Types and Methods of Repentance

Wherever you created karma, you must sincerely repent there and vow never to commit it again; before however many people you created the karma, before that many people you must sincerely repent. If the influence of the evil karma is very great, and your study of the Dharma has already reached a considerable level, you may adopt the repentance of suchness (reality). The repentance of suchness is divided into two kinds. One is the repentance of the non-arising principle according to the Small Vehicle: in meditation, contemplate the unreality of the five aggregates and the unreality of the bodily, verbal, and mental actions created by the five aggregates; when you attain the first fruit (stream-entry) or are oriented toward the first fruit, and obtain the pure Dharma eye, the repentance will be purified.

The other is the repentance of the non-arising principle of tathāgatagarbha according to the Mahāyāna Dharma: contemplate how the bodily, verbal, and mental actions just performed arose, and finally realize that all of your bodily, verbal, and mental actions are born bit by bit from the tathāgatagarbha; there is no reality to bodily, verbal, and mental actions—the five aggregates are illusory, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions that exist dependent on the five aggregates are therefore also illusory—and the karma is thus dissolved. Of course, one must be fully endowed with preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi) before there is any hope of directly realizing the tathāgatagarbha, and only afterward can one observe exactly how bodily, verbal, and mental actions are born from the tathāgatagarbha. Once you have realized the Buddha-Dharma, all karma leading to the three evil destinies is eliminated, including the karmic offenses of the three evil destinies accumulated over beginningless kalpas. But this is extremely difficult; it requires quite excellent roots of goodness, merit, meditative concentration (samādhi), wisdom, and the proper conditions.