Each week two-three members of Hardcore Dharma do a presentation about\u00a0our assigned readings.\u00a0 Last week\u2019s selection in Training the Mind by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was about Point Three of the Lojong Slogans: Transformation of Bad Circumstances.\u00a0 Some of the most famous slogans emerge in this grouping, the most notable, catchy yet ego-catching\u00a0 being the\u00a0oft-quoted \u201cDrive All Blames Into One.\u201d\u00a0 Saturday\u2019s presenters, Cassie and Denise, questioned how to integrate this slogan into daily life without turning into mealy-mouthed sad sacks who lay their body atop slush puddles so that the nasty and oblivious pedestrians\u00a0of the world might use them for stepping upon.
\nLearned Ethan mentioned that the original translation of this particular slogan is, \u201cDrive All Blames Into One Sense of Self.\u201d\u00a0 Jamgon Kontrol, a 19th century Buddhist scholar and great influence on CTR, explains the slogan comme ca:<\/p>\n
Whether you are physically ill, troubled in your mind, insulted by others, or bothered by enemies and disputes, in short, whatever annoyance, major or 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:
\nThis 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 non-virtuous 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhether you relate to the concept of \u2018one\u2019 or \u2018one sense of self\u2019, this slogan is where Buddhism gets good and hard and hard and good.\u00a0 Drive all Blames into One conflicts with our traditional\u00a0theistic sense of justice.\u00a0\u00a0 We fear that if we are to absorb blame, let anger disperse and rid ourselves of the pain of fixation, then the person who trespassed against us may never reap the suffering THEY have sown.\u00a0 We fear if we take complete responsibility for our mental and emotional states, if we remove \u2018objects\u2019 from anger and see a situation as a massive web of empty, interdependent phenomena perceived by an unflinchingly subjective mind void of solidity then the classroom that is the world will not improve under the tutelage of our morally erect instruction.
\nDrive All Blames into One says \u2013 who cares.\u00a0 Give it up.\u00a0 Eat it.\u00a0 Buddhism is not so concerned with justice, and certainly not in the Judeo-Christian way of punishing perpetrators.\u00a0 Letting our self-righteous, \u201cwhat you did was really freaking messed up and you need to know that\u201d diatribe go is 99.999% of the time the most skillful action towards creating inner and outer harmony.\u00a0 It may not be the most satisfying option but not all Buddhism is supposed to always be some milk and honey mental massage.\u00a0 We are supposed to confront our own ego clinging, and our ideas of moral rectitude are part of that ego to which we cling.
\nUnder-experienced actors in a scene study class often lean into conflict.\u00a0 They yell, scream, cry, wave their arms, shout histrionically and attack.\u00a0 A good director will\u00a0encourage the actors to attempt, at all costs, to create order.\u00a0 Executed properly, once the actors eschew conflict for order the scene lights up \u2013 the characters, struggles, themes and essential questions of the play are clarified.\u00a0 The\u00a0players seem more truthful, and stripped of all the fuss, they become one thousand times more interesting to watch.\u00a0
\nWe\u2019re so afraid that if we stop yelling, screaming, crying and waving our arms at the outside world we might turn into that mealy mouthed sad sack who lies atop a slush puddle beneath the digs of spike-heeled pedestrians.\u00a0 But maybe if we get rid of all our messy judgments, histrionics and \u2018rocks in my bed\u2019 mentality, some truth could be revealed.\u00a0 Maybe, if we let go of blaming\u00a0objects outside\u00a0of ourselves,\u00a0what we do within this world might become one trillion times more interesting to watch.\u00a0 At least it’s worth a try.
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