A Penance:
Have regard for those who inhabit this world with you.
When with sinners remember your own frailty.
When with the innocent respect and use your own strength in their service.
Do as well as you can and leave the rest to God.
Be a true penitent through life toward Grace.
--by Edith Mary Pargeter
Translated for our practice:
A Penance (for we are all doing penance):
Have regard for those who inhabit this world with you.
When with “sinners,” remember your own frailty.
When with “the innocent,” respect and use your own strength in their service.
Do as well as you can and leave the rest to That Which Is.
Be a true penitent through Life toward Grace.
The changes:
All of us who ever identify with egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate benefit from an awareness that we must be vigilant to avoid ego coming in, taking over, and causing us to allow ego-driven unconscious thoughts, words, and deeds. If we chose, we could see that as penance for all the unconscious unskillfulness in the past. Do we need to dwell on what happened, allow ego voices to make us feel bad about what ego was allowed to do when we were “put to sleep” by ego? No, and we are happy to use the past as a reminder of what can happen and as an inspiration to use our efforts to “cease from evil, do only good, and do good for others” (traditional Buddhist Precepts) and to offer “the merit for all good acts” to all beings.
Are there such things as sinners? Yes, we all are when in unconsciousness we inhabit the illusory world of ego and, identifying with ego, acting for ego and against Life. Is that possible? No, but that’s for another conversation! Are there such things as innocents? Yes, innocence is the True Nature of All Being. Can we know which is which—sinner or innocent? No, because only ego would claim to want to know, pretend to try to know, or attempt to convince us we could know.
So, where does that leave us? It leaves us diligently endeavoring to do our best while leaving everything to That Which Is. Because this is what is, we don’t have to be anxious, worry, or fear. We don’t have to look to conditioned mind, to ego conversations, to know what to do. We don’t even need to do. We can simply trust in the guidance of That Which Is, in the unfolding of Life, as we move through Life toward dissolving into Grace.
Gasshō,
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