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Buddhists make mistakes right?
msac123
Explorer
I am not a Buddhist but I have aspirations to be one. Now, I know that humans make mistakes even Buddhists, but I feel guilty about mistakes. I know I should learn from them, but does anyone feel this way too?
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Comments
For mistakes?
1 See that mistakes are a quagmire to escape.
2 Resolve to stop making that mistake.
3 Create skillful karma to counteract like meditation, contemplation, and mindfulness.
4 Take refuge in the dharma as you would a ship captain to get you to the land.
Namaste,
I think we all do at times (except for @lobster he's a freak LOL j/k). It's human nature. And although I'm no expert, I think to practise Buddhismis to be human, just to be more mindful of it.
In metta,
Raven
As that raven @dhammachick says, the faultless are freaky . . . and a mistake . . .
As you mature and become a seasoned Cushion squasher, kindly dharmaist, sangha supporter (Come on you monks!) etc. you will find your guilt falls away as do your dukkha clinging tendencies. So for example even the freaky cructaceans feel guilty about lack of skill to enable others but they don't beat themselves over it . . . they take it out on the defenceless and innocent Mr Cushion . . .
Bad cushion, naughty cushion [whack, whack]
It depends on the mistake doesn't it?
As a recent convert to Buddhism, it seems to me that dwelling on past mistakes, or feeling guilty about them would be a form of unhealthy attachment to a form of suffering.
Does that mean that no one can feel bad about the mistakes they've made? No - but then what do we do about it?
I think it is more productive to try and do better rather than continuing to feel bad about a mistake - by all means: look at what happened, look at your behavior, look at others behavior, and think about what you might have done differently so you'll be prepared to do so next time.
From what I've read, much about Buddhism is literally "being prepared" - prepared for the next life through Good Karma, proper mindfullness can be prepared by proper meditation, and some of us prepare ourselves for Enlightenment by following the Eight-fold path.
I understand from personal experience that it is much harder to view our mistakes in such a way, especially if they are terrible mistakes that have hurt others - I don't mean to say that it is simple.
I think, what it comes down to, is that mistakes are mistakes - you didn't intend for them to happen but they do. If you intended a "mistake" to happen, then it wasn't a mistake, it was a deliberate choice.
Try to forgive others their mistakes, and it should be easier for you to forgive your own.
Exactly so.
We practice for our next level/life/being. Without this we are playing at Buddhism, which is fine for kinder dharma but so soon they grow . . .
ain't it so Mr Cushion?
True.
I am almost 50 years old and make mistakes every six or seven nanoseconds. One blessing of the aging process is that by then, you've made SO MANY mistakes and haven't been struck by lightening, shunned from society or thrown in jail for being ugly that making mistakes is kind of no big deal any more.
The Buddha himself made mistakes. The Jakarta Tales are full of his mistakes.
When a Buddhist makes mistakes, they are not going to Hell or punished by some greater power, which is a relief to those brought up in a Christian or Jewish context. Mistakes are expected and seen as opportunities.
The stuff going through your head right now, as you consider Buddhism for yourself, is mostly irrelevant, and that is GOOD NEWS. You only need to worry about 0,00002% of what you've been worried with so far. You are already really, really OK
If you don't agree, then you are missing the point. Isn't that great news? You aren't bad or wrong, you are just lacking knowledge and experience 
You can get knowledge and experience studying the Four Noble Truths and trying to meditate once a day no matter how badly it goes. It's all already good in Buddhism, when it comes to the concerns you've been posting 
I am not sure that I accept the whole concept of 'mistakes' in this context.
We do stuff.
Sometimes what we do is on purpose..in which case its not a mistake.
Sometimes what we do is unintentional..in which case its not a mistake.
Sometimes it works out..in which case its not a mistake..
The only mistake I can imagine is doing something on purpose which does not work out..so we do it again expecting a different result.
On reflection it might be a difference between English English and American English.
While watching the news I have heard American males , on being asked about killing three people reply, ' sure I have made mistakes '..and my reaction is ' What ! That wasnt a mistake...you MEANT it '...
As an American, perhaps I can help clarify:
"Mistake" in that context means "upon further reflection of my intended action, I realize it was the wrong thing to do. I wouldn't want people to be hard on me for doing that, so maybe we shouldn't be so hard on other people who do the same thing."
I agree with you though, @Citta - I wouldn't call killing three people a "mistake."
As we all know we have a tendency to ignore the obvious. Even enlightenment is as close as a blink, yet we miss it . . . would that be a mistake? . . . Ignoring our life, our surroundings, our blessings and difficulties, you name it, someone has found a way to ignore it. We all have different degrees of ignoring the symbols, signs, arisings, wonders, mundaneness, breath and blinking obvious. However some are no longer content with a life of 'mistaken' living. They wish to know the wise course of action. Or to put it another way, free of the mistake that mistakes are avoidable except on the most trivial level of behaviour modification.
The foolish are best treated as if wise, it would be a mistake not to. Nobody except the wise are glad to have their ignorance pointed out to them. That after all is how they became wise. The simplest level of wisdom is that of the worldly. They have lived. They have experienced. They know the trite from the profound, the genuine from the flim-flam and the mature from the childish. They have in effect grown up. A wise move if I am not mistaken.
However we are talking here of the spiritual dimension of wisdom v ignorance/mistakes; in Buddhism sometimes personified as Manjushri. This is not intellectual reasoning, important and useful as that is. This is not book learned or teacher expounded facts and techniques, important and useful as these may be. Spiritual wisdom is knowing oneself and through that all things that manifest from and through that self.
How do we contact that wisdom self, that self that is not ignorant and stuck on patterns of trivia and conflict, internal and external? I suggest it is a mistake not to.
_Mr Cushion says Manjushri is a pin cushion . . .
Bad cushion!_
This is known as regret, and is an acknowledgement of those mistakes... This passes and then you move on to the next [mistake], trying to be mindful not to make it.
According to the sutras, Buddha at first refused to admit women into the Sangha as full members. Then later on, he was talked into changing his mind by Ananda. After Buddha's death, the other monks (the men only) put Ananda on trial for talking Buddha into letting women into the Sangha, so they obviously believed a Buddha could make a big mistake.
So either Buddha made a mistake when he first refused to admit women, and later with some urging reconsidered and changed his mind and corrected his mistake, or he made a mistake when he later changed his mind. Which was it? In either case, Buddha made a mistake, but aren't Buddhas supposed to be perfect in knowledge and free from error? An interesting koan to rank up there with why Bodhidharma came from the West.
Living can be described as making a series of mistakes, in the process creating something we call a "life". Another name for a mistake is "taking a chance". We make a decision and take a chance on it having a good result or working out all right in the end. If it doesn't work out the way we hoped, we call it a mistake. That's life.
I hope PAnanda was free to rejoin . . . and hang out with the women . . . one sex dharma? Worse than Jainism (orthodox nuns are not capable of enlightenment).
Cultural brainwashing runs deep. I think @betaboy would be treating me differently if I was a panda . . .
Buddha made plenty of mistakes. Elite sangha, leaving teachings with nagas, gender prejudice (quite the thing at the time) and hapless monks.
However look at what he achieved
OM MANY PANDA HUM
At the risk of pedantry I would distinguish between guilt and shame.
Guilt I suggest is what we feel when we don't reach our own standards of behaviour.
Shame is what we feel when our behaviour differs from some social norm.
Guilt is healthy. We acknowledge that our behaviour has fallen short and try to learn from that.
We don't wallow in it, but we are not in denial either.
We don't just ' let ourselves off '.
Shame is no use to anyone...
Buddhism is not about "the guilt trip." You make mistakes, you learn, you move on. You' ll do better next time. Buddhism is a pragmatic self-healing belief. It is meant to enable you to deal a happier life, not to dwell on your mistakes, the past, the guilt.
The Path of Mistakes (audio)
Thank you. I really needed that and it makes me understand how the path of Buddhism is more important than the goal of the path.
@msac123
Buddhists make mistakes right?
Take bar of Buddhist soap, wet, chew and remember that taste next time you consider putting Buddhists and mistakes in the same sentence!
But seriously...
I sometimes wonder if the word mistake just refers to any action that we regret with guilt just being an optional identification to it.
The goal helps you remember what path you should be on. They're not really separate. Even if the goal were more important, what have you heard/read tht suggests Buddhists cannot falter in any way trying to achieve the goal?