Lost opportunities have the power to haunt. 

Some years ago, a woman related something that happened when her daughter was young.

While checking out in a grocery store, she heard the woman at the next register saying she did not have enough money to pay for all her groceries. Planning how she was going to get her daughter and her own groceries to her car, the young mother realized—too late—that if she had not been so self-absorbed, she could have offered to help pay for the other woman’s groceries.

Years later, her oversight still haunts her. That young mother is now a loving grandmother, thoughtful of everyone she encounters. Like all of us, she has regrets. One of them is how years before, failing to notice what was happening in someone else’s life, she missed the opportunity to provide assistance.

How easy it is for each of us to become so preoccupied with our own lives that we fail to notice situations in the lives of others.

And so, not paying attention, we miss an opportunity to do good. 

I didn’t want . . . (Click image for video)

Regrets are afflictions 

that cause grief and distress, 

disturbing both body and mind. 

A crucial objective in cultivation is to discover our faults, feel remorse, correct them, and then continue practicing. One risk in this process is to go through it quickly and without much thought. Call it a cursory correction.

Alternatively, another risk we run is getting mired in the process and being overwhelmed by feelings of guilt. We need to move mindfully through each step, neither progressing so quickly that wedon’t really learn from our mistakes nor so slowly that we find ourselves trapped in guilt, unable to practice.

Repeatedly replaying what we did saps us of our energy, leaving little for our desired improvement. Acknowledging that so much of what we do is a continuation of karmic threads can help here. And also to realize that we need to stop adding to the karmic chain. How? By chanting “Amituofo” and dedicating the merits to all those we hurt.

And expending our energy thus saved on self-cultivation.