Start Where You Are

Bringing All That We Meet to the Path
67

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will continue to feel inadequate, and we can use
these experiences to wake up, just as they did. The
lojong teachings give us the means to connect with
the power of our lineage, the lineage of gentle war-
riorship.
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Bringing All That We Meet to the Path

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8
Drive All Blames into One
I
’ d l i k e t o t a l k a b i t
about another slogan,
“Drive all blames into one.” When we say, as in a
previous slogan, “When the world is filled with evil,”
we mean, “When the world is filled with the results
of ego clinging.” When the world is filled with ego
clinging or with attachment to a particular outcome,
there is a lot of pain. But these painful situations
can be transformed into the path of bodhi. One of
the ways to do that is to drive all blames into one. To
see how this works, let’s look at the result of blam-
ing others.
I had someone buy me the New York Times on
Sunday so I could look at the result of people blam-
ing others. In Yugoslavia, there’s a very painful situa-
tion. The Croats and the Serbs are murdering each
other, raping each other, killing children and old
people. If you asked someone on either side what
they wanted, they would say they just want to be
happy. The Serbs just want to be happy. They see the
others as enemies and they think the only way to be
happy is to eradicate the source of their misery. We
all think this way. And then if you talked to the other
side, they would say that they want the same thing.
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This is true in Israel with the Arabs and the Jews.
This is true in Northern Ireland with the Protestants
and the Catholics. The same is true everywhere, and
it’s getting worse. In every corner of the world, the
same is true.
When we look at the world in this way we see that
it all comes down to the fact that no one is ever en-
couraged to feel the underlying anxiety, the underly-
ing edginess, the underlying soft spot, and therefore
we think that blaming others is the only way. Reading
just one newspaper, we can see that blaming others
doesn’t work.
We have to look at our own lives as well: How are
we doing with our Juans and Juanitas? Often they’re
the people with whom we have the most intimate re-
lationships. They really get to us because we can’t
just shake them off by moving across town or chang-
ing seats on the bus, or whatever we have the luxury
of doing with mere acquaintances, whom we also
loathe.
The point is that if we think there is any difference
between how we relate with the people who irritate
us and the situation in Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia,
the Middle East, or Somalia, we’re wrong. If we think
there is any difference between that and the way that
native people feel about white people or white people
feel about black people or any of these situations on
earth, we’re wrong. We have to start with ourselves. If
all people on the planet would start with themselves,
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Drive All Blames into One

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we might see quite a shift in the aggressive energy
that’s causing such a widespread holocaust.
“Drive all blames into one”—or “Take the blame
yourself,” if you prefer—sounds like a masochistic
slogan. It sounds like, “Just beat me up, just bury me
under piles of manure, just let me have it and kick me
in the teeth.” However, that isn’t what it really means,
you’ll be happy to know.
One way of beginning to practice “Drive all blames
into one” is to begin to notice what it feels like when
you blame someone else. What’s actually under all
that talking and conversation about how wrong
somebody or something is? What does blame feel
like in your stomach? When we do this noticing we
see that we are somehow beginning to cultivate brav-
ery as well as compassion and honesty. When these
really unresolved issues of our lives come up, we are
no longer trying to escape but are beginning to be cu-
rious and open toward these parts of ourselves.
“Drive all blames into one” is a healthy and com-
passionate instruction that short-circuits the over-
whelming tendency we have to blame everybody
else; it doesn’t mean, instead of blaming the other
people, blame yourself. It means to touch in with
what blame feels like altogether. Instead of guarding
yourself, instead of pushing things away, begin to get
in touch with the fact that there’s a very soft spot
under all that armor, and blame is probably one of the
most well-perfected armors that we have.