How to Deal with Blamers’ Negativity

   

 

Tips to deal with blamers

Some relationships are toxic, so toxic in fact that we don’t even realize what a negative impact they can have and how much they can drain us. One day you think you are close to someone and the next you wonder if they are your enemy.

But it’s hard to let go of a relationship in which we spend so much energy, even if we know the balance is not right and suspect people are playing the blame game with us and holding us back from believing in ourselves.

“Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame something or someone is foolishness, that there is nothing to be gained in blaming, whether it be others or oneself.” Epictetus

How do you know if you are dealing with a blamer? 

Blaming others is a form of narcissism, meaning an inflated sense of one’s self-importance. Narcissists are well known for blaming others for their problems and by doing so they are projecting their own insecurities onto the other person, who is usually not to blame at all for whatever they are being accused of. Example: the person that prangs their car and says it was your fault for distracting them when they were driving!

People who blame refuse to be accountable for their own actions and failures, as a result they put blame where it doesn’t belong, on others. Deep down blamers know they are wrong but they like to be in control and get caught up in their own game; blaming others makes them feel better about themselves and their own failures.

Blamers make you feel fearful of taking a risk toward your dream goal in case you fail and when you fail they’ll be there to say “I told you so”. People like this will slow you down and maybe it’s time to let go of them or adjust your behavior when you are with them. Understand that their behavior is not about you, something inside them is broken, and your happiness or existence triggers, their own insecurities to surface.

These negative people blame as a defence mechanism. They usually have self-esteem issues and can be described as selfish and self absorbed. They pretend that they can do no wrong and it’s the other person who is in the wrong all the time. They also don’t realize how negative they are and how this can make others feel. Blamers say they feel misunderstood and when challenged around their blaming behavior they interpret it as persecution without acknowledging their part in the situation.

In a blamer’s mind it seems logical and acceptable to blame others instead of taking responsibility for themselves. To blame is self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing, it’s a way of avoiding external repercussions while seeking something from a target, whether it is emotional, monetary, fun, reassurance or psychological stability.

What should you do about someone who blame you?

• Do consider if you should hang out with someone who makes you feel guilty in the first place or into a one-way street relationship, where you put a lot of energy into bonding but the reciprocal feeling only exists in your illusion.

• Believe in your instinct and common sense and ask yourself if you are really to blame in a situation where you are being blamed.

• Have a good sense of yourself. How would you have acted if you were the other person? If you conclude that you are being treated unfairly just peacefully remove yourself from the situation without feeding the blamer’s ego.

• Seek relationships with people who believe in you and support your dreams.

• Keep a positive attitude because some people really suck the energy out of you so there is no point trying to make them admit their mistake, it just won’t happen. Everyone deserves compassion but we cannot change other people’s behaviors, only our own.

By Tatiana Michelet

Conversation with Buddha

Dear Buddha,

Today I felt the desire to engage in a conversation with you....

In a few days I will be completing 56 magnificent years…The years of vivid emotions joy, innocence, love, hate, happiness, ego, sadness, fear, trial, error, success, failure, temptation etc., that I can’t deny nor ignore it. I see before me the faces of countless people, who remind me of ordinary and extraordinary events in my life.

The passage of time and your teaching has gradually helped me to see all these experiences in a clearer light and softens its significance realizing the meaning of impermanence and illusion. This introspective gaze made it possible a more serene and objective evaluation of my life I have met along the way.

On this beautiful day, I simply wish to express my warm gratitude to my parents, entire family and all friends for being in my life with their unconditional love.

I want to express my profound thanks to almighty for everything. For giving me countless lessons and opportunities to kindle my awareness. For giving me a chance and strength to stand up whenever I fall down. For giving me health and happiness. For giving me a most caring wife and awesome children. For giving me most loving family and true friends who stood by me in my darkest hours.

Most importantly for giving me precious gift of Free Will; the choice to accept or not to accept responsibility for where I am right now and where I am going next; the complete freedom and choice to change, alter and grow within.

Though there maybe times….I may digress and will leave your side while walking this mystical journey further; but I know that I will always come back to your path.

As someone rightly said “Man is immersed in time. He is born, lives and dies within time. Birth establishes one date, the first of his life, and death another, the last: defining the beginning and end of his existence on earth.”

I’m looking forward for the remaining years to walk with you holding my hand and guide me through your most divine teaching….

Timelessly yours,
Aditya

Searching For The "I"

The way the I, or the self, exists is merely labeled by the mind, but it appears to us as real, in the sense that it appears to exist from its own side. If it is expressed or introduced according to our experience, the ordinary term is the real I. This I appears to us as real, even when we are not upset, excited or frightened. Even when we don’t have these life situations, there is a real I appearing to us, but when we meet these situations, the I that appears as real becomes clearer and more obvious. When we get angry or when somebody provokes or blames us, or we win a game and we are excited about our success, at those times the I that appears as real becomes very clear and strong. This is called the emotional I and in that sense, the emotional I is always there, because this I appears as real. We always have this appearance and the emotional I is always there, but it is not as obvious, strong and clear as it appears in these particular life situations.

The real I—the emotional I, the truly existent I—doesn’t exist, because if we search for it, it can’t be found. If we search for that emotional I or that real I, it can’t be found anywhere on these aggregates, this association of the body and mind—from the tip of the hair down to the toes. If we search for this emotional I, this real I, this truly existent I, it can’t be found anywhere. When we are unaware of the reality of the I and we do not analyze, it looks as if there is a real I—a truly existent or inherently existent I—that can be found. However, if we look for the I and start to analyze, it suddenly becomes unclear and the experience that comes to us is that the I doesn’t exist.

If the I really exists, when we start to analyze and to search, it should become more and more clear. The existence of that emotional I—the real I or the truly existent I—should become more and more clear if it exists. We don’t feel that the I is in a particular location in the aggregates or the body, and as soon as we start to analyze we can’t find it, so that proves it is not there. This emotional I—the real I or the truly existent I—can’t be found anywhere on this association of body and mind, the aggregates.

The I is nowhere to be found, either on these aggregates or separate from these aggregates, therefore it doesn’t exist. Also this I is merely labeled by the mind, therefore it doesn’t exist from its own side and it doesn’t have true existence. There is no true existence on the I, which means there is no true existence on the merely labeled I. “On the I” means the I that exists, therefore, there is no true existence on the merely labeled I.

The conclusion is that every day, every moment when objects appear to us, they come from our own mind. If our mind does not label, there is no appearance of the objects of the senses, including the subject and object. If we do not label the subject, there is no appearance of the subject, and if we do not label the object, there is no appearance of the object.

By Lama Zopa Rinpoche

stress management

A Zen Master when explaining stress management to an audience raised a glass of water and asked:

"How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The master replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm and neck. If I hold it for a day, you'll probably have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same little weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with our life. If we continue to carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, the burden becomes increasingly heavy and we won't be able to bear it" Better we learn to drop our burden regularly to maintain our well being"

The Three Poisonous Minds

Our mind is bound by the three poisonous minds, so we are not free from suffering. We are bound by the suffering of the three poisonous minds, for example, anger, which is very dangerous, like a fire that can destroy all our objects of enjoyment. Fire can burn all our beautiful objects, our possessions and our house, and it can also burn us and cause danger to our life. Many times in the West, there is danger of fire burning our apartment and destroying our possessions. Anger is very, very violent to the mind, and it is very harmful to our peace and also to the peace of other living beings. When anger arises and we get angry with our family, we scold them, we beat them and we kill them, and besides that, we may kill many others with anger. When this violent mind arises, we may kill many hundreds of people, or thousands, millions of people, and it causes danger to us—it puts us in danger of death, of killing or being killed. There are many things we do when we get angry, such as breaking the possessions in our own house. It is no use to break our possessions—things like tables and plates—but after we get angry, we break things, like the TV, though it is not necessary and it doesn’t help at all. Like this, we create many unnecessary problems. Anger destroys all the beauty and to say it simply, it is very harmful to our enjoyment of this life.

Attachment is like black ink that gets on our beautiful clothes or on our beautiful paintings, drawings or letters. When black ink gets on our papers, it obscures the beautiful paintings, the beautiful drawings or letters, and we can’t see them. It is not like putting a drop of water on a painting, then just wiping it off. When black ink gets on a painting, it becomes oneness with the paper and it obscures the drawings. You can’t see them clearly. It is difficult, all of a sudden, to separate the black ink and the paper. This is the nature of attachment and this is the reason why I say that it obscures our ability to see the letters and the beautiful drawings on the paper. This is an example of attachment which arises and obscures the ability to see the truth of the self. It obscures the truth of the self and it obscures the ability to see the truth about others. Many people use the word "truth", especially young people—they always talk about truth and they seek truth in the East, they think they see truth. They always talk about seeking the truth, maybe with hashish. Anyway, this is the truth that only the Nepalese sell. I’m joking!

Anyway, like this, the rising of attachment causes us to hallucinate and to see ourselves with the wrong view, which is opposite to the self that is actually existing. The wrong view sees the self as really existing and it causes us to hallucinate and to view others completely in the wrong way, which is completely opposite to how the other person really exists. Attachment causes us to hallucinate and to see that object, that person, in completely the wrong form, the wrong view. We see them in a way which is completely opposite to how they really exist. Attachment obscures our ability to see the true nature of the self and others.

Another way of explaining the nature of attachment, although this is not the actual meaning, it’s just an example, is just as if we got stuck. If we fall into the water we can swim—especially you people, you can easily swim if there is water—but if there is dirty mud that we can’t comfortably swim in, then it is difficult to get out of that. We become completely stuck in the mud and we drown, because it is difficult to get out of that mud. This is another way to describe the nature of attachment and the way our mind is bound by attachment...

Just like anger, attachment causes so many problems in our own life and in other peoples’ lives. First of all, our mind is bound by attachment, but that is never our only life problem. In a way, attachment is just like glue. If our hand is covered by glue, then whatever object we meet, we get stuck to problems with that object. No matter how clean the other thing is, whatever we touch, we get stuck to that object. Another way of explaining it is like this: we get stuck everywhere, we are not free, and even if we leave one thing, we get stuck to another one. It’s as if our fingers have honey or glue or something like that on them, we get so attached to things. Even if we throw something out, we are still stuck to it. That is how attachment functions and causes problems in our own and others’ lives.

Also, our usual daily life problems arise from the thought of attachment. The usual daily life problems, such as disharmony in our relationships— families or couples not getting along even for a day—all this confusion arises from attachment. If there is no attachment in the first place, these problems wouldn’t happen.

Many times, because of attachment to an object it is very easy for anger to arise. When something goes wrong with our object of attachment—when we don’t receive the object or when it is possessed or occupied by other people—when something bad happens, it is very easy to generate anger and jealousy, all these things. Anger is very harmful and this is another way attachment is also very harmful.

It’s quite easy to understand how anger is harmful, but it’s really difficult to understand how attachment is harmful for our mind because this seems a little bit obscure. Really it is not obscure, it is so clear. We are experiencing problems and going through them all the time, but we are not aware, so it is quite difficult for us to see clearly how attachment harms us, because it seems obscured. It is extremely important that we should be aware of the functions of attachment and the effect or result of attachment and how it harms us. That is extremely important. Not only attachment, but also anger, ignorance and any other type of delusion. Always investigate the functions of these delusions and the harmful results. How is it harmful? It is important to check up all the time and to have a deep understanding.

And now ignorance. As I said before, when attachment arises, it obscures the true nature of oneself and others. Another way saying this is that attachment obscures the reality of self and the reality of others. This means the attached mind increases our ignorance. It causes our ignorance and anger to increase more and more. Ignorance is such a harmful mind. At night-time, when there is no light and no stars or moon, it is completely dark and we think that we are walking on the right path, but in truth we are walking where there are stones and thorns. Then we get thorns in our feet and we fall down and get wounded. We think there is a wall protecting us from a precipice and we don’t recognize there is a danger of falling down. We don’t know there is no wall and the precipice is creating a dangerous situation. We travel at night with a wrong belief. So, ignorance is harmful like this and our wrong conceptions cause us so much trouble. Ignorance is like this person with wrong conceptions who cannot do anything clearly and doesn’t know that he’s going to fall down. The nature of ignorance is just like that person who can’t see how harmful it is. This is just an example to give some idea of how harmful ignorance is, but actually there is no way to compare the great harm of ignorance with this example. The person walking with wrong conceptions who falls down a precipice and breaks a leg, causing death – this is still nothing when compared with the incredible, unbelievable harmfulness of ignorance, which we have to experience for a long time, and the various other harmfulnesses, that we experience not just one time, but at various times. Compared to those, this example of the harmfulness of ignorance is nothing.

These three minds are usually called the “three poisonous minds.” Calling them poison is very meaningful—it makes so much sense, it has so much meaning. For instance, by eating poison, when poison goes inside the stomach, inside the body, the person doesn’t become healthy, person gets sick. So it is like this, but that poison is an external thing, it is made of matter, and the other poison, the great ignorance, anger and attachment, is inner poison. The other poison is the outer poison, these three minds are the inner poison. If we take the outer poison we get sick—we are overwhelmed by hallucinations and vomiting, and there is danger to our life. Similarly, by having these three poisonous minds, we constantly get sick.

First of all, when the mind is bound by the three poisonous minds, it is not a healthy mind, it is a sick mind. Then, with these three poisonous minds, we produce unrighteous actions, unrighteousness. Another way of saying this, is that we create negative actions with our speech, body and mind. By creating the wrong actions, with the wrong method, the result or the effect that we receive is always suffering. There is always a problem and we don’t receive happiness, even if we have the expectation that we will gain happiness from that action. For instance, a person who eats honey mixed with poison. This ignorant person does not know it is poisonous honey, he just believes that it is pure honey because it tastes sweet, and he keeps on taking it. What is the result? The result the person receives is that his body becomes more and more uncomfortable, and more and more pain arises.

It is just like this with any of the poisonous minds of anger, attachment or ignorance. Whatever action we create with speech, body and mind is a mistake or a wrong action, just like a person who eats poisonous honey. The person thinks he is enjoying it, that it really is pure honey, not poisonous. He thinks that nothing will happen by eating it, that he will only enjoy it. So, our normal minds are like this example.

Just as the actions of body, speech and mind produced by the three poisonous minds are wrong, are negative action, so, the result is always in the nature of suffering. These actions don’t make us happy. The physical and mental sufferings and unhappiness that we have been experiencing in this life, since we were born until now, all these life problems are the result of the wrong actions done with the three poisonous minds. So, these three poisonous minds are the cause of all our suffering and unhappiness.

Therefore, without depending on the method, without depending on Dharma, and instead depending on external things, we can’t destroy the cause of our suffering, the three poisonous minds. Nothing can destroy this, without depending on Dharma.

By:Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Happiness Comes from the Mind

We are here to receive peace and happiness in our mind by avoiding suffering, but first we have to recognize the cause of happiness. We have to understand what brings us happiness and what brings us suffering. This is extremely important to understand, or there is no way to prevent suffering and receive happiness in our mind.

In our dreams, happiness and small pleasures are created by our mind, and suffering and unhappiness are also produced by our mind. In our dreams, even the small suffering and the pleasure that we feel when we meet an object is a projection of our mind. It is easy to understand how this is dependent on our mind and is produced by our mind.
Similarly, all our happiness and the small pleasures of our life—when we feel extremely cold, we stay inside for a long time and when we are hot, we go outside and feel pleasure—even small pleasures and physical pains are just like a dream, they all come from the mind. Just like this, all our enjoyments—our food and clothing, whatever we wear and whatever we see, beautiful or ugly, always wearing soft, comfortable clothing, always receiving good enjoyments and food, always being busy in a beautiful comfortable place—all this is received by depending on the mind. All our pleasure and happiness comes from the mind.
This is explained in the Buddha’s philosophical teachings about nature and the evolution of the universe and things. All these various worlds are born from karma or action. What Buddha is saying is that all the planets, the earth on which we live and the reason we have to live on such an earth and in such a country—why there are different planets and at night-time another moon and lighting, and the sun, stars and different planets that we enjoy, all these objects that give us pleasure—all these various worlds are born from our actions or karma.
The different mountains and plants—ugly and beautiful plants and bushes—all these different objects of our senses in all of the different universes are all produced by the mind and have arisen from the mind. How they are produced is dependent on the mind. All the sufferings, all the ugly objects and all the unhappiness that arises from meeting these objects, is all born from karma, or the actions of our body, our speech and our thoughts.
Do all the actions of body, speech and mind bring suffering? Not all the actions of body, speech, and mind bring suffering, but some actions cause suffering and cause the existence of ugly objects—the objects that we feel unhappy about when we meet them.
What actions bring all this suffering and all these ugly objects? These are the nonvirtuous actions of body, speech, and mind. What creates the nonvirtuous actions of body, speech, and mind? The whole source is the mind. Do all the actions of mind bring the causes of suffering? Not all the actions of mind cause suffering, but there are certain types of mind that cause suffering and produce nonvirtuous actions. So what type of mind is that? The delusions—the nonvirtuous thoughts.
If we plant poisonous seeds in the ground, all the trees and fruit become poisonous plants. So, the delusions are like poisonous seeds. From our nonvirtuous thoughts, our actions become nonvirtuous and bring the result of suffering. All the undesirable, ugly objects that cause us to feel unhappiness and suffering when we meet them, come into existence as a result of our actions. It’s the same thing with all the problems in our life. Where do they come from? They come from the nonvirtuous thoughts and actions, which are like poisonous seeds. The various problems of life are like the various poisonous fruits of the tree with branches that have grown from those seeds.
In the same way, all our happiness and all the desirable and beautiful objects that make us feel happy when we meet them, come from the virtuous actions of body, speech and mind. Just as a medicinal tree grows from the medicinal root, fruit and leaves, virtuous karma or action arises from our virtuous thoughts. From this we receive a good result—happiness. So, the key to suffering and happiness depends on the mind. The whole root of suffering and happiness is within our mind.
Therefore, we each have the freedom to prevent suffering. If we want to continuously receive happiness, there is freedom and there is a chance. Since our own mind is the root of all this, it is up to us how we direct our mind. Whether we make it into virtue, or whether we turn our mind to nonvirtue, it is up to us. It depends on us and what we do. That is why happiness and suffering is not something that is decided by God, it is created by us. If we receive happiness, it is because we did some good actions with a good mind, and if we receive unhappiness, it comes from our own nonvirtuous thoughts and actions.
We can’t blame other people and there is nothing to criticize other sentient beings for. If we always turn our mind to virtue, we always experience happiness as a result. Even if other sentient beings want us to suffer, because we have not created the cause to experience that result, no matter how much other sentient beings try to create a problem and try to arrange for us to suffer, because the cause is not within our mind, it is impossible to experience the suffering result of that problem. Even if all sentient beings pray for us to be killed, because we have not created the cause to die in an explosion or atomic bomb, even if they pray for this, we will never experience it. If we have not created the cause to be bitten by a snake, even if we walk in a place which is full of poisonous snakes and even if we touch them, there is no way to be harmed.

By:Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche