First of all we have to see whether the feeling of failure is internally generated or arising because we have taken on someone else's opinion. This is because sometimes when other people think that we have failed, we may not have failed. And when we think we have failed, it may be true and we have to do something about it.
If other people are blaming us we have to look at our own intentions and see whether what they are blaming us for, is worthy of blame. If we had a good intention when we did an action, it may be just their opinion, they don't like some things that we do due to not understanding how we view things or that we had a good intention. Also, sometimes people blame you for doing good actions due to jealously and their own feelings of unworthiness or inferiority. So it is not very helpful to always judge our failure or success totally on whether other people blame or praise us, but depend more on investigating into whether our intentions were beneficial or not and whether we had wisdom guiding our actions or not.
After we investigate, if we realize we did make a mistake, we have to see what it is that causes this feeling of failure to arise. If we did an action that was unskilful then it's helpful to have a feeling of Moral Shame or remorse, this is an unpleasant spiritual feeling. And this unpleasant spiritual feeling is a step in trying to change these unbeneficial actions to beneficial actions. The Buddha taught that Moral Shame and Moral Dread, the Lokapala Dhammas, are "two virtues that protect the world."
Moral Shame is when you see that you've done an unskilful action, you have shame for that and that is good. So it's an unpleasant spiritual feeling that will motivate us to do something about it. It is simply understanding that as a human being not only will we make mistakes, but taking responsibility for it. The regret we feel gives us the energy and motivation necessary so that we can make a determination necessary to avoid it again in the future.
It's when shame or regret goes to a feeling of neurotic guilt about our mistakes, then it's a problem. We're more likely to create a self image of a failure, and this is like freezing ourselves into that ignorance in the past, into that particular feeling at that time and forget that we have the capacity to change. We can try to heal the damage that we have caused.
If we continue to do the unskilful actions, then we weaken our capacity to heal or change some of the damages that we have caused, but hopefully the unpleasant feeling of Moral Shame will motivate us to lessen this within ourselves. So the feeling of failure is looking at the intentions that we had when we did that particular unskilful action, if it is beneficial or if it is unbeneficial. We try to see that these unbeneficial intentions bring unbeneficial results, that we get the results of our actions that's the Law of Kamma.
You do unbeneficial actions, you get Dukkha. That's it! So if you want to avoid that Dukkha for the person you are going to become in the future, you need Moral Dread. We don't want to cause harm for the person we are going to become, so the person that we are going to become in the future has to deal with all that regret, as well. We try to change the actions, we try to bring forth a determination, a resolution to avoid these actions in the future. We try to forgive the person we were so that self hatred doesn't cause us to have the idea that we haven't got the capacity to change. And we use courage to accept the results of our Kamma. Sometimes this is what people don't have, the courage to accept the results of their Kamma. They may think, "Since I've seen what I've done wasn't good, it's not fair that I'm suffering in the present from the results arising from this same action." But that's Kamma, Kamma has to come to you and you have to have courage to accept the results of your actions.
With courage and with determination you are going to have more compassion for the person you are going to become, because basically you had a lack of compassion for the person who you are now, the person you used to be didn't have enough compassion for who you are now. However, we can acknowledge that people change and we don't have to freeze ourselves in a moment of time.
And sometimes if we make a mistake, it's a building of experience. We can try to use the Four Noble Truths to investigate into the Dukkha, see the cause of it and develop the understanding how to avoid it in the future. So we are using the Four Noble Truths wisely and try to prevent unbeneficial things from arising in the future. And we can bring up those efforts to prevent - first effort of the Four Great Efforts, the Effort to Prevent - look at the conditions that cause this particular problem to arise so that we can try to prevent it in the future.