Repentance is self-reflection. The purpose of self-reflection is to get rid of the bad habits of ignorance, greed, hatred, ignorance, and ignorance. The reason why people are ignorant is because they can't reflect on themselves. If one cannot reflect on oneself, one cannot see one's own shortcomings. Since beginninglessness, we have become accustomed to this, and even numb, so we are still in samsara.

Whether it is the study of the worldly law or the study of the worldly law, if you carefully observe yourself, you will find that most of the advantages are acquired, and most of the shortcomings are innate. Everyone has a lot of shortcomings, and there is an idiom called "no one is perfect", which is what it means. It seems that we have come into this world to learn how to change negative ways of thinking and shortcomings. Some people change a little more, some change a little less, and some people don't want to change at all. Those who have faith will change more.

The advantage of repentance is that it allows us to reflect on our ignorance. Through the education of Buddhism, we learn to observe our own hearts, actions and thoughts that we did not think were wrong before, and by observing cause and effect and good and evil, and thinking carefully, we are aware and begin to reflect. When we are really willing to observe ourselves from the inside and repent of our karma, we will find that there are so many shortcomings in us! Most people don't want others to see their shortcomings, and because of arrogance, they still think that they are perfect, and with such a mentality, they lose the opportunity to know themselves.

In the practice of Buddhism, the method of repentance accounts for a large part. Whether it is sutra or esoteric, there is a special method for repentance. In Mahayana teachings, there are many scriptures about confession. The most familiar treatment of repentance in Tantra is the practice of Vajrasattva, the king of repentance, which is also a lesson that we often do.

No matter how we do repentance, we must first know: Why do practitioners repent? In the world, if a person makes a mistake, he can admit it and review it, or he will be sentenced to prison for breaking the law. Now what we are talking about is that there are actions that not only violate the laws of the world, but also violate the precepts of the Dharma, and therefore are punished not only by the laws of the country, but also by the laws of cause and effect. Although they have nothing to do with the laws of the world and are not subject to social constraints, if they do not repent, they will have an absolute impact on their practice of wisdom, the cycle of birth and death, and ultimate liberation. Therefore, in order to become a true Buddhist, one must pay more attention to the purity of one's body, mouth, and mind than those who have not studied Buddhism, so that they can embark on the path of spiritual attainment.

To learn and practice Buddhism, one must purify one's karma, and the other must accumulate merit and wisdom in order to achieve something. In order to purify karma, one must rely on the method of repentance in practice. The so-called repentance is to use one's own piety and rely on the blessings of the Guru and the Three Jewels that one trusts and relies on to have a state of admitting and reluctance to one's own incorrect actions in one's body, mouth, and mind, in the hope of purifying one's karma and restraining oneself from making mistakes in the future. Repentance is like cleaning the house, and you need to clean your heart from time to time. Repentance is the cleansing of the garbage of the karma that we have accumulated since the beginningless!

The karma that we have accumulated since the beginning of time is accumulated by external beings for the object, and when we want to repent of our karma, of course, it is up to them to get rid of it. So, if you can emit a strong bodhichitta during repentance, it is very good to repent of karma in this way, and this is something that cannot be missing in repentance. Does repentance without bodhichitta eliminate karma? That would only lighten the karma, and it is impossible to remove the karma from the root because we don't have the ability! So, when we practice repentance, we have to repent of our karma with the intention of benefiting all sentient beings. Repentance with bodhichitta is the most skillful method of repentance.

Knowing the meaning and importance of repentance, it is necessary for us to focus our minds and concentrate on the process of repentance. If we recite the confession while our thoughts are drifting around, or if we sit in the Buddha hall with our bodies, but our minds are not really thinking, we don't send out repentance from our hearts, and we don't even know where we need to repent, and we just follow others to participate, that kind of confession is of course useless! Also, repentance is for oneself, not for others to see, and it is not because the guru or Buddha has prescribed that we should repent.

Many Buddhists are familiar with many confession methods and theories, and no matter where you learn what kind of confession method you learn, if you don't use it in your heart, what's the use of truly repenting? It's like when we go to the doctor, and the doctor talks about a lot of causes, and we all hear it, and the doctor prescribes medicine to us, and when we get home, we put the medicine next to our pillow, and we look at it once in a day, and if we don't take it, it won't help our condition. Therefore, when you learn the method of repentance, you must use it with your heart.

If, now, I give a lecture and you listen to it, you visualize it and visualize it, and your sinful karma is your sinful karma, and you still put the Dharma book there when you get home, it doesn't matter to me who is lecturing, but it won't have any real effect on your own karma. These are to be done with great caution! So, if we listen to the Dharma and then understand it deeply, study it diligently, and practice it according to it, it will be 100 percent helpful to our body and mind in this life, and it will be of considerable benefit to the liberation of samsara in future lives, which is true.

The most crucial step in hearing and thinking about the Dharma is to put it into practice, which is listening and meditating. We all want to be able to break free from the cage of suffering and samsara through the good karma of this life, so it's useless to just imagine it, everything has to start with a single step. Therefore, action and execution are key. In the whole process of meditation, because of the karma and habits of successive lifetimes, we don't have enough motivation to actively do good deeds and keep accumulating karma, so the role of repentance is to help us vacate or cleanse us of the dirt left on our minds by karma. When karma is cleansed by repentance, then our storage space for goodness will continue to increase, and the motivation to do good will continue to grow.