As usual, it's been quite a day, another day, and there's been challenges, and we have endeavored to meet them with kindness. Yes. Rev, I would like to thank you for being able to take the time to be able to meet with all of us today. I feel very grateful for that. Thank you. You're welcome. And thank you all. Thank you. And now, shame and guilt.

[01:13]

I'm not trying to control the universe in general or specifically or particular. But anyway, there are these two words, shame and guilt. And People are using them in various ways. Some people are using shame and guilt kind of interchangeably. Some people not. I think it might be useful to be clear about how we're using these words or also be aware of how some people have used them. So one possible way to use shame, to use that for feeling that others are feeling bad about us in some way, or shame about how other people is about, use shame for how other people see us and use guilt for how we see ourself.

[02:35]

I'm suggesting that because I've heard some people have been using it that way, but also because in the Buddhist psychological teaching of the Abhidharma, they do distinguish between these two sides, how we see ourself and how others see us. And we have Sanskrit and Pali words for these things. So in one case, in the Pali, the Sanskrit words are hri, hri, and apatrapya. These have to do with how others see us and how we see ourselves. And there's a positive way of seeing these two, which is easy, maybe easy to start with, the positive way, which is that having to do with how we see ourself, there's a way of looking at ourself, which could be called self-respect.

[04:05]

And there's a way of dealing with how other people see us, which is called decorum. In other words, because of self-respect, we feel not good about not acting in certain ways. Because of self-respect, I feel pain if I'm not kind to other people, if I'm not kind to myself. It doesn't go with self-respect. Saying bad things about myself or others doesn't go with my self-respect. I feel guilty when I'm not acting in accord with self-respect. On the other side, I feel pain when others do not respect me or do not appreciate me.

[05:31]

And because I feel pain when other people do not appreciate me, do not respect me, particularly don't appreciate me, I'm somewhat careful of what I do. You know, I'm perhaps be gentle towards others because I'm concerned of how they see me. I practice being respectful of others because I'm concerned with how they see me and how they feel about me. So in the Buddhist tradition, there are these two mental factors, mental phenomena of actually being concerned about how people see me, a natural animal thing, that we're concerned about how the people in the group see us.

[06:35]

And the other is a concern about, from my own sense of myself, of whether I'm acting in accord with what I respect about myself. So in the Buddhist tradition, there's a difference between those two about how we're seen and how we see ourselves. Now, one other thing about these two things is there's two other dharmas that go with these two. So we have in this Buddhist tradition three, self-respect and apatrapya, Decorum? By the way, decorum is also described as scrupulousness or humility or modesty. I'm somewhat modest because I care about what people, how they see me.

[07:47]

Even if I do something good, I might just mention that what I just did might have been helpful. Anyway, those are the ones, those two things, kri and apatrapya. And then there's two other ones that go with it, which are called ahri and anapatrapya. which means no self-respect and not caring what others think of. Brackets. Psychopath. Or sociopath. But psychopath's good, too. Because it's not just social, it's also internal, that I don't care.

[08:50]

There's nothing I can do that would be a problem for me. I don't care. There's nothing beneath me. And I don't care what other people think of me or do to me even. And the further teaching is, if those two are present in the mind, what two? not caring what people think or feel about me, and also nothing beneath me, if those two are present, it is definitely an unwholesome state of mind. Those two successfully make an unwholesome state of mind. If one of them is present but the other one is, I don't know what it says in the literature, but maybe if one of them is present and the other one isn't, maybe might not be unwholesome.

[09:52]

But if they're both present, it is an unwholesome state. Pardon? Yeah, nothing. Like there's nothing that I could do that wouldn't go with my sense of respect. You know, I'm a person who can do the worst things. That's who I am. And I can do them without caring about it, too. I can be totally cruel to you and not have any problem with that. Well, like, being cruel to you is not beneath me. Nothing's too low. Nothing's too creepy for me to do. No heinous act. could I not be comfortable with? Something like that. Just let me finish the other side. However, the presence of those other two, they're present in all wholesome states.

[10:53]

They're present because the unwholesome states have the absence of them. So the wholesome states have the presence of them. However, they're not powerful by themselves enough to guarantee that the state of mind is wholesome. For example, if you have these two, self-respect and decorum, you can still do things that go against your self-respect. You can still do decorous, indecorous things, but you feel bad about them because you feel bad about people not liking that you're being indecorous. It bothers you that they don't appreciate you being disrespectful and so on. So you can still violate decorum and self-respect even when you have a sense of self-respect and decorum. You can still go against it.

[11:54]

So that doesn't guarantee that you're going to have a wholesome state. But having a lack of them guarantees you're going to have an unwholesome state. It's similar to the Buddhist saying in the early teachings. There's right view. He taught the Eightfold Path. Right view, right intention, and so on. Right view is karma has consequence. Doing unkind things has consequence. Doing kind things has consequence. That's right view. And then there's wrong view. And then the Buddha says, among the wrong views, the worst is to think karma does not have consequence. That's the worst wrong view. There's other ones. For example, the view that I'm better than you is wrong too.

[12:55]

But it's not as bad as thinking that having such thoughts had no consequence. having the thought that what I do has no consequence is similar to a lack of decorum or a lack of self-respect because I can do whatever I want and not a problem. So that's what I wanted to bring up. And so some of the translations also of these two is fear of guilt and fear of blame. So decorum is related to being afraid of being blamed or being censured. Some fear of that. Not overwhelming fear, but just fear that people will censure me, kick me out of the group, etc.,

[14:05]

But that's fear of being blamed or censured. The other one is fear of guilt, fear of the pain I feel of not living up to who I am, of doing things that are beneath me, of acting not in accord with what I know to be my values. So all this has a lot of charge on it and so on and so forth. But I just thought I might introduce that. And I think I intend to bring it up on the online offering. I want to introduce you to make a distinction. And maybe in our group we can just identify guilt as what I just did I don't feel good about. and shame as what I just did, I'm worried I'm going to get criticized for that. So when we say shaming, people are doing the shaming thing.

[15:10]

I think that's this way of using it, where people are putting that on, blaming somebody for something. And guilt's more like This is a big shortcoming. This is my shortcoming, and I feel pain of my own shortcomings. That was not the way I want to live. I'm sorry. And the other is I feel pain of people not liking me, not supporting me. But these factors are actually fear of those things. They're not actually acting that way. It's fear of being indecorous because of what will happen and fear of not doing wholesome things because of how painful that will be for me. So these things are to encourage us not to do things which will disturb others and not to do things which will be disturbing within ourselves.

[16:15]

So they're kind of like guardian deities, these two. And the lack of them is taking away the guardian deities of our behavior. But again, these are guardian deities. They do not guarantee. They just sort of support us to look carefully at everything we think, say, and all our gestures. They support our being, in other words, they support us being conscientious and careful so we can have wholesome states of mind to support our practice, our incredible, wonderful practice. And, yeah, that's my introduction.

[17:19]

So there's lack of decorum, but it's actually fear of lack of decorum, and there's lack of self-respect, but there's also fear of what I will do if I don't have self-respect. Yes. Yes. I think it's a very rich teaching. I'm wondering what prompted you to give this teaching at this particular time? I think what prompted it was, anyway, I don't know. What prompted me to listen to some lectures about Shakespeare? I don't know. But while I was listening to them, the person who was talking about some play where there was a mixture of shame and guilt, this person chose to speak of shame as our concern about how others see us and guilt about how we see ourselves.

[18:24]

I thought that... And I've... That's sort of in here because self-respect has to do with how we see ourself. That's in the Buddhist thing. But also... Decorum is more about acting in accord with the protocols and decorums of society. So I thought that person setting out that way made me want to say, I'm going to go back and point out that Buddhism makes that distinction and they don't use shame and guilt interchangeably. But a lot of people do. Or they use guilt for what is actually more like, and actually our legal system is kind of like that. We say the person's guilty. In other words, we say the view of the jury is that they shame the person by saying the person's guilty. So really they should say, we find the person shameful. The person should be the one who's saying, I'm guilty.

[19:28]

I'm guilty. mea culpa. Culpa means guilt. It doesn't mean shame. So there's a confusion in our society, but still, I think we can, in our little groups, we can start to create little clearings of clarity in the morass of the way these important words are used. But again, it's not just shame and guilt. It's fear of shame and guilt or not being afraid of shame and guilt. Again, a psychopath, I don't care about shame. People can shame me, no problem. And I'm not afraid of feeling guilty. I don't feel guilty. I don't care. Yes, Daryl, Darren. Darryl. Darryl. Louder, please. Louder, please. What family?

[20:31]

Do you say inmost? Oh, you're in-laws. You're in-laws. Yes? Yes. something they didn't do. They didn't give freely. I'm wondering if that makes sense. You wonder if that makes sense? Did you say? Not yet for me. They try to communicate that you should give something, but you didn't Yeah, well, these practices are not about towards other people. These are about other people towards us or us towards ourselves. They're not about shaming other people or telling somebody else that they're guilty.

[21:32]

That's not what they're about. They're about I feel guilt and it's painful because it's not in accord with why I'm living here in this world. And I feel decorum. I feel, did I say I feel guilt? Yeah. I feel guilt and I'm also somewhat afraid of feeling guilty. Right now I maybe feel so much guilt that I'm afraid of feeling guilty. I do not want to feel guilty. I do not want to feel that I have not been kind. So that supports me to be kind. And also I do not want other people to think badly of me. I don't, and I'm afraid that they might. So I'm somewhat careful about what I do and so on. But these are not about shaming other people or accusing other people of being guilty.

[22:42]

These are inner practices to develop wholesome states of consciousness. So that's one story about what led me to do this. And also, in the various definitions of these things, I believe... Yeah, maybe not. I was going to say, so under the heading of decorum, which has to do with shame, you also have here, under the one called decorum or apotropia, it's fear of exile. Because in social situations, one of the ways you discipline, not babies so much, but teenagers, is by exiling them.

[23:49]

Like the matriarch of a herd of horses exiles rambunctious teenagers. And in their exile, they calm down and decide to go along with the program because they feel kind of unsafe there, away from the group. So exiling... is one of the ways of disciplining people. So, fear of exile. But I don't see under the second thing fear of shame. But I have heard that definition, fear of shame. Up above, they have actually a saying for the first one, shame. So I don't like those translations. I think guilt is better. Otherwise, we're using shame in both places. This is before I act.

[24:54]

The fear is before. The fear of doing some unwholesome thing. So atonement and attunement is the response, you know. Not yet. No. Unless I would have noticed, if I noticed that I don't care what people think of me, I probably should atone for that. Again, that's a good one. If I notice that I think I don't care what other people think of me, then I would atone for that, because that contributes to unwholesomeness. And by atoning for With the fact that I don't care what people think about me, I attune with them. Yes? I noticed that you came up for me when you were talking, because I thought maybe I'm a psychopath. I'm so surprised, because I don't care about some people. But I took it a little further, and I thought, there are some people I do care. But when you were just talking, it's not general. In general, people don't.

[25:55]

Yeah. But for me, I don't need everybody to approve. Well, you don't need everybody to approve you, good, because that's not going to happen. But you do care about some people approving of you. But to not care about what people think of you, that's kind of like sociopath. And also to not care about what I think of when I'm doing myself. Like I just did a really cruel thing and I don't care. And I don't care if I do something cruel. I don't care what anybody thinks. So caring what some people think is a step in the right direction, really caring about what everybody thinks, not trying to get them all, knowing that it's never going to happen that they all approve of me. But still, I do care. about what people think of me. But I don't expect ever that everybody's going to approve of me.

[27:00]

What play were you reading? Which play are you referring to? You mentioned you were reading a Shakespeare play. Oh, which play? I don't remember which one it was, but it was one of those ones about where there's a lot of shame and guilt and where you can distinguish between the two. There's a lot of that going on in Shakespeare. And this scholar said that generally that's the way it's being used is shame in terms of how you're seen by others and guilt is how you see yourself. And if you don't notice anything like that, that's something to worry about. And if you don't worry about not noticing it, that's something to worry about. So part of being wholesome is to have a little bit of fear, a little bit of worry.

[28:02]

I'm not too worried that not everybody likes me. I'm not too worried about that. But I am worried that I might do something unkind. I am. Kind of worried. The main thing, I am worried that I might not practice compassion. I am kind of worried. Because I don't want to forget to do that. But I know I might. So I'm kind of worried that I might any minute. It hurts me when I cannot be compassionate. Yeah, it hurts. And I'm afraid of that pain. It's a bad pain. I'm afraid I might feel it. So I don't want to act in a way that promotes this really... Plus, not only do I feel bad, but part of the reason I feel bad is because I'm not living the way I want to live. Which would be good.

[29:05]

Yes. Yes. I don't know if this fits here, but you used the word censure. Censure, yeah. And the quorum. And I was just thinking, I just wonder if there's a way to break the quorum. That's in a positive way. So we just have one of our representatives censure for speaking out during this. Excuse me. The censure is not decorum. It's just that if you're not in accord with decorum, you get censured. So somebody just wasn't going in accord with the decorum during the president's talk, and he got censured. I just don't know if there's a way to break with the rules or something. And he said, I will do it again. Definitely sometimes it would be good

[30:06]

to break with some people's decorum. Sometimes it's good to not go up, to not be decorous, to not do what everybody likes, what people generally would like. That would be in accord with self-respect, yeah. That because of self-respect, I cannot go along with that, for example. these people are doing something and if I don't go along with it, I might get censured. But I'm more actually, and I'm concerned about it, and I'm somewhat afraid of getting censured. But I sometimes shouldn't be. I should be not decorous and be censured because of self-respect. I should not go along with certain things, but if I don't, I may get censured. And I'm a little bit afraid of getting censured.

[31:09]

Pardon? Well, the fearlessness would be part of what I think, fearlessness is part of what I think everybody wants me to be. But fearlessness doesn't mean I'm not afraid. Fearlessness means I'm intimate with my fear. I'm not getting pushed around by my fear. I'm being guided by it, but not pushed around. Yes? What if I had to? I guess like with the wild animal, I'd be very careful because I have no agreements with them.

[32:15]

There's no contract. They're operating in a different moral universe maybe. So I'd be very careful and I would be very respectful. And I would be, for example, with a tiger, you know, even in tigers in zoos, I'd be very respectful of them. And I would try not to, you know, defend them. Yeah. Well, if I was at a distance from a tiger, the tiger wouldn't be bothered by me, and I would not need to be bothered by the tiger. If I get closer to the tiger, the tiger usually will go away from me. But I would not get too close to the tiger because then the tiger will attack me because it will become frightened.

[33:20]

No, it's already frightened. But usually when a tiger is frightened of someone, they move away. But if you get too close, instead of moving away, they move towards. I'm talking about something like us. We're not tiger food usually. They're not built to attack these homo sapiens anymore. They used to be. But now they're more like kind of afraid of us. So And I'm not going to try to provoke that fear, but if I notice the tiger's moving away from me, I know I'm in the zone where I probably shouldn't get any closer because then they'll come at me. But still, you can't really predict what the tiger will do, and sometimes tiger trainers do get mauled because they're not sensitive to that place. Basically, I think what I'm addressing here about shame and guilt have to do with being conscientious, being careful.

[34:31]

They're moral factors. And generally speaking, morality has to do with being careful and respectful. Okay? Okay? Yeah, we went over today. I hope that wasn't a big problem for people. Please excuse me if it was. And you can blame the people who asked the questions.

[35:00]

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