Okay, we don't have "moral disgust." We have "Moral Dread," and dread is different in English from "disgust." "Disgust," to me, would really fit on the moral shame side, where we're disgusted with what we did. This is just a clarification of words, so let me re-read this using "moral dread" instead of "moral disgust": "Connecting moral shame, forgiveness and moral dread, is it necessary to first forgive the act of moral shame in order to build a more pure form of moral dread? Or are the two not related?"
It certainly helps to forgive all those things we did which moral shame brings up. Yes, it's very essential. Moral dread will work best if it's not hampered by regret. Forgiveness takes away the regret. For moral dread to work the best way, forgiveness has to work itself into all those things that moral shame brings up. Earlier we compared moral shame to a big database with information about everything in the past we did wrong. Moral shame is typing away and has a list of all these things. We take a look at it and say, "Okay, when I was ten years old I stole a candy bar." Can we open with Compassionate/Lovingkindness for that ten-year-old who stole a candy bar? Can we give Compassionate/Lovingkindness for the shop owner who lost the little bit of money? Can we then open it up with the D/D method for all the ten-year-olds today who are stealing a candy bar? If somebody stole something from us in the past, can we forgive them?
So we try to forgive that ten-year-old and we try to forgive all the other ten-year-olds for doing the same thing and understand it's just due to their conditioning. Who taught them how to steal? Their older brother, their older sister, their older cousin? Somebody taught me. I don't know about everyone else, but for me it was my cousin from Brooklyn. So, can we forgive that little ten-year-old we were? The minute we forgive, we soften around it, how much easier is it for moral dread to say, "I'm not ever going to steal anything else again for the rest of my life"? It's much easier to do that when we've forgiven who we were, and we understand it was not good, and we forgive everyone else.
Then, it's also easier to forgive people who steal something from us. This has been nice when I've had things stolen from me. This story is a little hard to believe: in one retreat eighteen or so years ago, on Day 3 evening, I was giving the talk, right here on this platform, in this hall. You know what the Day 3 evening talk is. It's the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation. It's a very nice meditation, where we're learning how to be loving and kind to everybody. At that time, I lived over in the monks' area, in the small wooden hut that's near the little Buddha statue. I finish the talk, I go back to the hut, the door's open, and I have a tape recorder and a pair of sunglasses stolen!
I was so loving and kind for an hour and a half and there I was, having these things stolen! (laughs) It was interesting to see my reaction, the disbelief at first. I wasn't really angry -- things had been stolen before -- but it just seemed a little bizarre that it happened while I was giving a Compassion/Lovingkindness talk and meditation. But because I had been guilty myself, as a little kid, of taking a few things here or there, I opened my heart to this poor person who took the stuff from me, who not only stole in this case, but stole from a monastery, stole from people who were doing something so good. That person makes more bad Kamma, according to Buddhism, than if they had stolen the same tape recorder from someone down at a bungalow. So that's even more interesting, that we can open our heart for this person who's making such bad Kamma for themselves.
The more you open your heart with forgiveness for all of the unbeneficial things you've done, that moral shame brings up, then the more it's possible to open your heart for others, as well. And then, of course, that forgiveness will definitely strengthen your moral dread, so that you're fully convinced that "No, I'm never going to do this ever again." After all, how many times do you want to do the same thing that's unbeneficial, and have to forgive yourself, and have all the regret, over and over and over? How many times do you want to burn yourself with fire? It's up to you, isn't it?