Recalling the Kindness of Others: Beating the Blame Game
Filed Under Buddhadharma | Posted on February 23, 2008
In Lama {en:Je Tsongkhapa}’s meditative technique for generating compassion for all sentient beings, the meditator begins by recalling the selfless and unconditional love received from his or her mother. Recalling that love, the
meditator naturally develops the wish to repay that kindness. Because all sentient beings have been trapped in the cycle of death and rebirth for countless eons, we have all lived countless lives, and have had countless mothers in 
all of those lives. In fact, we have had so many lives and so many mothers that it’s quite likely that every sentient being alive today has been our mother in one or more of those lives, and will be our mother again in one or more future lives. Therefore, the desire to repay the kindness of our mother must extend to all beings of the past, present, and future. Lama Tsongkhapa writes in his masterwork, Lamrim Chen Mo, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenemnt:
At present you cannot bear for your friends to suffer; you are pleased with your enemies’ suffering; and you are indifferent to the suffering of persons toward whom you have neutral feelings, who are neither enemies nor friends.
Consequently, in order to have affection for living beings, cultivate the view that they are close to you, like friends or relatives. Since your mother is the closest person to you, cultivate a recognition of all beings as your mothers. Also, recollect their kindness as your mothers and develop the wish to repay their kindness. These three steps are how you learn to cherish and have affection for living beings. The result of these three steps is a love that considers living beings to be beloved, just as a mother considers her only child. This love gives rise to compassion.
The reference to “my mothers” in Verse 7 of Geshe Langri Tangpa’s Eight Verses for Training the Mind is another example of the prevalence, within Tibetan Buddhism, of the notion that all beings are our mothers:
In brief, may I offer both directly and indirectly all help,
Happiness and benefit to all beings, my mothers,
And may I secretly take upon myself
All of their harmful actions, pain and suffering.
This is quite a powerful concept, and a powerful tool for generating the love and compassion that is so central to the Buddhist path. Even if one doubts or rejects, as many Western Buddhists often do, the Buddhist concept of rebirth, setting those doubts aside and viewing all beings as our mothers can be an effective tool for reducing the anger, hatred, and conflict that permeates our world today.
However, I’ve noticed that when this concept is discussed in a group of American Buddhist practitioners, it often encounters an objection or two. At least one or two particpants will almost inevitably respond that his or her mother did not offer unconditional and selfless love; in fact, it turns out that in the mind of these folks, Mom was not a nice person and all. There are alternative meditations that don’t rely on Mom (for example, Shantideva’s method of exchanging oneself for others), but it seems to me that it may be necessary to confront and resolve one’s anger and resentment toward one’s mother (or father, or whoever) before true compassion can be generated.
I guess I’m fortunate in having a mother who has always loved me without conditions or expectations. I know this because, as a teenager and young adult, I put her through the most rigourous tests imaginable, and she never wavered in her devotion and forgiveness. Admittedly, then, I am unable to relate to or imagine the complaints and objections raised to Tsongkhapa’s meditation technique. There have been times in my life when I’ve searched for a Freudian excuse to blame for my problems and neuroses, but at the end, those problems always find their root in my own shortcomings and delusions, not in those of my parents or others. My parents aren’t Ozzie and Harriet, but they kept me fed, clothed, and sheltered; they never wanted anything more or less than my happiness and success; and when I failed, as I often did, to be a perfect son or a perfect person, their love and concern did not diminish.
So, I’m lucky … but aren’t we all? When I shared with my friend and teacher, the venerable Tibetan monk Geshe Thupten Dorjee, the experience of encountering dharma practitioners who did not recognize the kindness of their own mothers, he reacted with monkish outrage (a sort of kinder, gentler outrage than what we’re used to): “What are they talking about? They don’t understand! Their mothers fed them, clothed them. They didn’t put them out in the wilderness to die! If they continue to think in this way, they will just generate hatred and end up harming themselves!” In other words, the very fact that we’re here and alive and able to complain is proof of our mothers’ kindness. If Mom and Dad fall short of some idealized archetype of parenthood, it’s because they’re human just like us. Mom and Dad are not the problem; the problem is the unattainable and unrealistic model against which they are compared; and that model resides firmly and only within our own deluded mind.
How do we fare when we hold our own lives up to such scrutiny? We find that we too often fail to reach the standards that are imposed by ourselves or by society. And when we encounter those failures, we search, encouraged by Freudian psychology and a mass media obsessed with explaining every human misfortune, for an excuse, a cause outside of ourselves and beyond our control. Mom is an easy target, as is the Boss, the Teacher, the Man, the Significant Other, the Child, the State. It’s no wonder we lead such miserable lives when our happiness depends on so many others who, in their own turn, contend with the failure of so many others to provide them the happiness that we all so desperately seek. If we want to blame Mom for our own unhappiness, we must also blame those Others who shaped her attitudes and behavior; and the Others who shaped the Others, and on and on in an unending cycle of blame and anger and hatred. This outward search for blame becomes an infinite and fruitless exercise, which all too often consumes our time and energy, preventing us from discovering the true source of our unhappiness. We will never find and remove the cause of our suffering by looking outward, because it doesn’t exist out there. The cause of our suffering and the potential for our happines is within, and only within, our own minds, our own ability to look upon the Other — and most importantly, our Self — with compassion, love, patience, and forgiveness.
Our modern Western culture has taught us to attend to cruelty and ignore kindness. Cruelty makes for better ratings because our insecurity and self-doubt is attenuated by the constant reminder of the weakness and deficiency of the Other. What Buddhadharma reminds us is that we are all weak and defective, ovewhelmed by an ignorance that blinds us to our own potential for goodness and happiness. We will never realize our own potential without recognizing that the same potential resides in everyone. That realization requires a shift in our attention from the cruelty of others to even the smallest kindness. We find compassion and forgiveness for ourselves only through our ability to extend those feelings to others, even those who have fallen short of our expectations and desires.
To remember vividly during every moment the kindness that has been expressed by all beings, and to cultivate an intense and constant longing to return even a small portion of this kindness, unveils the true significance of life in all worlds. The person who fails to respond wholeheartedly to this call for universal kindness and concern is on a lower plane of development than animals, who are capable of experiencing immense gratitude.
~Lama Je Tsongkhapa in Twenty-Seven Verses On Mind Training
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