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**medifastwoman** · 10-08-2010, 01:12 AM

I remember HH the Dalai Lama mentioning once that in his own culture, they don't have a word for "guilt" as other cultures do. They have a word for regret, for the feeling you get when you look back on something you did and decide that another choice would have been better. However, that's not the same as beating oneself up.

I would say that regret is useful. Guilt... can be, but it can also get really masturbatory. It's easy to spend so much time beating ourselves up that we miss an opportunity to actually repair what we did, or learn how to do better in the future. If we do that, what have we really shown our priority is?

Yes I agree Cobalt.

I also recall hearing a Tibetan teacher saying something similar to HHDL in a talk I went to. Someone asked the teacher a question about guilt and he said 'What's that?' and then had to have a chat in Tibetan with the translator to find out....and then still looked a little bemused!

10-08-2010, 01:12 AM	#5
medifastwoman Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 490 Senior Member	I remember HH the Dalai Lama mentioning once that in his own culture, they don't have a word for "guilt" as other cultures do. They have a word for regret, for the feeling you get when you look back on something you did and decide that another choice would have been better. However, that's not the same as beating oneself up. I would say that regret is useful. Guilt... can be, but it can also get really masturbatory. It's easy to spend so much time beating ourselves up that we miss an opportunity to actually repair what we did, or learn how to do better in the future. If we do that, what have we really shown our priority is? Yes I agree Cobalt. I also recall hearing a Tibetan teacher saying something similar to HHDL in a talk I went to. Someone asked the teacher a question about guilt and he said 'What's that?' and then had to have a chat in Tibetan with the translator to find out....and then still looked a little bemused!
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