Seven Points of Mind Training

Point 3 : Transformation of Bad Circumstances

12: Drive all blames into one.

Point Three : Drive all blames into one.

Commentary :

This slogan is about dealing with conventional reality, or kundzop. No matter what appears in our ordinary experience, whatever trips we might be involved in, whatever interesting and powerful situations - we do not have any expectation in return for our kindness. When we are kind to somebody, there are no expectations that there will be any reward for that. Drive all blames into one means that all the 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.

A lot of people seem to get through this world and actually make quite a comfortable life by being compassionate and open. They seem to get along in this world. Yet although we share the same kind of world, we ourselves get hit constantly. We get blamed and we get into trouble - emotional problems, financial problems, domestic, relationship, and sociological problems are happening all the time. What is playing tricks on us? A popular phrase says, "Don't lay your trip on me." Interestingly, trips are laid on us, but not by anybody. We decide to take on those trips ourselves, and then we become resentful and angry.

We might have entirely the same lifestyle as somebody else. For instance, we could be sharing a room with a college mate, eating the same problematic food, sharing the same shitty house, having the same schedule and the same teachers. Our roommate manages to handle everything okay and find his or her freedom. We, on the other hand, are stuck with that memory and filled with resentment all the time. We would like to be revolutionary, to blow up the world. But who did that to us? We could say that the schoolteacher did it, that everybody hates us and they did it. But why do they hate us? That is a very interesting point.

The blame for every mishap that happens to us is always directed naturally to us; it is our particular doing. This is not just purely mahayana wishy-washy thinking. You might say that what we are discussing tonight is purely mahayana - once we get into tantra, we might get revenge on those people. But that doesn't work. I would request you not to try that. Everything is based on our uptightness. We could blame the organization; we could blame the government; we could blame the police force; we could blame the weather; we could blame the food; we could blame the highways; we could blame our own motorcars, our own clothes; we could blame an infinite variety of things. But it is we who are not letting go, not developing enough warmth and sympathy - which makes us problematic. So we cannot blame anybody.

Of course, we could build up all kinds of philosophies and think we are representing the voice of the rest of the world, saying that this is the world's opinion, that is what happens in the world. "Don't you see that you should not make me suffer this? The world is this way, the true world is that way." But we are not speaking on behalf of the world, we are simply speaking on behalf of ourselves.

This slogan applies whenever we complain about anything, even that our coffee is cold or the bathroom is dirty. It goes very far. Everything is due to our own uptightness, so to speak, which is known as ego holding, ego fixation. Since we are so uptight about ourselves, that makes us very vulnerable at the same time. We consequently provide the ideal target. We get hit, but nobody means to hit us - we are actually inviting the bullets. So there we are, in the good old world. Driving all blames into one is a very good idea.

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. On that basis, you drive all blames into one again at the level of vipashyana. This involves actually experiencing the real, visible, logical consequences of doing otherwise. For instance, you could drive all blames into Joe Schmidt, but instead you drive all blames into yourself. In this case, you actually begin to see the possibility that aggression and neurosis is expanded if you drive your neurosis into somebody else. So instead, you drive your blames onto yourself. That is the basic point.

All of this seems to come under the general categories of compassion for others and having a loving attitude to oneself, known in Sanskrit as karuna or maitri. In other words, the experience of karuna and maitri is to drive all blames into one. So this is connected with the basic discipline of the bodhisattva path, which is to refrain from any kind of ill-doing. The traditional listing of the forty-six ways in which a bodhisattva fails could be used in connection with driving all blames into one. They are connected very basically.

This slogan is the essence of the bodhisattva path. Even though somebody else has made terrible boo-boo and blamed it on you, you should take the blame yourself. In terms of power, it is much simpler and more direct way of controlling the situation. In addition, it is the most direct way of simplifying complicated neuroses into one point. Also, if you look for volunteers around you to take the blame, there will be no volunteers other than yourself. By taking that particular blame on yourself, you reduce the neurosis that's happening around you. You also reduce any paranoia existing in other people, so that those people might have clearer vision.

You can actually say, "I take the blame. It's my fault that such and such a thing happened and that such and such things took place as a result." It is very simple and ordinary. You can actually communicate with somebody who is not in a defensive mood, since you already took all the blame. It is much better and easier to talk to somebody when you have accepted the blame already. Then you can clarify the situation, and quite possibly the person you are talking to, who might be the cause of the particular problem, would realize that he has done something terrible himself. He might recognize his own wrongdoing. But it helps that the blame, which is just a paper tiger at that point, has already been taken on by you. That helps.

This kind of approach becomes very powerfully important. I've actually done it thousands of times. I've taken a lot of blame personally. A person may actually do a terrible thing based on his or her understanding of my recommendation. But that's okay, I can take it on wholeheartedly as my problem. In that way there is some chance of working with such a person, and the person begins to go along and fulfill his actions properly, and everything is fine.

That's a tip for bureaucrats. If individuals can take the blame themselves and let their friends off to continue their work or duty, that will make the whole organization work better and allow it be much more functional. When you say, "You're full of shit! I didn't do such a thing. It wasn't me, it's you who did it. There's no blame on me," the whole things gets very complicated. You begin to find this little plop of a dirty thing bouncing around in the bureaucracy, something like a football bouncing back and forth. And if you fight over it too much, you have tremendous difficulty dissolving or resolving that particular block, plop, slug. So the earlier you take the blame, the better. And although it is not really, fundamentally your fault at all, you who should take it as if it's yours.

This seems to be the interesting point where the two aspects of the bodhisattva vow, monpa and jukpa (desiring to enter and actually entering into bohisattva discipline) come together. It is how you work with your fellow sentient beings. If you do not allow a little bit of blame and injustice to come to you, nothing is going to work. And if you do not really absorb all the blame, but say it is not yours since you are too good and are doing so well, then nothing is going to work. This is so because everybody is looking for someone to blame, and they would like to blame you - not because you have done anything but because they probably think you have a soft spot in your heart. They think that if they put their jam or honey or glue on you, then you actually might buy it and say, "Okay, the blame is mine."

Once you begin to do that, it is the highest and most powerful logic, the most powerful incantation you can make. You can actually make the whole thing functional. You can absorb the poison - then the rest of the situation becomes medicine. If nobody is willing to absorb the blame, it becomes a big interrelational football. It is not even tight like good football, but filled with a lot of glue and gooey all over the outside as well. Everybody tries to pass it on to each other and nothing happens. Finally that football begins to grow bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Then it causes revolutions and all the rest.

As far as international politics are concerned, somebody is always trying to put the blame on somebody else, to pass that huge, overbuilt, gooey, dirty, smelly, gigantic football with all sorts of worms coming out of it. People say, "It's not mine, it's yours." The communists say it belongs to the capitalists and the capitalists say it belongs to the communists. Throwing it back and forth doesn't help anyone at all. So even from the point of view of political theory - if there is such a thing as politics in the mahayana or in Buddhism - it is important for individuals to absorb unjustified blame and to work with that. It is very important and necessary.

Such an approach is neither very theistic and Occidental nor is it Oriental. But it is possible to do, which is one of the interesting points about nontheism. If you are in a theistic discipline, you don't actually take the blame. Supposedly this guy up in the sky with a beard and big nose says that when you're right, you're right, so fight for your right; and when you're wrong, you just repent. You should do your duty and all that. So much for that old hat. But for a lot of people, this may be a new hat, actually. You could freak out and say, "Do you mean to say that I should take the blame for somebody else? I should get myself killed for that?" You don't have to go so far as to do that - but you actually can accommodate that much blame. You can do that.

Usually, with any problems at all that might occur in your life - political, environmental, psychological, or, for that matter, domestic or spiritual - you always decide to blame it on somebody else. You may not have a particular individual to blame, but you still come up with the basic logic that something is wrong. You might go to the authorities or your political leaders or your friends and demand that the environment be changed. That is your usual way of complaining to people. You might organize a group of people who, like yourself, blame the environment, and you might collect signatures for a petition and give it to some leader who might be able to change the environment. Or, for that matter, your complaint might be purely individual: if your husband or wife is in love with somebody else, you might ask him or her to give up his or her lover. But as far as you yourself are concerned, you feel so pure and good, you never touch yourself at all. You want to maintain yourself one hundred percent. You are always asking somebody else to do something for you, on a larger scale or on a smaller scale. But if you look very closely at what you are doing, it becomes unreasonable.

Sometimes, if he is brave enough, your husband might say to you: "Isn't there some blame on your side as well? Mightn't you also have to join in and do something about it?" Or if your wife is brave enough, she will tell you that the situation might have something to do with both of you. If your spouse is somewhat timid and intelligent, he might say, "Both of us are to blame." But nobody says, "It is you who has to change." Whenever anybody does say, "It's your problem, not anybody else's," you don't like it at all. We have a problem with relative bodhichitta here.

The text says: "Drive all blames into one." The reason you have to do that is because you have been cherishing yourself so much, even at the cost of sacrificing somebody else's life. You have been cherishing yourself, holding yourself so dearly. Although sometimes you might say that you don't like yourself, even then in your heart of hearts you know that you like yourself so much that you're willing to throw everybody else down the drain, down the gutter. You are really willing to do that. You are willing to let somebody sacrifice his life, give himself away for you. And who are you, anyway? So the point is that all blames should be driven into oneself. This slogan is the first slogan connected with viewing your whole life as part of the path of relative bodhichitta.

This slogan does not mean you should not speak up. If you see something that is obviously destructive to everybody, you should speak out. But you can speak out in the form of driving all blames into yourself. The question is how to present it to the authorities. Usually you come at them in an aggressive, traditionally American way. You have been trained to speak for yourself and for others in the democratic style of the "lord of speech." You come out with placards and complaints: "We don't like this." But that only solidifies the authorities even more. There could be a much better way of approaching the whole thing, a more intelligent way. You could say, "Maybe it's my problem, but personally I find that this water doesn't taste good." You and your friends could say, "We don't feel good about drinking this water." It could be very simple and straightforward. You don't have to go through the whole legal trip. You don't have to use the "lord of speech" approach of making public declarations of all kinds, "Freedom for all mankind!" or anything like that. Maybe you could even bring along your dog or you cat. I think the whole thing could be done very gently.

Obviously, there are social problems, but the way to approach that is not as "I - a rightful political entity," or as "me - one the important people in society." Democracy is built on the attitude that I speak out for myself, the invincible me. I speak for democracy. I would like to get my own rights, and I also speak for others' rights as well. Therefore, we don't want to have this water. But that approach doesn't work. The point is that people's experience of themselves could be gathered together, rather than just having a rally. That is what you do in sitting practice.

In an extreme case, if I happened to find myself in the central headquarters where they push the button that could blow up the planet, I would kill the person who was going to push the button for the bomb right away and without any hesitation. I would take delight in it! But that is slightly different from what we are talking about. In that case, you are dealing with the threshold of the power of society altogether. In this case, we are simply talking about how we can collectively smooth out this world, so that it could become an enlightened society. Creating an enlightened society requires general cultivation of that nature.