Moral Shame is in a group in the scriptures with another term called, "Moral Dread". Moral shame means we look into our past, and we see whatever actions we've done that are not skillful. Things we regret, things we wish we had not done. That's moral shame's job - to look in the past and say, "Oh, I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have stolen that. I shouldn't have lied about this, blah, blah, blah...". Now, if that's all we do, then it doesn't go very far, we just have a lot of information in our head about what we did that wasn't so good. So we want to use that information to improve who we are, otherwise we're just gong to do the same things again and again, because that's what we're conditioned to do.
Moral dread comes in here. Dread is a type of fear, in this case a very beneficial fear. We are afraid to repeat those unbeneficial actions we did in the past, which we have moral shame about. You can think of moral shame like compiling a big database with a lot of information about everything in the past we did wrong. Then it takes that folder and it hands it over to moral dread, and it says to moral dread, "Okay, moral dread, here study this, understand it fully, and don't do it again". So moral dread then watches out. This is where we want to be careful, we want to be mindful, we want to guard against repeating the same mistake over and over. So these two are a very close pair in Buddhism, called "Two virtues which protect the world". Two very important virtues.
It is said that if you can perfect moral shame and moral dread, you would get enlightened. This is because moral shame is recording everything you've done wrong. If moral dread then can stop you from doing those same things for ever and ever, you'll never do anything wrong again - never have anger, never have fear, or whatever, of course, you are gong to be enlightened. So that's how important these two are.
So back to the question: "Can you please talk about moral shame and forgiveness?"
Forgiveness has to work with the information moral shame brings up. We also need Compassionate/Lovingkindness in here.
Moral shame brings up information, e.g. 12 years old, stole some candy in the store. Wrong thing to do. Unbeneficial action. That's what moral shame says, lines it all up. What happens to most people when they first start thinking about these things we've done in the past that weren't so good? What happened to you when you were sitting in meditation the first time this kind of stuff came up? "Oh, I was a rotten kid! I did all this crummy stuff", whatever and on and on. We start hating ourselves, we start blaming ourselves, we start thinking "I'm a terrible person".
Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation, the really long one - if you remember at the end I go through our own life, e.g. 6 years old. Can you have compassion for that little 6-year-old? Who did not know everything? Who was ignorant of some things? Who made many mistakes? Can you do it for the 10-year-old; can you do it for the 15-year-old; last year, yesterday, and so one. We are breaking it down, so that we actually understand that who we were in the past is gone. They didn't know any better; they made mistakes.
If somebody makes a mistake that harms you - they didn't know any better, they made a mistake - and they immediately apologize, saying, "Oh my gosh! I'm sorry I stepped on your foot". Would you forgive them? You would, wouldn't you? Would you say, "Oh, it's okay"? If someone bumps into you, steps on your foot, then immediately says sorry, you'd forgive them. That's how we resolve the situation. In forgiveness we resolve the difficulty. The fact that the person made a mistake is resolved, the minute we forgive them.
Now, if someone steps on my toe accidentally, says "I'm sorry" and I say, "I think you did it on purpose. You're a jerk". It doesn't work, does it? Then it just builds more animosity, and the other person's going to hate us back, because they were sincere, and now we're not believing them, and boom! We can have World War 3, or something.
So forgiveness resolves situations. It resolves our guilt, it resolve our regret. It helps resolve every negative thought that we have about ourselves concerning things in the past. But unless moral shame brings the stuff up, we won't know what we should forgive ourselves for.
Sometimes, people want to do just a very broad forgiveness of, "Oh yeah, I forgive myself for everything I've done in the past". It usually doesn't work very well, because the stuff pops up later, they haven't dealt with each one individually.
So it does help very much to take a look at your past, in the scope of moral shame. Bring things to mind that you did that were not very skillful. Forgive yourself for it. That was a different human being who did that action. That was a person who made a mistake, did not know any better. Use forgiveness to help resolve the regret, the moral shame and so on, and then you also have to add something to this, because if you only forgive yourself when you've make a mistake, but then you do the same mistake again later, it's not really complete yet. This isn't what our practice wants. Our practice wants to forgive our mistakes in the past, and turn to moral dread and say, "Moral dread: get on with it, because I don't want to do that again and again!"
So moral dread is very important, and that's got part of our dedication, part of our motivation. Moral dread is very much empowered by our compassion, by our determination, by our energy. Moral dread has a lot of force in it, because that's what's gong to guard against us doing the same things again in the future.