Daily Connect: Disappointment and Blame

I think that relationships are tricky. Lovely, certainly and vital, yes, but tricky. For most relationships have stories - stories of shared experience and expectation. This is normal and, frankly, human. The roles within which we are embedded - societal, familial, religious - ask us to perform certain duties - to show certain care - to those we are formally connected to. This is all, of course, well and good, until someone perhaps doesn't perform quite the role or up to the standard one feels appropriate to the privilege a certain relationship seems to imply.

Very recently I was confronted with an occlusion of care from a friend that has surprised and confounded me. A seemingly careless absence with no direct communication that I, frankly, was not prepared for. Today, though, interestingly, as I was grasping for a way to presently engage with my disappointment and confusion, I turned to a passage in Trungpa's Training the Mind that said:

Drive all blames into one.

This slogan is about dealing with conventional reality, or kuendzop. 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 expectations in return for our kindness. When we are kind to somebody, there are no expectations that there will be any reward for that. Dive 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.

Interestingly, I was at first somewhat defensive about this. "Seriously? Like shifting the blame is going to matter. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight." But that isn't at all what's going on here. The idea more is that blame cannot go anywhere productive unless it returns to its own maker - i.e. you (i.e. ME). Blaming another does nothing but point and laugh and say, "Yes. Now. YOU. YOU that other person over there that is not me - yes, YOU - need to make this situation better and until that happens I will remain in a blame place. I will stew and rot and stay in this place until you fix it."

I hope that the dramatization itself highlights the absurdity and futility of this path. To blame oneself is not to blame oneself but to return blame to its maker, to its origin, to enable one to investigate and approach the causes and conditions surrounding that blame from a place of empowerment, curiosity and, hopefully compassion. Denying blame from another does not say to that person, "No problem! You've done everything RIGHT! The issue is ME. Continue on!" but rather opens up space to more accurately perceive the situation for what it is. 

That is. Yes. I am disappointed. Yes. I feel there was an occlusion of care and, frankly, there probably was. And that, my friends, is all I'm going to communicate to my friend. Because really. That's all there was there.

Happy Thursday that is actually Friday my loves.