Tolerating Injustice

  During the Dharma talk tonight, ChangYuan Fashi shared his ideas about repentance and how they relate to "tolerating injustice". Whenever I feel distress about something, I might have the idea in my mind that things should be better. I think it's the "should" part ("I should feel secure", "I should be happy", "I should be treated fairly") that leads an otherwise simply unpleasant situation to be a source of suffering. Not only do we feel the pain of insecurity (which is a natural part of being alive) but we add to that the sense that we are entitled to feel secure. In fact, as Fashi pointed out, many unfortunate things happen to us as a result of the ripening of causes and conditions that happened to us in the far distant past or even many lifetimes ago. Since karma is very complex, we can never tell when a negative karmic retribution will ripen. The best attitude is to fully accept the retribution, knowing that we must have incurred it through our previous behaviors, and that it's ultimately impermanent and the result of myriad circumstances, causes and conditions that happen to ripen.

   When I asked Fashi how we deal with fears about the future, he mentioned that repentance helps us to calm down and to stay in the present, rather than imagining a future that hasn't happened. The "future" is often only our own projected image of the past, and the future itself has nothing to do with how we are thinking about it. The fact is, we only need take care of what is happening now in this moment. There is so much that we can't know about the future, so instead of being endlessly anxious about the future, we can ask ourselves, "what can I do now about this?" In this way, the worries become more manageable and less cumbersome. 

  Another point is about regret. "Regret" involves thinking that we should have done one thing instead of another. Again, this can be resolved through the practice of fully repenting and saying wholeheartedly "I am sorry". But we can also practice acceptance of the moment. What we did in the past was the result of the causes and conditions. Why feel regret for what's already passed? Again, working with repentance--wholeheartedly repenting of previous mistakes and accepting the present moment--can be a good way of addressing regrets