Blame No One

In November, 2011, Amma came to visit the US.  She comes every November and just makes a couple stops (not like her huge summer tour), but as 9/11 had just happened, we weren’t sure she would be able to come.  But she did.  During the retreat’s Q&A, I think someone asked about the situation and she said, among other things, “Blame no one.”  I have remembered that sentence clearly ever since.  Blame no one.

At 6pm this past Sunday, I was standing at the Snohomish Little League field.  It took me an hour to get there (including the time I spent lost) and, much to my dismay, when I looked around, I saw no purple uniforms anywhere.  Which means my nephew’s all-star team wasn’t there.  I called my mom only to find out not only was at this field at the wrong time, I had missed another game that was actually closer to home.  There was a wave of sadness followed by a wave of anger.  I was very frustrated.  But somehow, I didn’t go to blame.  I didn’t blame my mom, myself or anybody else.

I could see quite clearly what my part in it was.  I had completely misinterpreted the text message my mom had sent by making assumptions and I didn’t reply.  In that moment, I saw how I often don’t respond to others’ communications in a timely way or at all and how that causes difficulty (always easier to see when it causes difficulty for me).  But it didn’t need to be my “fault.” 

There is a difference between blame and responsibility.  Not blaming doesn’t eliminate responsibility; it’s just that there are usually so many factors involved in any one thing happening that it just doesn’t really make sense for it to be all somebody’s fault.  It makes it seems like we have more control than we do.  But I can see my part—I can see how I contributed.  And in a weird way, that actually feels good (as opposed to blame, which pretty much always feels bad).  When something happens and I ask “What’s my part in this?” I can learn something.  So not blaming seems like one of the many ways to practice ahimsa (non-violence), which allows us to practice svadhyaya (self-study) because it is so much easier to look at myself when I'm not going to get hit with blame, shame and judgment.