This is a very deep question. Regret is part of Moral Shame. Moral Shame is one of the two virtues that protect the world. Fear of having regrets in the future, is actually Moral Dread, which is the other virtue that protects the world: Moral Shame and Moral Dread. These are very important in our practice, they are unpleasant spiritual feelings, which actually can inspire us to let go of Dukkha. Unless we feel them, we may not feel enough compassion for ourselves to want to bring up the effort to have enough awareness to prevent these things arising in the future. So we wouldn't want you not to feel regret, but we have to keep it balanced so that it does bring about a little bit of concern about doing the same things in the future, that is, Moral Dread. Because this is actually how one protects oneself and has compassion for oneself, being careful of one's actions, speech and thoughts.
So how do we work skillfully with Moral Shame and Moral Dread? First, we have to be able to look truthfully at our actions, speech and thoughts, look at what we did in the past that was unskillful, unwise, and brought suffering to ourselves and others. This is the process of being truthful. Truthfulness is essential for the purification of the mind. It's actually investigating into the first two Noble Truths, seeing Dukkha and seeing the cause of it; and not blaming it on others.
So truthfulness is important, but to prevent it going into self-hatred and other neurotic sorts of mind states, which prevent us from developing ourselves, we have to learn the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness for what we have done, and then bring up the determination to try to prevent ourselves from doing it again in the future. Determination is one of the Paramis. Determination or Resolution, making a resolution to try to be more aware of our motivations, through compassion for ourselves and for others.
So how do we forgive ourselves? We have to look at what we did and we have to see, "OK, so why were we doing it? What hindrances were arising in us at that time? What views did we have? What intentions did we have? Were they skilful? Were they unskillful?" We want to see whether we had awareness to protect ourselves at that time, whether we had enough understanding or other factors that help us actually understand that these are unskillful now. And if we see that we were lacking in wisdom, that we were lacking in compassion, if we were lacking in awareness, we try to understand the Dukkha of that person at that time. That person was suffering, wasn't able to protect themselves, didn't have these qualities to protect themselves. So we try to have compassion for the person we were in the past, realizing that they didn't have these qualities to protect themselves.
And then in order not to freeze ourselves into this idea of ourselves and create a solid static self-image of ourselves, we want to see whether there has been any changes in ourselves, whether our understanding is now different: whether our intentions are different, whether we really want to do that again. And if we see the change, then we can acknowledge the change and try to bring forgiveness to that person, realizing that we have the capacity to walk out of Dukkha. We have that potential, and we don't want to freeze ourselves in that time. So we'll try to have forgiveness for that person and see the difference between that person and ourselves. Understanding that we are a changing process. This is where Resolution comes in, making a resolution to try to protect ourselves from such actions again, bringing up the determination to have more effort and awareness to protect ourselves. This is having compassion for ourselves right now, and also compassion for the person that we're going to become.
This is where Moral Dread is quite important in our practice, because unless we have some fear of wrong actions and fear of making bad Kamma, we wouldn't want to actually make the effort to try to protect ourselves from this. But we also have to be careful of going into excessive fear that we don't have the potential to protect ourselves, by understanding that we do have beneficial qualities right now, we have changed, and we have the capacity to continue to develop these qualities. So we need awareness, Right View and Right Intention to protect ourselves from suffering in the future. So I believe if you work with regret and the fear of regrets in the future, it will do a lot to develop these Paramis, do a lot to develop these factors of enlightenment or the Noble Eightfold Path. Especially the effort to prevent and the effort to let go, the effort to let go of self-hatred and of these other paralyzing mind-states that prevent us seeing our potential. So working with regrets in this way can help us.