True Repentance and False Repentance

Repentance, if it is truly sincere repentance, with the manas willing to repent of its faults, can transform karmic seeds, or make karmic seeds disappear, or make karmic seeds less likely to manifest, or lighten the retribution. Because when the manas is able to repent, the mental conduct changes, and new karmic seeds can be stored to offset the old karmic seeds; the degree of repentance differs, and the degree of offsetting differs accordingly. If it is not sincere repentance, but merely a perfunctory, going-through-the-motions repentance of the mind consciousness, then the manas's mental conduct does not change, the old karmic seeds do not change, and the retribution will not change.

It is just like this when we repent to someone face to face: if the other person senses that our repentance is sincere, their heart often softens and they forgive us, no longer holding past grievances against us; if the other person feels our repentance is insincere, they know our mind has not changed, will not forgive us, and will then seek ways to retaliate. Especially when they know we are pretending to repent and deliberately deceiving them, they will become even angrier, thereby intensifying their retaliation. True repentance is the repentance of the manas; false repentance is merely the superficial perfunctoriness of the mind consciousness. Naturally, true repentance is effective and can dissolve karmic obstructions, while false repentance cannot dissolve karmic obstructions and may even aggravate the karma.