Confession Practice

The teaching of the confession of sin that purifies the mindstream

Visualize in the sky in front of you all the lamas and all the Buddhas and then let them dissolve. 

Normally, we do the same visualization for confession as we do for generating bodhichitta, and taking refuge. 

Visualize in the sky in front of you an eight lion throne. On the throne is a sun cushion. On the sun cushion is a moon cushion. On this moon cushion is a lotus flower. On this, visualize your root lama in the form of Shenla Okar. In front of your root lama, visualize the inner and outer yidam deities, the Buddhas of the ten directions, Rigdzin awareness holders, and Yungdrung Senpas (Bodhisattvas), and the lineage lamas of the sutra, tantra, and dzogchen. Around them are the khandromas, and protectors – both wisdom protectors and worldly protectors. All are gathered like clouds in the sky in front and around your root lama. 

Behind your root lama is the representation of the Enlightened body, speech, and mind. The representation of the Enlightened body is the statue of the Buddha. The representation of the Enlightened speech is the scriptures of the Buddha’s teachings. The representation of the Enlightened mind is the stupa. You can visualize many of these statues, scriptures and stupas vividly existing in the 10 directions.

We visualize like this, so that we have an object to confess to. We are openly confessing to Shenla Okar and all the great Enlightened beings.

Next, reflect: myself and all sentient beings from the beginningless lifetimes until now have been wandering in samsara bounded by ego-grasping. We praise only suffering. This experience of suffering arises from engaging in countless negative actions of the body, speech, and mind. 

Therefore, all sentient beings, including ourself, have accumulated countless negative actions of the body, speech, and mind from countless lifetime to lifetime until now. According to the negative action there are the great five inexpiable actions, the five nearly inexpiable actions, and the four heavy actions, eight perverse actions, nine delusions, and ten non-virtues.

The five inexpiable actions

1. Killing your own father.

2. Killing your own mother.

3. Killing your son and daughter

4. killing your nephew and niece,

5. killing your student

These are inexpiable because the result when you die is to immediately be reborn into the hell realm of ceaseless torment without going through the bardo state.

The five nearly inexpiable actions

1. Killing Bӧn or Buddhist practitioners (monks, nuns, lay people)

2. destroying consecrated three objects of support (statues, scriptures, stupas)

3. revealing the teachings,

4. killing those who have entered the teachings,

5. Causing spiritual friends to impair the root spiritual commitments.

The four heavy actions

1. To anger the lama or spiritual teacher,

2. being friends with bad people – people who do negative actions,

3. causing generous people to stop being like that,

4. And doing the opposite of what you promise.

These are very evil so they are considered heavy.

The eight wrong actions

1. Yelling from the top of a mountain,

2. setting fire to a forest,

3. making a river go in another direction as a trap,

4. teaching incorrectly,

5. helping others kill,

6. fighting in a civil war,

7. denying the law of cause and effect,

8. And having sex with your relatives.

The nine delusions

1. To believe dreams are real,

2. the mind being seduced and going after the object with admiration,

3. harming and scorning older people,

4. having great desire and attachment for cyclic existence,

5. too much affection for relatives,

6. having great desire and attachment for possessions,

7. too attached to your area or country,

8. previous bad karma continuing in this life too powerfully,

9. And being distracted by endless worldly activities.

The Ten Non-Virtues

The Three Non-Virtues of the Body

a. Killing is the act of separating the body and mind of a sentient being.

The divisions are:

1. Killing through hatred like warriors killing enemies in battle.

2. Killing through attachment and desire like desiring to eat the flesh and wear the skin of goats, sheeps, and so forth.

3. Killing through ignorance like those who do not know the cause and effect of virtue and non-virtue, or those who do not understand religion properly and make offerings of sentient beings.

b. Sexual Misconduct is immoral sexual intercourse

The divisions are:

1. Protected by lineage like brother and sister of the same parents

2. Protected by spouse, like having sex with a married person

3. Protected by precepts, like having sex with a nun who has taken vows

c. Stealing, taking what is not given, is taking possessions that you do not own that

were not given to you.

The divisions are:

1. Taking by force, like taking without the authority of the government or king.

2. Stealing through power, like many people together with the power of arms directly stealing and so forth.

3. Stealing in a stealthy manner, like a thief who does not use force but takes belongings without the owner seeing.

4. Taking possessions in business and so forth by lying to deceive others

5. Taking through deceit, like making up wrong volume and measurements and so forth in order to take and claim ownership of others possessions and so forth.

The Four Non-Virtues of Speech

a. Harsh speech is to disturb others' minds with your words.

The divisions are:

1. Direct harsh speech is like exclaiming to someone about their being deaf or blind and calling them that right to them.

2. Indirect harsh speech, like sending messages that disturb other’s minds.

3. Abusive speech; although the words may be pleasant, they make other’s minds upset.

b. Pointless speech is speaking many irrelevant, meaningless words.

The divisions are

1. Nonsense speech that is spontaneously, carelessly speaking

2. Especially pointless speech is talking when you know you should not talk, like at a prayer gathering or initiation.

3. Unreal pointless speech like singing and stories.

c. Lying is to know the truth of something but to express untrue words to others.

The divisions are:

1. Lying without benefit or harm which is not intending to mislead, others, like saying things that are untrue when joking around.

2. Lying with benefit and harm, intending to mislead others and, speaking untrue words.

3. Serious lying, like falsely claiming to see Buddhas, and saying you have attained levels of spiritual realization that you have not.

d. Divisive Speech is saying words that incite discord between friends and break

their relationship

The divisions are:

1. Forceful divisive speech, when someone with power directly uses forceful words to separate friends.

2. Concealed divisive speech, as when there are two friends and you go to one and say the other criticized him, then this causes them to separate.

3. Exhorting divisive speech, although the divisive speech is not direct, you say something to others whom the friends associate with which creates discord between the two friends.

The Three Non-Virtues of the Mind

a. Evil Mindedness is a desirous mind that wishes to get attractive things, food,

possessions, and so forth for oneself.

The divisions are:

1. The evil mind wishing to get others’ food and wealth for oneself.

2. Delighting and having evil thoughts that others do not have fortune, possessions, and so forth.

3. Selfishness, wishing to have fortune, possessions, and so forth for oneself, and at the same time delighting in others not getting such things.

b. Malice is the intention to harm the object one feels is unpleasant.

The divisions are:

1. The mind is angry with another and wants to harm and injure which is the malice that arises from the aspect of hatred.

2. When you become unhappy about others being great and famous is the malice that arises from the aspect of jealousy.

3. When you do not forget being harmed previously by others and you want to retaliate which is malice arising from the aspect of resentment.

c. Wrong Views are the mistaken understanding of the meaning.

The divisions are:

1. The wrong view of cause and effect of thinking that there is no benefit to positive actions, and that there is no harm in negative actions.

2. The wrong view of the Three Jewels of not going for refuge in the Buddha, and not having faith in the Buddha’s teachings.

3. Following the wrong views of the truth of extremist philosophies

Even if you have never done some of these actions in this life, we need to understand that this is not our only life, but countless past lives. And in these past lives, we have done wrong actions. In a past life, born as an animal, we may have done heavy negative actions without knowing any better. But now in this human body and human mind we can reflect upon our negative actions and confess our sins from this life and past. In past lives we may not have had the capacity to reflect as we can now. So we should use this precious life to reflect deeply and make genuine confessions. 

There are three ways in which we create negative actions. First, some negative actions are done by ourselves. Second, some negative actions are through encouraging others to do negative actions. Third, sometimes we rejoice in the negative actions of others even if we don’t do them or encourage others to do them. These three are done through ignorance of sentient beings. So we should generate compassion for all beings who don’t know any better and confess our own actions when we create negative actions in these three ways.

Previous negative actions done by myself or other sentient beings done unknowingly not understanding the difference between positive and negative actions and under the power and influence of their ignorance, I confess. 

Negative actions come from the negative mind. The root negative mind is ignorance. Some sentient beings have more powerful negative actions because their ignorance is more powerful. That's why we need more compassion for those sentient beings. Those mother sentient beings who do not know any better. They do not know virtue from non-virtue.

Feel that all of these sentient beings are our family. They are our father, mother, brother, sister, nephew, etc. Even through they appear like an enemy today, they are still our family from previous lives. Just with a different form, different mental state, different influences by ignorance, some more some less. But still all beings we should show compassion for.

Remembering all of these negative actions in our mind, never think “I don’t do these things.” We need to accept our actions from beginningless samsara.

What does beginningless samsara mean? Samsara is not a physical thing. Samsara is those who feel suffering. These different levels of suffering we call samsara. Beginningless samsara are sentient beings, including us. 

Remember and reflect on these negative actions that we have done and suffered from and in front of all the Buddhas and Senpas [which we visualize] who have the quality of knowing all the negative actions we have done in the past clearly in their mind and in front of the refuge objects we confess.

Feel strong regret for all the past negative actions from the center of our heart.

From now on, I will take my pure mind as my witness. I will abandon all the negative actions and having joined the great vehicle’s teachings and practice I will practice seriously on cultivating even the smallest roots of virtue. 

We need to make this kind of promise to ourselves.

When we confess, we take ourselves as a representation of all sentient beings. Thus we confess our own actions, and the negative actions of all beings. We can take upon all the negative actions of all beings and confess on their behalf. That is the best way to practice. If that is difficult to do, then simply confess your own negative actions, purifying yourself through confession practice so that you can become a Buddha now to help your fellow mother sentient beings who are suffering in this very moment.

In this world, it is truly wonderful of those noble beings who engage with virtuous deeds (conditioned and unconditioned virtue).

Conditioned virtue includes actions such as generosity, practice of vows, rituals, prostrations, through the teachings, through meditation, etc.

Unconditioned virtue includes the non-practice of non-visualization, non-conceptual meditation, meditation on impermanence, emptiness, and the natural state of mind.

I always rejoice greatly in all of the noble beings. Reflecting like this, you should pray the confession prayer.

བཤགས་པ།

Confession of Sins

From our many past lifetimes, whatever non-virtuous, sinful actions I and all other

sentient beings have committed,

Whether done by ourselves, instigated, encouraged, or rejoiced in,

Whether mentally, spoken, or actually performed,

Whether done intentionally, unintentionally, completed or not,

Subtle, gross, and similar to negative actions,

Likewise, all those done and will be done,

Remembering them all without forgetting even a little,

Gathering all the sins and obscurations in our minds,

In the presence of the sacred objects of refuge,

We intensely confess with feelings of regret, sorrow, and dismay.

Having continuously abandoned non-virtuous actions and obscurations,

We will pursue all virtuous actions.

The practice of confession will purify all the previous negative actions and obscurations. Through that one will become a suitable for the teachings of the great vehicles. If you do not do this kind of confession practice, it is like trying to write on oil paper. [You can not write ink on oil paper.] That is why you need to understand that without confession, you will not be a suitable vessel for the great vehicle’s teachings.

Until here the teachings on the purification through confession is finished.