The second of the four practices is to confess evil actions, or lay down neurotic actions. In Buddhist monasteries, this is done ceremonially on days of the full moon and the new moon. Confessing your neurotic actions has four parts to it: (1) regretting what you've done; (2) refraining from doing it again; (3) performing some kind of remedial activity such as the Vajrasattva mantra, taking refuge in the three jewels, or tonglen; and (4) expressing complete willingness to continuethis fourfold process in the future and not act out neurotically. So the fourfold formula of laying down your neurosis consists of regret, refraining, remedial action, and the resolve not to do it again.
Bad circumstances may have arisen, but we know we can transform them. The advice here is that one of the best methods is to confess the whole thing. First, you don't confess to anybody; it's a personal matter. You yourself look at what you doand go through this fourfold process with it. Second, no one forgives you. You're not confessing sin; it's not as if you've "sinned" as we were taught in the Judeo-Christian culture in which we grew up.
What is meant by neurosis is that in limitless, timeless space - with which we could connect at any time - we continually have tunnel vision and lock ourselves into a room and put bolts on the door. When there's so much space, why do we keep putting on dark glasses, putting in earplugs, and covering ourselves with armor?
Confessing our neurotic action is a fourfold process by which we see honestly what we do and develop a yearning to take off those dark glasses, take out those earplugs, take off that armor and experience the world fully. It's yet again another method for letting go of holding back, another method for opening rather than closing down.
(1) REGRET. So, first, regret. Because of mindfulness and seeing what you do, which is the result of your practice, it gets harder and harder to hide from yourself. Well, that turns out to be extremely good news, and it leads to being able to see neurosis as neurosis - not as a condemnation of yourself but as something that benefits you. Regret implies that you're tired of armoring yourself, tired of eating poison, tired of yelling at someone each time you feel threatened, tired of talking to yourself for hours each you don't like the way someone else does something, tired on constant complaint to yourself. Nobody else has to give you a hard time. Nobody else has to tell you. Through keeping your eyes open, you yourself get tired of your neurosis. That's the idea of regret.
Once someone who had done something that he really regretted went to his teacher and explained the whole thing. The teacher said, "It's good that you feel regret. You have to acknowledge what you do. It's much better that you see that you harmed somebody than that you protect yourself from that. But you only get two minutes for regret." That's a good thing to remember because otherwise you might flagellate yourself - "oy vey, oy vey."
2) REFRAINING. The second part of confessing neurotic action is refraining. It's painful when you see how in spite of everything you continue in your neurosis; sometimes it has to wear itself out like an old shoe. However, refraining is very helpful as long as you don't impose too much authoritarian a voice on yourself. Refraining is not a New Year's resolution, not a step where you plan your next failure by saying "I see what I do and I will never do it again," and then you feel pretty bad when you do it again within the half hour.
Refraining comes about spontaneously when you see how your neurotic action works. You may say to yourself, "It would still feel good; it still looks like it would be fun," but you refrain because you already know the chain reaction of misery that it sets off. The initial bite, or the initial drink, or the initial harsh word might give you some feeling of well being but it's followed by the chain reaction of misery that you've been through not once but five thousand times. So refraining is a natural thing that comes from the fact that we have basic wisdom in us. It's important to remember that refraining is not harsh, like yelling at yourself or making yourself do something you don't want to do. It's gentle; at the very most you say to yourself "One day at a time."
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