Buddhism teaches that regrets from past lives are illusions based on ego; release them through understanding impermanence and karma.
Buddhism acknowledges that past lives exist within the cycle of rebirth (samsara), but it fundamentally rejects the idea that you should carry regrets across lifetimes. This rejection rests on a crucial insight: the "you" of a past life is not the same as your current self. While karma from past actions does carry forward, clinging to regrets about past-life decisions represents a misunderstanding of how Buddhism views identity and causality.
The Buddha taught that what we call a "self" is actually a constantly changing process made up of five aggregates: form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. This doctrine of non-self (anatta) means there is no permanent, unchanging entity that can legitimately carry emotional baggage from one lifetime to the next. To regret past-life actions as though a stable "you" performed them contradicts a fundamental Buddhist principle.
Buddhism distinguishes carefully between the natural operation of karma and the psychological burden of regret. Karma simply means action and its consequences—past deeds naturally create conditions that affect your present life. This happens automatically, without requiring any emotional response from you. A harmful action in a previous life will produce difficult circumstances now, but those consequences unfold whether you feel regret about them or not.
Regret, by contrast, is an emotional attachment to the past that arises from ego. It assumes a stable self that "did something wrong" and carries that judgment forward. The Buddha would have seen this as compounding suffering unnecessarily. You are already experiencing the natural results of past karma; adding regret on top of that creates additional mental suffering without serving any useful purpose.
Buddhism emphasizes what you do now, not what you did before. The Dhammapada, a central Buddhist text, teaches that your present actions determine your future, far more than your past does. A person who committed harmful acts in a previous life can completely transform their trajectory through virtuous conduct now. This is extraordinarily hopeful: you are not bound by past mistakes.
This teaching applies whether we are speaking literally about past lives or metaphorically about your past in this life. Either way, the Buddhist response to regret is not to dwell on it but to redirect that energy toward skillful action in the present. Intention matters most in Buddhism, and your intention now is what shapes your future.
Most Buddhist traditions share this core perspective, though they emphasize it slightly differently. Theravada Buddhism, which focuses on individual practice, stresses personal responsibility for present actions while acknowledging past karma as background conditions. Mahayana Buddhism, which emphasizes compassion and help from enlightened beings, sometimes frames it as: enlightened beings can help purify past karma through practice, but holding onto regret blocks that purification.
Tibetan Buddhism includes practices like Vajrasattva meditation, which explicitly aims to purify the consequences of past harmful actions. However, even these traditions teach that you perform these practices to transform your future, not to psychologically flagellate yourself over the past. The Dalai Lama has written that understanding impermanence naturally dissolves regret because you recognize that the person who acted in the past no longer exists.
If you find yourself burdened by regrets from your past (whether from childhood, years ago, or if you believe in past lives), Buddhism offers a clear path: acknowledge the actions and their natural consequences, then release the emotional attachment to them. This is not moral relativism or excuse-making. It is simply refusing to add suffering to suffering.
Practice mindfulness to observe when regret arises, and notice that it is just a thought and emotion passing through your mind—not a fundamental truth about who you are. Then redirect your attention to ethical action now. This is how Buddhists actually work with regrets: not by denying them, but by understanding their illusory nature and choosing a different relationship with the past.