When I review my career as a life coach and ask the question, “why do people seek my services?”, the most common answer is: they are not in charge of their life. They feel subject to situations and circumstances, and while they want to live life a certain way… It seems almost impossible.
Guilt is actually a fairly uncommon primary reason for coming into coaching, but the thing about guilt is this: any problem can be described as a guilt problem. Suppose somebody procrastinates. We are allowed to not do everything in one day, we are allowed to do things at our own pace. So what makes procrastination an actual problem? It's the overwhelming guilt we feel for not being in action.
Another fairly popular topic is business. It's ok to have a business that doesn't make a ton of money, that's why there are these things called “side hustles”. So why does not making money become a problem? It's because we feel guilty for not contributing to family finances, for example.
In discussing guilt it helps to clearly understand whether we actually did something bad or not. For that Buddhism locally provides you a handy guideline.
- Did I harm another person physically?
- Did I take some one's property without their permission?
- Did I verbally harass someone?
- Did I sexually harass someone?
- Did I engage with someone while under the influence?
The 5th condition is because being under the influence tends to increase the odds that you will meet the other four conditions. These conditions seem fairly self explanatory because if we put ourselves on the receiving end of these we can generally agree that these are bad things for me to experience.
Now that we know this condition we have to know how to apply it. If we did not do these 5 things we generally did not do something bad. This is important because we need to understand when is it the right time to be responsible for our actions, and when are we being good or bad people? If we do not know how to tell whether we are being good or bad, we are at the risk of constantly feeling guilty for no reason or constantly feeling righteous when we have done something wrong.
If I go around the street punching newborn babies, I am being a bad person. But just because I don't punch babies, it doesn't make me a good person. If I volunteer my time at the animal shelter I am being a good person. But just because I don't volunteer my time it doesn't necessarily make me a bad person.
Guilt can be a very crippling feeling because it consumes your mind. This is the reason why I list it as one of the negative factors for action in my procrastination framework, the Action Formula. Then, suppose we did do something bad. Suppose we did do one of the 5 things. What do we do? It feels like it makes sense to feel guilt when we actually did one of the 5 things.
As I said before, guilt is a crippling feeling: therefore it is likely that when you are feeling guilt, you will not be making action. This has an important implication. Your guilt, by itself, does nothing good for the person you have wronged. It only serves your self-pity.
Then what should we do instead of feeling guilty? We have to be responsible for the things that we did. If we caused damage to another person, we must be responsible for their healing and the side effects of our damage. If we took someone's property, we must give it back and account for its loss to the rightful owner.
Notice how it is possible for you to feel extremely guilty for the person you have wronged and yet do none of these actions (very likely to happen). Notice how also it is possible to do all these things without necessarily feeling guilty.
What else does being responsible entail? What if the person we have wronged cannot receive our amends? They might no longer be here on this earth with us, or they might not want to communicate with us anymore. Responsibility, along with actions that counteract our harms, means that we understand the karma of our actions and accept it earnestly.
Karma does not keep a complex accounting system. Suppose I used jiujitsu to break someone’s arm because they were robbing a store. Karma does not care that I broke their arm for a good cause; I need to accept the karma of breaking the arm separately from accepting the karma of helping stop a robbery. If I kill someone in the process of protecting another person, I still have to accept the fact that I very much can go to jail for the harm I have done.
Unfortunately, humans have a tendency to be self centered. This is just how we are, it's not necessarily good nor bad. Being self centered in times of wronging another person means that we can be defensive. If I stole from another person, it makes sense that I am hated by the person I stole from. They can criticize me and make claims that I am way worse of a human being than the harm I have done.
We have to understand that from a karmic perspective this is the outcome of my actions. The more defensive we get and the more we deflect and protect ourselves, the more you stray away from responsibility. This will also incur further harm and incur further karma. The only way to stop karma is to accept it with ease.
When I was in college, I got a pet rabbit out of my irresponsible loneliness and it died shortly after. I was riddled with guilt, an overbearing amount of guilt that affected my life for things completely outside of animals or personal responsibility. When I learned these Buddhism concepts, I accepted my karma and decided to feel all the crushing pain that came from harming another life. And even with all of this crushing pain, the pain that the rabbit endured because of me was way worse.
The rabbit is no longer with us, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. If I did such an irresponsible thing out of loneliness, then there has to be other lonely people who are on the verge of making the same mistake as I did. Again, karma doesn’t care if I made a mistake or not. I was responsible for the death of another life.
So I started donating to animal rescues and volunteering at shelters. I coached people with a renewed passion, especially on the topic of loneliness so that future generations of my harm can be nipped in the bud. Every time someone is considering getting a pet due to loneliness, I tell them about my mistakes and encourage them to find an open heart within themselves. That’s why I care so much about my romance course.
If you did not do anything wrong, you have nothing to feel guilty about. If you did something wrong, you have things to do now that guilt does nothing to help with. Like the bible says, these truths will set you free from guilt.