Venerable Ru Jun used this question as a jumping point to discuss what we should be focusing on when we do repentance.
(from 8:31min mark)
My learning:
Venerable illustrates how if you have a chance to earn $100M versus $10k, choosing the latter represents a big loss rather than a small win. This is because you have wasted the potential to earn much more.
So similarly, when we repent, we should take the chance to repent our big faults like not having the merits displayed by our Master and Teachers:
- how come my 依止法 cannot be as good as Teacher’s
- how come my faith in my Teachers is not as good as the faith my Teachers have in their Teachers
- how come I can’t be close to my Teachers like how they are able to learn closely from their own Teachers.
This is versus the “smaller” faults like repenting on getting angry at some person. There is still merit, but the merit is much smaller.
So think carefully if you want to earn $10M or $10k!