There is this lady in my neighborhood and she doesn’t pick up her dog poop. Actually there are a few ladies like this but the lady I’m talking about ALWAYS walks her dog on our street and leaves the doggo’s poop on the grass. The other lady only occasionally walks on our street, the crazy thing is both ladies don’t even live on my street. Maybe that’s why they walk on our street?! Anyhow.
I pick up her dog poop because I just don’t like living in a neighborhood filled with dog poop. But I started doing this when I really got into studying the Diamond Sutra. The Diamond Sutra says to be of service but not with the intention of being in service. So I was thinking, if I pick up poop for the sake of being good — then I’m going to be disappointed and angry every time she continues to drop poop on our grass. Moreover when I’m not appreciated I will become bitter. So I decided to do it for me, because I want to live in a clean neighborhood without even thinking of others.
The wild thing is, if I think about it that way there’s literally no reason for me to be angry. Suppose there is a wild wind blowing and some dog poop rolled over to my yard. Sometimes the next door neighbor’s trash gets transported onto our yard because of the wind and sometimes my lemons trash my neighbor’s yard, and so on. When we detach the “BAD AGENT” from these actions and think it’s just nature doing it, it’s so simple to accept. So if I can pick up a coyote or a cat’s poop, why not another person’s dog’s poop?
I’m not mad at the person. Because I’ve seen enough shelter dogs to know that that dog’s life could be a lot worse. At least the dog’s walking, pooping in somewhere that’s not their kennel. I am definitely interested in hearing that person’s perspective, but I think my eagerness set off some kind of awareness for her and now she started avoiding me. I’ve tried to say hi multiple times but she just briskly walks away.
Today I saw her again and the dog was pooping. I just picked up my dog poop bag and started walking in their direction because I just wanted to pick it up right after instead of waiting for it, because for some reason cold poop is more yucky than warm poop to pick up (is that just me?!). But again, she started running away and this was so interesting to me. So she DOES know something is to feel bad about, because of she was totally out of the idea that she’s in the wrong then she would have no reason to run.
I said this on my Instagram a few days ago but I also was of the kind to not pick up dog poop. It’s because I used to not really have a big problem with poop lying around. I’ll get to picking it up at some point, and my dog’s so small that their poop doesn’t even smell unless I get super close to it. This abruptly changed after I married my wife because she has a zero poop tolerance policy and because of that I’ve learned to adapt my wife’s perspective.
So I understand the lady’s perspective. But I want to understand a bit more, why doesn’t she pick it up? Why doesn’t she have a problem with it? I’m genuinely curious to know because I know my anger won’t make her pick the poop up, nothing will change until she decides something needs to change. It’d be nice for her to change her ways but I have no interest in changing her behavior. I just have a deep curiosity for it.
Which got me thinking about the feeling of guilt in general. The way she ran away today, it reminded me a lot of me when I did something wrong as a kid. I didn’t want to face the consequences. I didn’t opt to physically run away while many of my peers did; I just dreaded it on the inside, waiting for that eventual physical punishment to come. Actually physical punishment was a bit preferable because boom I get smacked but after that we’re cool. It’s the emotional punishment that felt so horrible to me because I wasn’t in charge of whether we’re cool again or not.
My teacher, Ven. Pomnyun Sunim, does a lot of live Buddhist coaching for the public and there are literally thousands of videos of him doing these. A very common topic is people in remorse and deep guilt about various things: adultery, investing savings without their spouses knowing, causing car accidents that killed another person, and so on. A lot of them come and tell him that they want to die to absolve themselves from the guilt. Then the sunim asks, “when you die, who the fuck benefits from that?”. Well, minus the fuck part. Emphasis mine.
When I take my wife’s savings and go YOLO on Bitcoin and it crashes, does it help my wife for me to kill myself? No. When I cause a car accident and cripple someone, does it help when I sulk in my own remorse? Not at all. What actually helps is me taking responsibility for my actions and going on a course of recovery and repentance. But so many of us, including me, instinctively turn to the most comforting experience of all when it comes to these situations: feeling guilty.
We must understand how self-centered guilt is nothing but a self-preserving act. It does nothing to the people we have wronged. But also, what do we do when we feel guilty for ourselves by fucking our life up? What do we do when we repeatedly fall into patterns that don’t serve us at all, are we just going to continue to feel guilty without addressing any of it? It’s like a kitchen on fire, we can panic and be super agitated but that won’t turn off the fire; it’s the act of putting out the fire that puts the fire out.
Repentance is about practical actions and actual changes to your life. Repentance in practice NEEDS to come with an action of change. You know the 108 bows I do every morning? The formal name of that practice is 108 repentance bows. The nuance here worth pointing out is, we’re not repenting because we did something WRONG. Repentance is typically associated with sin but in Buddhism it’s not really about wrong or right because those are relative.
Of course, it’s important to note the general principle of some social wrongs included in Buddhism. The five precepts are refraining from killing another, stealing, verbally harming, sexually harassing, and getting intoxicated. I think everything else is pretty self explanatory but the verbally harming part needs a bit more of an explanation.
Here’s an intentionally simplistic example: if I say I like apples, someone with an apple allergy might be upset at my preference for apples. If I have a temporary dislike for Vietnamese food because I got food poisoning recently (true story from like 8 years ago) and say “I really don’t like Vietnamese food”, a Vietnamese person may hear this and be upset (I actually love Vietnamese food). This is different from me actually yelling “go fuck yourself” at another person.
Although the “go fuck yourself” is verbally harmful to another, in the other cases I’m not intentionally being harmful. But that doesn’t stop the aftereffects of the words being uttered from my mouth; it may still be registered as harmful to another person, especially people close to us. In these cases we have a choice: we can either adopt a change to our behavior because we can and we care about the other person, or we just acknowledge that it’s an unfortunate communication style difference and move on.
Why I explained this separately is because I wanted to demonstrate the fact that for us to repent something, we don’t necessarily have to be doing something bad or wrong. For example I like leaving cabinet doors open because it makes things more accessible to me but my wife doesn’t like it because we live in an earthquake-prone area. So I decided to change my ways for her because the downsides of closing the cabinets were minuscule compared to the benefits of being earthquake-proof. Because I did that, I need to follow my words up with action because if not, I’m letting my wife down. Again, it’s not something super harmful or damaging but I made a commitment and if I don’t follow through, I need to repent my way.
The nice thing about the 108 bows is, you have a lot of time to reflect upon what you did and why you did things a certain way. Whenever I have something specific to repent I like to add on 10 bows for every action I vow to never repeat. I’m not saying this is the answer; the important thing is I need to DO something to give myself a consequence for not following through with my intentions. Otherwise, I keep falling into the same pattern of behavior over and over again.
The actionable part also needs to be reflected in your ordinary life with tangible evidence. For example if I want to be a dog poop picker upper I need to start the day by loading up poop bags because I know that when I tell myself “I’ll do it before walking”, I’m not going to do it. So in order to make tangible evidences of change you need to know yourself and your pattern pretty well, that’s how you start interrupting them. Reflect upon your desired change, think of why you forgot or why it slipped your mind, and interrupt that moments of slippage by interjecting something into it.
Until now we discussed the actionable part of repentance. But the more important part is the unconscious intention part. If I’m repenting but underneath it all I’m thinking I’m making a sacrifice or a noble yield, I will eventually start feeling salty about the unreciprocated gratitude from other people or the universe. I’ll start asking myself, “what am I doing this for?” and that is not the point of repentance. The point of repentance is to change my actions FOR ME, not for anybody else.
For me to truly change I need to decouple myself from my previous actions. This means we have to let go of the idea that I’M RIGHT. When we let go of the idea that we’re right and start introducing the idea of “other people can be just as right as me” (many people opt for “I’m wrong” or “I can be wrong”, but I think the more accurate statement is that others can be as right as me in their own way which makes me wrong from their perspective), that’s when change becomes SO easy because now there is nothing binding you from the old ideas and behavior you used to have.
A bit part of changing life is repenting for our past ways. Not repenting for absolute sins that would drop us in hell kind of things, but repenting the constant urge to prove ourselves right at the cost of other people. Repenting the constant urge to address things later when the water has already spilled. The more practical repenting skills you develop, the more you will see your life change in the way you want it to.