The Psychological Value Of Confession In Mahayana Buddhism And Christianity

The act of confessing can be described as the act of acknowledging that one did something wrong or even criminal. In the religious aspect, he/she will be able to witness a Christian telling God, or rather a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, that he/she has done right or wrong to be granted forgiveness. It is also evident among the Buddhist followers who practice confession. All people in the Mahayana Buddhism carry in them the picture of enlightenment (Bodhicitta), but this is claimed to be in the state of sleep. To excite it, preparatory worship to it has been completed eight times (anuttarapūjā), and one of the latter is confession of sins (pāpadesanā) in the presence of Buddha and Bodhisattvas. With the grace of Christian doctrine and mostly to the Catholic doctrine, the Sacrament of Penance is the Church sacrament that provides individual men and women with confessing their sins committed after baptism and gaining their repentance before God with the assistance of a Priest. Simultaneously, the Bible urges believers to confess their sins. The present research attempt is a scientific investigation of the extent to which confession is possible as a practice to meet the social problems of the current society. Besides that, it concerns literature-based qualitative research. Besides this, the outcomes were also interpreted philosophically to establish the value of confession regarding psychology. It is conducive to ascertaining a just society in a situation where the human beings of the society are ready to classify their unjust actions as crimes.