A Belated Apology

On a sweltering summer afternoon, cicadas hummed steadily outside the garden. In a small room, a hammock swayed gently. The teacher lay there, eyes closed, but his mind was far from at peace. For so many years, a feeling of remorse had clung to him like a shadow.

When he was young, the teacher had read the books of a great Indian philosopher named Chris Nabuti. His older brother had brought the books home and read them with great enthusiasm. The teacher picked them up as well, but found them very hard to understand. The writing, translated from a Western language into English, and then into Vietnamese, felt stiff and dry—not at all like the Vietnamese literature in which he excelled. He felt irritated, unable to accept it. He thought: "What is this man saying? Nothing good at all. Surely he is just an ordinary thinker."

But time passed. The teacher grew up, encountered the Buddha's teachings (Dharma), and came to understand them. One day, he suddenly remembered what Chris Nabuti had written. Reading it again, he was startled. This man was no ordinary person. He was someone who had attained enlightenment, a holy being. And yet for so many years, the teacher had opposed him—not with attacks, but in his heart, there had been opposition. Even if it existed only in the heart, that alone was already a grave fault.

From then on, the feeling of repentance grew stronger. It gnawed at him day after day. He often asked himself: "How could I have misunderstood a holy being like that? How did I dare oppose someone I had never truly understood?" The feeling was like a hidden wound that would not heal.

That afternoon, lying in the hammock, he thought about the old story again. Weary, he drifted off to sleep without realizing it. In his dream, he saw Chris Nabuti appear. The man looked at him and smiled gently. That smile was like a warm ray of sunlight, dispelling all the darkness in the teacher's heart. He woke with a start, sweat beading on his forehead. But strangely, all the remorse and regret he had carried for so long suddenly vanished. His heart felt extraordinarily light, as if a burden of a thousand pounds had been lifted.

He understood that the man had come, and he had forgiven. He knew the teacher repented, and he had forgiven. It was the only time in the teacher's life that a sincere heart of repentance redeemed a mistake that seemed impossible to mend.

The Meaning of the Story

A repentant heart has the power to wash away wrongdoing. When we sincerely repent, punishing ourselves through remorse, the painful karmic retribution we would otherwise have to face from outside is lessened, and may even disappear. Repentance is a form of moral practice that helps us purify the soul and draw closer to enlightenment.

Compiled from a dharma talk by Venerable Thích Chân Quang