The Negative Impact of Remorse and One of Its Antidotes
As stated in the above-quoted section of the
Aṅguttara Nikāya, it is natural (
dhammatā) that freedom from remorse (
avippaṭisāra) arises in morally disciplined (
sīlavat) persons. However, the passage does not expand on how to attain that state. In search of an answer, we shall first consider the definition of
śīla/
sīla. According to the thorough study of it made by Schmithausen (
2001), this term is often used in Buddhist contexts in the sense of impeccable conduct that has become second nature. The attribute
śīlavat/
sīlavat is accordingly ascribable to persons exhibiting such ideal conduct, which sounds in fact unattainable; no one matches up all the time in real life. Does this imply that no Buddhist practitioner can ever hope to attain true
śīla/
sīla from the outset, let alone pass on to
samādhi meditation in the future? The answer is obviously no. In practice, Buddhist monks and nuns regularly hold a
karman ritual within their Saṅgha communities and make confession of faults in front of their fellow monastics. Through confession practitioners can turn a page on the past and move on along on the path of cultivation extending from
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra to concentration. One relevant passage in the
Śrāvakabhūmi reads as follows:
If a Buddhist practitioner who, introspecting, knows that, [in their own words], “My physical activity so far has caused injury or oppression”, [and later] that Buddhist practitioner confesses (prati√diś) in front of fellow practitioners endowed with [great] knowledge and corrects (prati√kṛ) [the fault] in accordance with [Buddhist] teachings; [and] if [then] that Buddhist practitioner, [still] introspecting, knows that “My physical activity is no longer detrimental [to others]”, and practises many days and nights with joy and gladness, then that Buddhist practitioner, introspecting well, [knows] that their physical activity is purified (suviśodhita) in the past, present and future time. Likewise, verbal activity should also be understood in this way. (Translation based on ŚrBh, p. 90)
The Śrāvakabhūmi thus offers a practical way to purify bad deeds, namely by confessing in front of fellow devotees and then rectifying one’s faults in accordance with Buddhist teachings. After this procedure, one again focuses introspectively on one’s own activity in order to know whether it has been purified. If it has, one can be confident of having restored moral self-discipline and of once again being pure in conduct (śīlaviśuddhi). Thus, free from remorse (avipratisāra), one proceeds on along the path toward concentration. The above passage in particular shows that avipratisāra is contingent upon facing up to a misdeed directly, confessing it, and then taking countermeasures whenever a person’s conduct has caused injury or oppression to others. According to this source, then, avipratisāra is not attained as long as one refuses to address the matter or even simply ignores it.
In comparison, the Bhaddālisutta (MN 65, I 437–440) associates the overcoming of vippaṭisāra and kukkucca with beseeching forgiveness. At the very beginning, for his own sake, Venerable Bhaddāli refused to accept the Buddha’s advice of eating a single meal during the day, and claimed that he would be consumed by remorse (vippaṭisāra) and feel the hindrance of regret (kukkucca) if he followed it. Then, in the next three months, he did not feel easy and avoided the Buddha’s presence. His fellow monks comprehended his distress, and comforted him by saying: “Please, friend Bhaddāli, learn your lesson. Do not let it become more difficult for you later on.” Venerable Bhaddāli was relieved, came to the Buddha, and apologized. He expressed his regret and remorse, and pled with him: “Sir, please accept my mistake for what it is, and I will restrain myself in future.” The Buddha well understood his mental states—feeling empty, hollow, and guilty (ritto tuccho aparaddho)—in the previous three months, probingly taught him why he was wrong, and accepted his confession. Afterwards, the Buddha elaborated on the Dharma, telling of a monk capable of meditating but who lived withdrawn and unreprimanded by a teacher, by knowledgeable fellow monks, by deities, or by himself.
It is quite interesting that Venerable Bhaddāli talked about regret and remorse on two different occasions: at first as a possible outcome of accepting the Buddhaʼs suggestion. His hesitancy can be expressed in words still heard today: “I will regret it later if I do this now.” Then later, after prolonged distress, he actually did become remorseful. The reason was a hollow feeling of guilt during three months of self-imposed isolation from the Buddha, during which he lost his grip on what he thought was a perfectly right and normal way of life. His fellows understood his predicament, comforted him, and guided him to the right re-entry point on the path: confession.
The dialogue in the Bhaddālisutta makes as a precondition for overcoming the suffering of vippaṭisāra and kukkucca—in the case of the Buddha’s contemporary followers who had been morally slack—forgiveness begged for in his presence. Given that the historical Buddha passed away more than two thousand years ago, this is now out of the question, but confession, this time in front of knowledgeable fellow devotees, as described in the Śrāvakabhūmi, is still a feasible recourse for the backslider who wishes to embark on the path toward samādhi.
In addition to their differing in the matter of the Buddhaʼs presence, the Śrāvakabhūmi and the Bhaddālisutta further exhibit two distinct scenarios: (1) offenders become aware of their transgressions on their own, and make their confession in front of others. Through confession, remedy, and practice, they are able to return to living in good conscience at having atoned; (2) offenders at the beginning feel justified for the wrong committed, but in course of time they come to feel utterly distressed. During confession, they are made to see why what they did was wrong, and only then do they feel remorse, but they soon come to realize that confession and remorse has purified them, and so do not need to let the incident be an albatross around their neck. (This summary is kindly provided by Mr. Pierce.)
Through proper confession, Buddhist practitioners can overcome distress and turn a new leaf. The other option is to remain stuck in that state for a long time without finding a way out. This theme occurs over and over in Buddhist literature.
In the Visuddhimagga, composed by Buddhaghosa (Theravāda’s most famous commentator and translator), it is again stressed (Vism, p. 54) that moral shortcomings are displeasing to both deities and human beings, leading to censure and remorse (vippaṭisāra). Interaction with the unreinstated is painful, and those who resist an accounting face long-lasting suffering in a state of loss.
One story (SuVi, p. 19) in the first volume of the Pāli
Vinaya (the Buddhist monastic code) describes the stress of a regretful (
kukkucca), remorse-stricken (
vippaṭisāra) monk, Venerable Sudinna. His inner unrest occasions a whole series of worsening states: he becomes increasingly haggard and wretched. The whole panoply of physical problems that brought about his mental suffering is vividly captured in Horner’s translation (
1982, p. 34).
Besides Pāli sources, the Chinese translation of the *
Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra amplifies the way remorse and regret (in the Chinese translation 悔
huǐ appears for
vippaṭisāra or
kukkucca) disturbs one’s peace of mind, and spiritual cultivation as well (T1509, 25, 184c11–21):
Persons who are prey to regret are like a criminal always tortured by fear. When the arrow of regret has entered the mind, it is implanted there and cannot be removed. Some stanzas say: if they have done what they should not do, if they have not done what they should have done, they are burned by the fire of remorse. Later they will fall into bad destinies. (Based on the translation by Gelongma,
2001, p. 789)
To sum up, in the Buddhist view, as long as one is assailed by remorse, one cannot easily lead a normal, peaceful life, let alone attain higher meditative goals. For anyone consumed by remorse, the first need is to attain avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra.
The Significance of Avipratisāra/Avippaṭisāra for Meditation
Having investigated the contexts and import of
avipratisāra in the Sanskrit text
Śrāvakabhūmi, I shall now turn to the Pāli term
avippaṭisāra, focusing on its morphology as set forth in the Theravāda commentary. To start off, the word can be resolved into the negative prefix
a- and the rest of word,
vippaṭisāra, this being the antonym of the whole form. And as for the morphology of
vippaṭisāra, the most renowned and authoritative Pāli commentator, Buddhaghosa, writing in his exegesis of the
Dhammasaṅgaṇī (AS, p. 384), provides a detailed elucidation, as follow:
… vippaṭisāra of the mind is [first of all a mental] journey [backwards] to (abhimukhagamana) what has already been done or not done, what is blamable or what is not blamable. One does not get bad deeds [done in the past] undone or good things [undone in the past] done. Therefore, this retrospective (paṭisāra) [mental journey] is unnatural (virūpa) and contemptible [in the mind of that person]. Thus is [the word] vippaṭisāra [formed] (i.e., vi- from virūpa plus the form paṭisāra). It [describes a state] of mind, not [simply] of sentient being, whence vippaṭisāra is said in relation to the mind. This is an exposition of vippaṭisāra’s formal nature.
In the view of Buddhaghosa, then, the prefix vi- in vippaṭisāra is shorthand for the word virūpa: an unnatural (vi-) retrospective mental journey (pratisāra/paṭisāra) is called vipratisāra/vippaṭisāra.
For those plagued by remorse, it goes without saying that they find no inner peace and happiness by recollecting the past, let alone attain higher meditative states. One might liken the torture of vipratisāra/vippaṭisāra in the Buddhist context to sinking deeply into debt. Both bear certain similarities: (1) they are both long-lasting depressing situations; (2) they both may easily plunge one into a downward spiral difficult to get out of; (3) but if the situation can be overcome, the sense of relief is overwhelming.
The association between vippaṭisāra and loss, and avippaṭisāra and benefit, is exactly preserved in the Pāli Canon (AN 10.1 at AN V 2). On the one hand, as my previous citation from Visuddhimagga 2.1 shows, being trapped in a feeling of vippaṭisāra is compared to living through a seemingly endless state of loss (apāya); by contrast, the avippaṭisāra state is described in terms of benefit/gain (ānisaṃsa).
One can imagine the elation felt by someone in debt once that debt has finally been paid off; something similar can be expected to happen to a Buddhist who attains freedom from remorse (avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra) following a long, torturous period plagued by vipratisāra/vippaṭisāra. That is doubtless why avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra plays such a prominent role in Buddhist meditation: it marks the turning point, transforming negative feelings into positive states, just as turning loss into gain in our worldly lives does, through which a downward spiral can be broken and reversed, and life turned around. To put it in a nutshell, the attainment of avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra serves as the starting point in the direction of successively more wholesome states (including meditative ones) along the Buddhist path. In what follows, I will discuss various English translations of avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra.
Alternative Translations of Avipratisāra/Avippaṭisāra
In my understanding of the term, avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra can be translated in at least a threefold manner: (1) absence of remorse, non-regret, or lack of regret; (2) a clear conscience; and (3) freedom from remorse. The subtle difference between the first and third options is that the absence or lack of remorse does not rule out its eventual appearance, while freedom from it implies that one has effectively been rid of it in the long term. Considering that remorse and regret causes worry and unease, which is not beneficial to meditation, it is not something wanted by serious practitioners.
The “absence of remorse,” “non-regret,” or “lack of regret” are long-established translations of avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra adopted by a number of eminent scholars. There is some merit to them, but my main focus will be on to the other two, namely (2) and (3).
Firstly, there is obviously not much difference among the established expressions, be they “absence of remorse,” “non-regret,” or “lack of regret”: they all denote the contrary of regret or remorse. To give a review of these renderings, Vajirañāṇa (
1962, p. 57) summarizes a passage from the
Kimatthiyasutta in the
Aṅguttara Nikāya with the words “… the benefit and advantage of moral virtues is the absence of remorse (
avippaṭisāra)…. Morality (
sīla) is of paramount importance in meditation.” Whitaker & Smith (
2018, p. 57) stress that “lack of regret (
avippaṭisāra) is critical to the development of open, clear and focused mindfulness. It is also essential for right concentration.”
It is noticeable that all the above translations of
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra are framed negatively, with either the negative prefix non- or the negative phrases “lack of” or “absence of” at the beginning, corresponding to the negative prefix
a- in Sanskrit or Pāli. At first sight, these seem to be utterly unproblematic renderings. However, non-regret, lack of regret, and absence of remorse all stand out against the other beneficial states: morally disciplined (
śīlavat/
sīlavat), gladness (
prāmodya/
pāmujja), joy (
prīti/
pīti), calmness (
praśrabdhi/
passaddhi), bliss (
sukha), and concentration (
samādhi) on the path of cultivation, which all are unequivocally affirmative terms. Heim (
2014, p. 116) points out this apparent discrepancy when she states that the presence of an absence (non-remorse) is what makes possible the other processes. In my opinion, it is possible, and perhaps even preferable, to render the term
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra so that it aligns with the affirmative form of all the other progressional terms. One such candidate for the translation of
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra would be “clear conscience.”
Let us consider this English phrase. As far as I can see, it largely reflects the meaning of
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra in two respects. In the first place, “clear conscience” means “a knowledge or belief that one has done nothing bad or wrong,” according to the
Merriam-Webster English Dictionary. This definition appears to comport with the literal meaning of
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra in the Buddhist contexts, as discussed in “The Significance of
Avipratisāra/Avippaṭisāra for Meditation” section
. Moreover, as reported by Cottingham, a British scholar known for his research in the philosophy of religion and moral philosophy, “a clear conscience occurs when someone’s inner reflection leaves him/her in the happy position of finding nothing wrong with how he/she has behaved” (Cottingham,
2013, p. 731). This again matches up with the inner state that a practitioner needs to attain on the path of cultivation toward
samādhi. In the second place, Vithoulkas & Muresanu (
2013, p. 105) and other neuroscientists have determined that “a clear conscience has the advantage of feeling inner peace.” This, in my opinion, encapsulates the progression from
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra to
sukha.
In previous studies,
vipratisāra/
vippaṭisāra is sometimes indeed translated as “bad conscience.” Horner (
1982, p. 172) argues that
vippaṭisārī, the adjective form of
vippaṭisāra, comes close to that underlying meaning (“self-recrimination” would be another term for it). She further comments that “words for conscience are sadly lacking in Pāli, but this may be an attempt to express the idea of it, emerging in the sixth century B.C.” The entry in the PTSD includes it among the synonyms of
vippaṭisāra along with “remorse,” “regret,” and “repentance.” Once “bad conscience” is accepted as a fit translation for
vipratisāra/
vippaṭisāra, the translation “clear conscience” for
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra imposes itself. So expressed, it appears as a positively expressed phrase from the outset, in line with all the other states along the path of cultivation. And like
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra and
vipratisāra/
vippaṭisāra, “clear conscience” and “bad conscience” form a pair of opposites rather than one simply being the contrary (i.e., negation) of the other.
In spite of the advantages that “clear conscience” offers, it does not fully highlight actual function of
avipratisāra, especially the turning point transforming negative feelings into positive states as elaborated in “The Subtle Differences Between
Kaukṛtya/
Kukkucca and
Vipratisāra/
Vippaṭisāra” section. Finally, I choose the third option, “freedom from remorse,” as the working definition for
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra. In the first place, the phrase “freedom from x,” indicating a state free from a negative condition, such as pain, fear, and worry, faithfully reflects the Sanskrit or Pāli prefix
a- in
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra. In the second place,
avippaṭisāra, like gladness (
pāmujja), joy (
pīti), calmness (
passaddhi), and bliss (
sukha), expresses a positive quality (
guṇa), as repeatedly described in the
Visuddhimagga: “the gaining of multiple good qualities starting from
avippaṭisāra is the benefit of
sīla” (
kim ānisaṃsaṃ sīlanti, avippaṭisārādi anekaguṇapaṭilābhānisaṃsaṃ, Vism, p. 9). In this sense, to translate
avippaṭisāra neutrally as non-remorse would not do full justice to its positive nature, let alone connote its sense here of ultimate immunity from recurring remorse in the future. We already know that the Pāli Canon draws an analogy between
vippaṭisāra and loss (
apāya). As the contrary of loss implies a certain freedom from loss, so too remorse and freedom from remorse form a similar pair. In the third place, the phrase “freedom from remorse” conveys a positive sense as a whole. Given that “bad conscience” is not an established translation for
vipratisāra/
vippaṭisāra, for now I shall stick with its common rendering “remorse” and apply a new term only to the translation of
avipratisāra/
avippaṭisāra. Actually, Amaro (
2015, p. 70) already briefly mentions that “through living ethically and responsibly, freedom from remorse arises.” Although in his paper he does not offer the Pali words for freedom from remorse, it is very likely
avippaṭisāra. I believe that it is him who firstly coins this translation.
The passage from the Bhaddālisutta cited in “The Negative Impact of Remorse and One of Its Antidotes” contains two terms that convey some sense of remorse and regret: vippaṭisāra and kukkucca. In the following section, I will juxtapose vipratisāra/vippaṭisāra with its companion kaukṛtya/kukkucca, with a special focus on their relevance to meditation and ethics. A deeper study of these two terms ought to help us gain a deeper understanding of avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra as well.