It’s Always My Own Fault - There is Never Anyone To Blame But Me
Slogan 12 of the
Lojong
This is a great practice for ending suffering, ours and
everyone else’s.
Faulting and blaming others is, as we all know, easy and
convenient. But it is also seriously flawed as a way of life, and ultimately
counterproductive.
When things in our society aren’t the way we think they
should be, our first line of “reason” is to determine who is responsible, who’s
to blame. With little or no evidence to support us, we simply blame or accuse
another person or group for what we feel is wrong. At times it is the person or
group who is accusing us of exactly the same wrong-doing, but no matter. After
all, we’re right. Take religious or
nationalistic conflicts–both sides feel they are right and correct in blaming the other.
The flaw in this way of reasoning is the assumption that I
am always right; it’s the flaw that assures me others are to blame. When we
look closely, however, we observe that there is no right and wrong.
Similarly, when things in our personal lives aren’t the way
we think they should be, the first thing we do is to look for someone to blame.
What makes this such a dangerous and maladaptive way of
living is that it never works; blaming never solves the problem. Why? Because
blaming others never gets at the cause. And the cause is never external–the
cause of our suffering is always internal, always in the way we choose to
narrate the event.
What mindfulness is suggesting is that, as we go about our
lives the moment we sense fault or blame arising, we tell ourself to come to a
screeching halt. We look inward instead of outward and we notice that our
suffering is coming, not from what others are doing or the external situation,
but from how we have chosen to write the narrative about those people and
conditions.
The Practice:
Commit to make a concerted effort to paying attention to how blaming arises and
what patterns it takes. See what happens when you shift it to the inward
gaze of the Middle Path. Notice how your suffering weakens, and how other’s
suffering disappears as you see need in others rather than suffering.
Two Renowned Tibetan Lamas on This Slogan
Chogyam Trungpa's
Commentary: "Drive all blames into one means that all problems and the
complications that exist around our practice, realization, and understanding
are not somebody else's fault. All the blame always starts with ourselves….The
intention of driving all blames into one is that otherwise you will not enter
the bodhisattva path. Therefore, you do not want to lay any emotional,
aggressive blame on anybody at all. So driving all blames into one begins with
that attitude."
Jamgon Kongtrul's
Commentary: Whether you are physically ill, troubled in your mind, insulted
by others, or bothered by enemies and disputes, in short, whatever annoyance,
major and minor, comes up in your life or affairs, do not lay the blame on
anything else, thinking that such-and-such caused this or that problem. Rather,
you should consider: This mind grasps at a self where there is no self. From
time without beginning until now, it has, in following its own whims in samsara, perpetrated various nonvirtuous
actions. All the sufferings I now experience are the results of those actions.
No one else is to blame; this ego-cherishing attitude is to blame. I shall do
whatever I can to subdue it."
