Part Two · Remorse in the Āgamas · Where Does That Ache Go

What Part One told of was the act of "saying it out," and the institutions that received it — disclosure, probation, rehabilitation, the invitation, the uposatha. That whole apparatus faced outward: spoken for others to hear, received by others, passed through before the assembly. It had power, because it handed over to the community what one person alone could not carry.

But one thing stood, all along, behind everything there, and Part One held back from facing it head-on: what pushes a person to disclose is, more often than not, that ache in the heart — remorse.

This ache is the most intimate thing of all, and the most troublesome.

Where does the trouble lie? It lies in its two faces. One face is good: only the one who feels the sting will mend; to repent the fault, to disclose, to guard — the Buddha says this is the growth of the path. The other face is bad: stewed in the heart and chewed over and over, chewed deeper with every pass, sleepless by night, listless by day — this remorse that turns and turns without stopping, the Buddha lists among the five hindrances that veil practice. One and the same word, remorse: one face is medicine, one face is poison.

What Part Two does is set these two faces on the same word, and see them clearly.

Two chapters. The first looks for the pivot of this double-edged blade — the same remorse: why does one walk out into a gate, and the other into a cell? The watershed, it turns out, lies in one place only. The second drives the blade to its very end — when remorse falls on the heaviest karma, on a king who killed his own father, how much force is left in it? There, we will strike the floor of phenomenal repentance.

These two chapters move the subject from Part One's "institution" into the "heart." From the Saṅgha's hall of assembly to the seat where the Buddha teaches.

We begin with the two roads that ache can take.