102 BUDDHADHARMA: THE PRACTITIONER'S QUARTERLY
Earth innocently like that, ignoring the effects of the way we treat
it. How do we love now, past innocence? How do we stay with that
love even when it near kills us with hurt?
Perhaps letting loss stain our love will help, because it will keep
us closer to what’s actually happening. Perhaps letting remorse stain
our love will help us do what a genuine love must do now: acknow-
ledge our debt.
Peter Hershock once said that in the Chinese koan tradition,
remorse is the foundation of morality. He didn’t elaborate, so I’ve
carried his thought around with me since. As best I understand,
remorse begins with listening without interrupting, and then feel-
ing with, experiencing the pain I’ve caused as my own. The natural
result is a desire not to do whatever it was again. And so remorse
becomes inquiry: How did this happen? How can I keep from
repeating it? How can I make amends?
This too is the activity of love. Grief is how we love in the face of
loss, remorse is how we love when we’ve caused harm. How could
they not be part of the work of this time? Right now it is difficult to
imagine loving the future we believe is coming, but someday soon
we will have to. How can we if we’re still drenched in unacknow-
ledged grief, if instead of attending to remorse, we’re lost in guilt and
denial?
We don’t cry forever. Grief changes, growing from its wild begin-
nings into a kind of dignity. Remorse becomes a noble companion.
They fit the season—as unexamined innocence no longer does,
as outrage only partially can. We can’t know from here what our
love of what’s coming will look like, but we can decide how we’ll
walk out to meet it. Right now we are so pregnant with the future,
pregnant without entirely knowing what’s about to be born. We’re
entering a great mystery together. We bring to this invisible ceremony
our warrior skills, our hungers and our strivings, the genius of our
minds—all the things that got us here—hoping we’ll do something
different with them this time. Perhaps we could also bring washed
hearts humbled by what we have done, and a willingness to follow
love wherever it takes us, as we step into the great ceremony of the
rest of our lives.