What could one do with the vows which one made with an unclear mind and regretted it?
It's a good question.
I normally answer this by saying that it's possible to make bad vows.
I think that's really the clearest answer you can give to this is that or the most important thing that needs to be said is that first and foremost if a vow is truly immoral
impractical or improper, unbeneficial, then there has to be room for breaking the vow.
I don't see any other way around it.
It's a difficult thing to say because we don't want to encourage people to break promises.
It's kind of a...
And it's a disruptive practice to break a promise, disruptive for your own mind, disruptive for your own development of the ability to do what you say you're going to do.
And disruptive for the other person who is then disappointed.
But, I mean, suppose you promised to kill someone, right?
You made a vow that before my 20th birthday, I'm going to kill my parents or something like that.
No, whatever, I'm going to rob a bank.
Before I turn 30, I'm going to rob a bank.
And then you come and meet with Buddhism.
Or you take for Angulimala, for example.
Angulimala, I vow to kill 1,000 people.
so he killed 999 and then the 1000th was going to be his mother and then suddenly the Buddha appears and he learns from the Buddha learns the Buddha's teaching and so then the question is would you expect him to follow through with his vow even if he had promised suppose he had promised to his mother that he would kill 1000 people or promised someone to do such a horrible deed
promise to his teacher, this is what they say, should he go through with it?
I think the answer is no.
So I guess you have to do a little bit of weighing there and you'd have to somehow find a way to balance the unwholesomeness of the act and the unwholesomeness of breaking a promise.
because
Well, it doesn't seem to be technically or necessarily intrinsically immoral to break a promise.
You can omit to follow through with your promise, one would think, without giving rise to an immoral mind state.
Most people would feel guilty or worried about breaking the promise, afraid of breaking the promise.
but one would think that it were possible to break a promise without an immoral act.
It's not a nice thing to do, as I said, but it seems fairly low on the immorality scale, so you'd have to find a balance.
If, for example,
You have married someone and you have this vow to stay with them until death do we part.
Yeah, in many marriage vows, there's the vow, till death do we part.
And that was the traditional marriage vow.
I don't know what it is now.
But so suppose you made this vow, this is a problem that people come up with, come up against, because then you find out that you're incompatible.
Or you find out that you want to become a monk, and suddenly you've got a problem.
So then the question is, well, is the marriage vow more important than the conflict, or more important than becoming a monk, for example.
So this is where it starts to get difficult, where you can't draw a clear line.
You can't clearly say that keeping the vow is immoral, or useless, or so on.
I think for someone who's intent on becoming a monk, or on the practice of the Buddha's teaching,
that they would very well break this vow if necessary.
But probably in such a way, I'm thinking of the cases that are on record, you do it in such a way as to make it clear to the other person what your plans are, that you can't possibly continue with this life.
In fact, the one case that I can think of is the case of Wisaka, the man whose wife was Damodinna.
Wisaka became an anagami after he heard the Buddha's teaching.
He actually didn't break his marriage vow.
He didn't go to become a monk.
It might have been very well because he was married.
it might have been the marriage itself that stopped him because he said to her that if she wanted he would stay with her as a brother and look after her as though she were his sister if she wanted to go and find another husband he wouldn't be averse to that he wouldn't stand in her way
So he didn't actually break the promise.
And this is where you would see that it's a little bit more difficult.
But when it comes to something like the difference between staying married and becoming a monk, I would say in some cases you have to kind of be realistic because a vow that is made in one state of mind
I don't see how it should be applicable to a state of mind that has realized that that state of mind was totally off track.
So suppose you make a marriage vow under the impression that getting married is the best thing to do.
the best course of the best way of life.
And then you begin to practice Buddhist meditation and you totally change your view of your outlook on life.
Now, for what reason should you be forced to keep a vow that was made
by a totally different person by a person with totally different outlook on life once you totally change your outlook or once you change your way of thinking that led you to make that vow for what reason should you be forced to keep it
of course the concern is for the other person but I don't see it as an unethical thing to break a vow that was made under a misunderstanding this idea that this or that vow would lead you to happiness or was made just under ignorance without realizing the consequences suppose you make a vow
Or you promise someone that you'll go to university, promise that you'll get a job, promise that you'll do this or do that, and then you realize that it's all useless.
You realize that you're just setting yourself up for a life of slavery or a life of imprisonment in this rat race world.
and decide or simply realize that there is no point in that.
So the fact that those vows, those promises or whatever they were,
were made under the influence of ignorance, what we would call ignorance in Buddhism, made under the influence of wrong views, wrong understandings, made under the influence of attachments.
Once those attachments disappear, I don't see a strong reason anyway to keep the promises, even if there are expectations of other people, because I think it's a valid excuse to say I was ignorant when I made those vows, when I made those promises.
I think that's a valid excuse.
From my point of view, and I'm couching this, I'm trying to be careful here, because I don't want to encourage people to break promises, and I know it's unpleasant to have people break promises to you, but I think for people who are on the other end, they should understand, or they should be sympathetic with people's change of ideas.
So I would like to be able to say that
a promise should be limited to the confines of the state of mind under which it was made.
So, if you still believe that marriage is a good thing, but you want to get married with someone else, for example,
Or whatever, if you can think of some example where it's simply a matter of convenience or a matter of irresponsibility, simply a matter of changing your mind or wanting to shirk your responsibilities.
like suppose you promise to go and work for one company and then it turns out that there's some perk for working with another company then generally we would expect people to keep their promise
not followed after their desires or so on simply because they changed their mind or something better came up for example if you promised and then something else came up in the same realm I would say don't be so quick to break your promises but
If you realize later that a promise was a bad promise, from my point of view, I'm fully open to encouraging people to break their promises.
And be careful not to make such promises in the future, because it's not pleasant to have promises broken on you, and it's not pleasant to break your promises either.
Anyway, no, I haven't ever answered that question, so there's my sort of not totally clear thoughts on it.
I hope that helps.