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Dhammapada · narration sample

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The Cloud of Unknowing · 36 of 80

Chapter 31. How a man should have him in beginning of this work against all thoughts and stirrings of sin

AND from the time that thou feelest that thou hast done that in thee is, lawfully to amend thee at the doom of Holy Church, then shalt thou set thee sharply to work in this work. And then if it so be that thy foredone special deeds will always press in thy remembrance betwixt thee and thy God, or any new thought or stirring of any sin either, thou shalt stalwartly step above them with a fervent stirring of love, and tread them down under thy feet. And try to cover them with a thick cloud of forgetting, as they never had been done in this life of thee nor of other man either. And if they oft rise, oft put them down: and shortly to say, as oft as they rise, as oft put them down. And if thee think that the travail be great, thou mayest seek arts and wiles and privy subtleties of ghostly devices to put them away: the which subtleties be better learned of God by the proof than of any man in this life. p. 174

Asked of Guide

Why must I 'cover' remembered sins with a 'thick cloud of forgetting'?

The chapter instructs that after lawful penance you must “set thee sharply to work” and, when past sins or new stirrings rise, “stalwartly step above them with a fervent stirring of love” to tread them underfoot. The act of covering memories with a “thick cloud of forgetting” is a practical discipline: it prevents sinful thoughts from monopolizing attention and interrupts the chain that leads from recollection to relapse.

Anonymous treats this forgetting as an interior art learned primarily from God by lived proof rather than from human trickery; you are to “oft put them down” whenever they return. The method resembles Ignatius of Loyola’s insistence in Spiritual Exercises on disciplining imagination and affection, where reordering love redirects the will away from temptation and toward God.

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