardest because it requires maturity and discipline. And self-respect.

And although harder in the beginning, it’s the real winner in the long run.

Remorse: Good People, Bad Choices

At the age of fifteen, Arthur began using drugs after someone told him that they would make him feel good. Four years later, he got into a fight with a man he was arguing with, pulled out a knife, and stabbed him to death. After taking the money he felt that the man owed him, Arthur managed to calm down. He admitted to himself that he was in trouble and that what he had done was wrong. 

After a reward was offered for information leading to his arrest, some people who knew Arthur reported his whereabouts to the police. They arrested him and took him to jail. He later said that he felt remorse as soon as he was locked up. 

At his trial, Arthur pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He later said he “wanted to give people closure. I knew that I was wrong. . . . And I didn't want, you know, anybody’s family, my family or his family . . . continuously going through this.” Arthur was sentenced to life in prison. Once there, he continued to feel guilty. He told himself that prison was where he needed to be. His mother, a nurse, and father, a welder, had not raised him to kill another man. 

Once in prison, unable to move beyond his all-consuming guilt and remorse, Arthur continued to use hard drugs. But after nine years, he managed to quit. Both the drugs and his feelings of guilt and remorse. He began attending Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, joined a church, and worked toward his GED, a high school equivalency diploma. 

He also began the lengthy and complicated process of working toward parole. He would have to undergo numerous psychological evaluations, gain work experience, and show that he would have support from those around him upon his release. Even if he did everything that was required, there were no guarantees. Arthur fully understood that it was going to be an enormous challenge, but he persevered year after year, over decades. 

In 2020, at the age of sixty, Arthur was granted parole. Having gone to prison at the age of nineteen, he had served forty-three years. 

After his release, Arthur continued to work at the manufacturing job he had started while still in prison as part of the prisoner release program. Now that he was on parole, he hoped to find a way to help other ex-prisoners. He also wanted to reach out to young people and let them know where his choices had led him. Hopefully, they would make better ones. Choices are important. As Arthur explained, “There are some good men and women in prison. They just made bad choices.”

After his arrest and incarceration, Arthur felt remorse, a gnawing feeling from his guilt over what he had done. When we hear that someone feels an emotion, in this case, remorse, we have no way of knowing if the person is sincere, whether their remorse is genuine. Or what exactly is the reason for this remorse. For the act? For being caught? With Arthur, we know. Explaining that he did not want to make his family or the victim’s family suffer by sitting in a courtroom and listening to the details of the stabbing being told over and over again, Arthur pleaded guilty to the murder charge. 

Nor do we know the karmic connection between Arthur and the man he killed. But an act such as murder speaks of an enmity intensifying over previous lives. The events from past lives leading up to this fatal encounter are unknown, but this current oblivion did not diminish the fierce emotions that erupted that night. Emotions so violent that one man stabbed the other to death. Emotions that a clear-thinking person would never have, or have to choose from. 

After mindlessly reacting from our own emotions, we usually feel the sting of our conscience. Feeling uncomfortable with what we’ve done, regret sets in. As our thoughts keep returning to what happened, regret develops into guilt. Guilt deepens into remorse, and we become increasingly aware of the pain and suffering we have caused others and ourselves. 

Our remorse becomes entangled with feelings of guilt and self-loathing. This is where we can get stuck, and this is what happened to Arthur. 

As soon as he found himself in jail, he felt remorse. He had killed a man. He admitted it to himself and again at his trial. Once convicted and in prison, overwhelmed by his remorse and guilt, he told himself that prison was where he needed to be. 

Most of us who have done something we’re ashamed of have been caught in our own conscience-induced pattern of regret, guilt, and remorse. And gotten stuck there. But when nothing is done to change ourselves, these just bring suffering, not only for ourselves but also for those around us. 

Clearly, we need a better way to respond to our guilt and remorse. 

While in prison, a rehabilitation counselor told Arthur that he had not yet forgiven himself for his crime. Why was forgiveness so important to Arthur? And, for that matter, for us? 

First, forgiving does not mean dismissing past actions. It is also not pretending that the negative actions did not happen. It is not about letting someone get away with what they have done. Nor is it an absolute pardon. A king, president, or sometimes a governor may pardon a prisoner and order them released with their record expunged. But even a pardon is limited to just that lifetime. It does not extend to those lifetimes yet to come. 

The law of causality, on the other hand, applies to and runs through everyone’s past lives, present life, and all future lives. This law is natural, immutable, and universal. Natural, for it is independent of time and place. Immutable, for it cannot be changed or waived. And universal, because it does not apply to some people while exempting others. 

Quite simply, our thoughts, words, and deeds—good and bad—will always have consequences. The consequences may be immediate, or they may take lifetimes to materialize. But one day, when the conditions are right, the consequences will come. So even if someone has been pardoned, they still have a karmic debt to pay. 

Instead of acknowledging, perhaps with some relief or some sense of justice-is-finally-done, or even rejoicing that the person will at some point suffer the consequences of his actions, we would do well to remember that we do not know the karmic actions that brought the offender to this point. But they’re there, because why else would the situation have happened? And then we can remind ourselves, that unless we want to suffer adverse consequences of our own, it would be wiser to have compassion for all those who are currently planting the seeds for future suffering.

We can also look at the factors in the current lifetime. Arthur became a drug user at the age of fifteen. At nineteen, with only partially developed impulse control due to his youth and while carrying a deadly weapon, he impulsively stabbed and killed a man. For nine years, he stayed deeply remorseful. Then, realizing that the bad choices he had made years earlier in his life left him where he was, he decided he would begin to make new choices. Choices he would make with an eye on the future. 

First, Arthur decided to stop using drugs and began attending Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He met with a counselor who helped him understand that self-forgiveness was necessary for him to move on from guilt and begin to reform. He joined a church, qualified for his GED, got a job in the prison’s work-release program, and eventually earned parole. He knew firsthand how previous bad choices can develop into current painful consequences. So upon his release, he wanted to find a way to inspire others to make better choices for themselves. 

Like Arthur, we too can consider why we made the bad choices that led to our feelings of guilt and remorse. Finding our reasons is essential to forgiving ourselves because it helps us let go of self-blame and guilt. Not to excuse what we have done and start enjoying ourselves, but to understand our actions and determine how to do better in the future. 

What could be our basis for doing all this?

We can consider some commonalities in the previous accounts of those who have forgiven. We see that several people said they could forgive others because their religion taught them that if they wanted to be forgiven, they had to forgive first. If a compassionate and wise higher being could forgive them, how could they refuse to forgive others?  

For those who understand causality, such an understanding helps them see the reasons why things happen. They can then appreciate the destructive consequences of not letting go of guilt and self-blame—sowing the seeds for more such suffering in their future lives. 

So how might we move forward and create the right conditions for better choices in the future and change our behavior and thinking? 

One way is to associate with others who are also trying to make good choices. Arthur had made bad choices as a teenager, but with the positive influence of a prison rehabilitation counselor, he decided it was time to give up drugs, join a church, and learn a trade. The counselor also provided Arthur with a model of how good choices lead to good results. 

Similarly, when we spend time with people who exhibit the very behavior we want to achieve, we see firsthand how they react in situations where we need to improve. Gradually, by being with them and modeling them, we learn how to modify our behavior. We learn to become calmer, more intentional, and better at making good choices. 

This is quite different from where we are now, where we usually react out of habit when faced with problematic situations. These habitual reactions may have led us to make bad choices, the very ones we’re ashamed of. When we are calm, we can catch ourselves before our bad habits take over. 

Another way we can improve our choices and change our behavior and thinking is through daily learning. In an earlier talk, we saw how the Amish were able to respond naturally with forgiveness. Daily, they recited certain teachings that, over time, provided them with an automatic path of empathy and compassion—of forgiveness. Forgiveness didn’t come perfectly nor did it arise immediately for everyone. Several years after the school shooting, some parents were still working on it. But they all knew the importance of forgiveness and were determined to achieve it. 

Arthur’s comment that there are some good men and women in prison, that they just made bad choices, is invaluable to how we too can process our remorse. We, too, have made bad choices. We, too, have felt regret and guilt. Rather than getting caught up by and dwelling on these intense feelings, we can use them to motivate us to do better. Moving on from our remorse will enable us to improve our lives and, in turn, show others how to improve their lives as well.