The Mental Factor of Regret (Kaukṛtya)

The mental factor of remorse (kaukṛtya) refers to regretting, repenting, condemning, and becoming weary of what one has done in the past; at times it belongs to wholesome mental factors, and at times it belongs to unwholesome mental factors. Ordinary beings and those at the three stages of the wise (the thirty-one to forty-first stages of bodhisattva development) have remorse in the manas, sometimes wholesome and sometimes unwholesome; sages who have severed afflictions and whose minds are pure also have remorse in the manas, but it is always wholesome. If someone does a wholesome deed and then regrets it, that is an unwholesome dharma. For bodhisattvas of the eighth bhūmi and above, whose afflictive habits have been completely severed, the manas has no remorse, because they no longer commit wrong deeds; the Buddha's manas has even less the mental factor of remorse, due to His great wisdom. When the manas of beings in the hells feels remorse for the evil karma they have committed, this is wholesome, and the evil karma is thereby extinguished; they will immediately emerge from the hells. The mind consciousness of beings in the hells, being preoccupied with undergoing suffering, has no mind to feel remorse; even if the mind consciousness could feel remorse, it could not eliminate the evil karma and enable them to emerge from the hells, because the mind consciousness does not make the decisions.