What role does contrition or shame play in nondual spirituality? Perhaps an interesting one insofar as it could be a gateway. To what?

So long as one takes oneself to be an agent, the teaching says, just so long are the fruits of one’s actions “one’s own.” Honesty, then, encourages one to admit, perhaps, that one still “feels as if” one is an agent. Consequently, one should–provisionally speaking–own up to what is one’s own.

Therefore, when, through insight, one feels that one has truly wronged or harmed another, there may come steadily or slowly the experience of contrition, remorse, or shame. Consider Elizabeth Bennet’s strained and highly appropriate response that occurs at the climax of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “‘Till this moment I never knew myself,’” Elizabeth exclaims upon reading Darcy’s letter. Austen tellingly describes the pain Elizabeth feels not as resentment, frustration, or anger but as shame. As she read the letter, Elizabeth “grew absolutely ashamed of herself.” For what Elizabeth recognizes is not only that she was wrong about Wickham and Darcy but also that her pride in her assessment of others had deeply, and erroneously, colored her judgment of them (“prejudice”).

This heaviness, the weight of sorrow experienced due to one’s prior conduct can be a key that opens a door. Which door is that? The door through which one can pass in order to investigate and thus understand who one truly is.

After all, once the dust has settled and thus the feelings have been properly felt, it makes sense to ask: “Who is the aspiring saint, or who is the great sinner?” That is, who is the one that’s beyond morality–beyond action and karma, beyond virtue and vice, beyond self and other (i.e., the distinction upon which the moral life rests)?

The nondual teaching of jnana yoga will say–ultimately, that is, not preliminarily–that in lieu of ceaselessly trying to be a virtuous being and instead of fearing that one has or will become a vicious one, one is entreated to take up the question concerning who the moral agent truly is. This question is not one of action (good or bad) but of immediate, apperceptive knowledge.

I’ll conclude with two verses from Shankara’s Atma Bodha:

2. Of all means, understanding alone can bring about liberation; as without fire there can be no cooking, so without knowledge of the truth there can be no real emancipation.

3. Action cannot remove ignorance; but knowledge disperses it as light disperses darkness.

–Shankara, Atma Bodha (trans. Francis Lucille)

Though action cannot remove ignorance, it should be said that it can pave the way for one’s setting foot into the path of knowledge.