Grief & Remorse

Tonight’s talk will be on equanimity. It’s a large topic—so large that we’ll have to split it into two parts, and give one of them this morning.

One of the main points in understanding equanimity is that the Buddha never recommends equanimity on its own. On its own, he says, equanimity can very easily become unskillful. This is why, when discussing the development of equanimity, he always lists it in conjunction with the development of other skillful qualities.

To introduce this principle this morning, I’d like to discuss two big areas in daily life where developing skillful equanimity is especially helpful: when dealing with grief over loss, and when dealing with remorse for mistakes you have made. When you see how the Buddha’s recommendations for equanimity in these cases involve developing other qualities as well, you can get a sense of how equanimity is meant to function, not only in everyday life, but also on more refined levels of the practice.

First, grief: Grief over loss covers not only the death of a loved one, but also the loss of a loved one in other ways—or the loss of love itself.

There are a couple of passages in the Canon where the Buddha talks about how to deal with grief. One involves King Pasenadi. One day, while he was talking to the Buddha, one of his courtiers came to inform him that Queen Mallikā, his favorite queen, had died. King Pasenadi immediately broke down and cried. The Buddha’s way of comforting him was to point out to him that this kind of thing was happening not only to him. He said, “When has it ever happened that someone who was born does not die?” In other words, this kind of loss is universal. It happens to everyone.

It may seem strange that thinking about all the many deaths in the world would actually make your own loss less sharp, but it actually does. You remind yourself, “It’s not happening only to me.” You’re not being singled out for any suffering that’s out of the ordinary. In fact, thinking about the universality of loss might lead you to feel compassion for others that have undergone the same sort of loss that you have. This can soften your grief, by giving you some distance from it without trying to deny the loss. At the same time, it can direct your energies toward acting with more consideration for others.

The Buddha then goes on to say that as long as you see that some purpose is served by grieving, by giving eulogies, or by conducting funeral ceremonies for someone who has died, go ahead and do it. This way, you give honor to what you have lost, recognizing the goodness in what is now past. This can encourage you—and the people around you—to devote the remainder of your life to more goodness. At the same time, it’s traditional in Buddhist funeral ceremonies to make merit and dedicate it to the deceased, both as an expression of your goodwill for the deceased and as a reminder that you are not totally helpless in the face of death: There are still things that you can do for the person who has passed on.

But then when you realize that your expressions of grief have reached the point of self-indulgence, you have to remind yourself that you have a life you have to live and duties you have to perform, so don’t let the loss overcome you. In this case, you develop equanimity toward the loss and re-dedicate your determination to return to fulfilling your duties, both for the sake of your genuine happiness and for the happiness of those still around you. In this way, you develop equanimity as a basis for two other perfections: determination and goodwill.

The Canon has a very interesting analysis of grief. There was one time when Ven. Sāriputta was talking to some of the other monks, saying, “This afternoon I was sitting and meditating, and I asked myself, ‘Is there anyone in the world whose loss would cause me any sorrow or grief?’” The answer to the question was No. Ven. Ānanda was sitting there and he asked, “Now, wait a minute. What if something happened to the Buddha?” And Sāriputta replied, “I would say that it’s a sad thing that such a great and beneficial person has passed away. It would be a great loss for the world. But what could be done? This is the nature of all living beings.” Then Ānanda made an interesting comment, which was that, “This is a sign that you have no conceit.”

Now, remember that conceit in this sense means a strong sense of “I am.” What Ānanda was saying here is that a lot of our grief has to do less with concern for the suffering of the other person who’s passed away and more with our own sense of loss. Sometimes there’s a feeling that you owe the person who’s passed away a certain amount of grief. But the other person is not benefiting from your grief at all. So, you really have no responsibility or debt that requires you to grieve for a person for a certain amount of time or with a certain amount of intensity.

The irony of this story is that Ven. Sāriputta actually passed away before the Buddha. Ānanda went to see the Buddha to deliver the news, telling him that hearing the news of Sāriputta’s death made him lose his sense of bearings. The world seemed dark to him. The Buddha asked Ānanda, “When Sāriputta died, did he take away virtue?” “No.” “Did he take away concentration?” “No.” “Did he take away discernment?” “No.” “Did he take away release?” “No.” So, the good things in life are still there. These are some of the ways in which the Buddha would talk to the monks about loss.

In more general terms, you have to remember that the amount of tears you have already shed from the death of a mother is more than the amount of water in the oceans. The same goes for the amount of tears you’ve shed over the death of a father, the loss of a brother, the loss of a sister, the loss of a son, the loss of a daughter. When you think about that, it becomes overwhelming. The Buddha adds that thinking about this should make you realize that the best thing in life would be to gain release from all of this.

This kind of thinking, which comes under the perfection of discernment, can help you develop a certain amount of equanimity around loss and lead to a sense of saṁvega, or dismay, motivating your determination to practice further on the path.

Now, the Buddha’s not forcing you to give up your grief. That would be heartless. What he’s actually doing is giving you the opportunity to realize that your life does not have to be ruined by a loss.

There are two examples of women whom he comforted after they had lost their children. In one case, it was her son, and one of the contemplations he recommended to her was this: “He came to you without permission and he’s left you without permission. Do you know where he came from? Was he yours before he came? And now he’s gone, to another unknown place.” He added, “This is the nature of all beings.” The woman later said that this calmed her mind and completely removed the arrow of her grief.

The other case was a woman named Ubbiri. She had lost her daughter, Jīvā, and she had gone to the cemetery, where she was crying, “Jīvā, Jīvā, where are you?” The Buddha said to her, “Do you realize that 84,000 women named Jīvā have been buried in that cemetery? So for which of them are you grieving?” The sense of the vast extent of all the loss that human beings have suffered does help to pull you out of your individual grief and to view the whole situation with a lot more equanimity.

So, we can see that, in the face of loss, the Buddha doesn’t advise overcoming your grief simply by numbing yourself into equanimity. Equanimity, to be skillful in situations like this, has to be developed together with other perfections, such as discernment, goodwill, and determination.

The second situation where the Buddha talks about using equanimity to get over your emotional upset regarding things in the past deals with remorse for your own mistakes. He says that no matter how much remorse you have for what you’ve done, remorse cannot go back and undo what you did. Sometimes there’s a childish thought that if we punish ourselves enough over a past mistake, then no one else will punish us. You’ve probably seen dogs act this way, right? They wet on your carpet and they know they did something wrong, so when you come back to the house they turn over on their back and look miserable, in hopes that if they look miserable enough, you won’t hit them. There is this aspect of the human mind as well.

But, as the Buddha says, this accomplishes nothing. Simply recognize the mistake—“Yes, that was a mistake”—and determine not to repeat the mistake. That determination, which is then carried out in the persistence of your right efforts, is really all that can be asked of a human being. Then at that point, he said, you develop thoughts of goodwill, compassion, and equanimity for all beings: yourself, the people you’ve wronged, and the other people you will be dealing with in the future. This way, by not punishing yourself over the mistake and still wishing goodwill for yourself, you don’t weaken yourself. By extending goodwill to others, you erase any resentment you might have for the person you wronged, and you remind yourself to be careful in how you treat others from now on.

In cases like this, the Buddha doesn’t simply have you develop equanimity toward your past mistakes. He also has you develop discernment into how to use the teaching on kamma wisely, along with the perfections of goodwill, determination, and persistence that will ensure that you do your best not to repeat those mistakes in the future.

Those, then, are two of the areas in daily life—grief and remorse—where the Buddha talks about how to develop equanimity with regard to things that have happened in the past. In both cases, you’re combining equanimity with other good qualities, such as discernment, goodwill, persistence, and determination. These additional qualities are what ensure that your equanimity doesn’t become indifference, and instead becomes skillful equanimity, a perfection that furthers the path.