Blame, Seeing Someone Like Us

"It's not your fault, but I'm blaming you anyway!" --Unknown 
"Looking deeply, we are not fooled by signs." by Thich Nhat Hanh

While one person may fancy himself as clever to place blame regardless, another may be more skillful and clear thinking to realize that carefully looking, they are not fooled by signs. And so it is the way. Some of us are more skillful at any given time than others, but all of us need deep looking and compassion for our less skillful means.

Look at things as more or less skillful. When we are less skillful, we are inclined to blame. Without more skillful means we suffer and we cause others to suffer us. "Forgive me and teach me so that I can be more skillful next time," writes Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, Talks from a 21-Day Mindfulness Retreat. With this mind, we will not blame or have the desire to punish our self or others. Without judgment, compassion may take its place and skill arises. These seeds can bring much happiness to you and to others.

Likewise, If we can say there in a place whose beginning and end are known, then we are fooled by signs. Yet when looking deeply, perceiving the inter-being of matter, we see that there is no clear edge. There is self and non self, world and non world, all are one within the many, and the many are the one. This is the true nature of inter-being, teaches Hanh.

In Cultivating the Mind of Love, Hanh writes of those who find their hearts cold. They do not understand themselves; they do not understand others. He writes, "If we look around, we see many people who are like dead persons, carrying their own dead bodies on their shoulders. We need to do whatever we can to help them... They need to be touched by something." What 'something' can water their seeds of understanding? What might awaken their compassion?

Hanh records the story, The Stranger by French writer Albert Camus. In the story the main character finds that he is imprisoned and will be executed in three days time. What has his life come to? What did it mean? Why is he alive? Suddenly he sees "that life had meaning" and he began to live that meaning, the words, the earth, the sky, it all meant something to him for the first time. For him the end was the last, just as the first. It was the first time he paid attention, and it was the last time he would pay attention there on his last day, the day of execution.
It was there always, the seeds of understanding-the sky, the  leaves, the scent of the ground, something that wakes them up, that brings them alive. He saw that now.

"The energy of compassion in you will transform life and make it more beautiful. Compassion is always born of understanding, and understanding is the result of looking deeply." -- Thich Nhat Hanh

The Great Truth Just Moved

"There is in truth deception, and in deception, truth." -- a Simple mind

An old story about Mara, the evil one, goes like this: One day Mara and his disciples came upon a man in the road. His face glowing, they curiously inquired into the cause of the man’s pleasure. It seems the man had just discovered something of the Truth.

Upon reporting this to their master, Mara, the disciple was perplexed at his reaction. You, Mara, the One of Deception, does it not perturb you that this one has come into a moment of Truth? Mara replied that it did not.

You see, Mara opined, that no sooner do people discover a part of the Truth, a moment of the Whole, then they make a belief out if it.

The great Hindu Master, Sri Aurobindo once stated that no sooner does one discover that there is a certain truth, that, then, they often chase after it. They lose their common sense. For Truth was about them all the while; they have only just noticed it! Whether you recognize or understand Mara, Quan Yin or any other sage, at any time in your life, is no matter to anyone else; the sages have always been about you.

In her book, Waking Up to What You Do by Abbess Diane Eshin Rizzetto, she writes about the “Certainty Principle.” Certainty is seductive. She says that often we desire to feel safe and comfortable via certainty. Sureness may arise out of personal experiences, but impermanence may alter the sum of those experiences. Things do change. Thus the Buddha emphasized that we must not believe the teaching alone; we must go out and discover it for ourselves.

Rizzetto writes, “truth [just] won’t be pinned down. Truth will not be pinned down with the word, the.” Truth defies definition because as soon as we try to grasp it, it changes. In this way it shares a close connection to reality. Reality is many faceted. There is no single valuable reality. Instead there are many parts of the whole. So what does this notion leave to us? It seems that we can trust, be truth, moment to moment. We can be as we are, as we find ourselves to be. This is awareness that the great masters speak about. It is just this moment, every moment together forms what we know about reality, about truth and about our selves.