Much of our lives is run by our hunger for praise and fear of blame. These two dominate our actions and erode our relationships. We fear being natural and honest, trying new things and growing. Zen practice suggests that we let go of both praise and blame and stand in the truth of who we all are.
Much of our lives is run by our hunger for praise and fear of blame. These two dominate our actions and erode our relationships. We fear being natural and honest, trying new things and growing. Zen practice suggests that we let go of both praise and blame and stand in the truth of who we all are.
Hi, good morning. How are you? Here is Shana. I'm back again with another episode of our podcast. Zen Wisdom for your everyday life. Not Mine, yours, mine too of course, but each of us, this is for each of us and each of our lives is different. It's unique, it's, it has different questions, different demands upon us and the one hand we're all of course connected where one there was that bond. On the other hand, we do have our uniqueness, which is to be cherished as well and expressed and valued. It's not about saying this is not about plugging yourself into some kind of a system and joining the gang. It's actually about really deeply, deeply expressing, connecting with and knowing your own being along with others together. Very beautiful. Like in the garden, they were all kinds of flowers, roses, tulips, chrysanthemums. Each one blooms in its own way and we too. We all bloom in our own way anyway. For today, the title of our podcast is a very fundamental quote from from morning service, from something that we study and say all the time from one of the great teachers, which is praise and blame away with them once and for all away with them. Wow, that's such a powerful and succinct statement. Praise and blame away with them. Let's let that go for now. Let's let that go once and for all. And why is this so fundamental to the teachings in Zen and what does it really mean? What is it really imply for your life? Very important question. Because most of our lives, much of our lives at least are run. They're just run by our hunger for praise and by our fear of being blamed, being wrong, being punished. Oh my goodness. So we'll do anything to be praised to be glorified. Maybe that's a strong word, but it's true for many of us to be lifted up, to be noticed, to be praised. And in this way we feel, Oh God, I've done something that's good. I've done something that's right. I've done something that's worthwhile. When we receive the praise and the acclamation of others, that's a very position to be in from the point of view. I was in practice. Let me talk a little more about it in a moment. Let's also talk about blame because that's another the opposite of praise. Two sides of the same hand and it's a force that we will do anything not to be blamed censured because we take it in and we believe it and we think, oh my goodness, I'm bad, I've done something wrong, I'm not worthwhile, whatever. And by the way, we also blame ourselves intensely. Very, very, very destructive process. I'm not saying not to correct errors. Certainly that's important. And when we sit, we can easily see our errors and we correct them or they become naturally corrected in the process of sizing. But blame is something else. And I'm not saying not to be happy or to be fulfilled by behavior or by moments that are very beneficial for ourselves and others. That's not the same as praise, which comes from others and blame, which also comes from others. And Sartre actually has said hell is to live through the eyes of others, is to know ourselves through the eyes of others. What a powerful quote. I'll repeat that slowly. Excuse me. Hell is to know oneself to have one's identity through the eyes of others. So if someone praises us and their eyes were wonderful and we, that's who we are, then if that same person later blames us or centuries us, well then that's who we are. So we don't have an identity. We don't have a beingness. We fluctuate depending upon how others see us and view us and how they happen to be reacting to us today. Actually they're blame of us. Could have nothing to do with us. Maybe they feel sick too. They may, they have an upset stomach. Maybe they had a bad dream the night before and then we appear in their world and boom, they projected onto us blame. So when our lives are dominated by the hunger for praise and the fear of blame, running away from blame, trying to apologize for it, morning, noon and night, not undertaking projects we might want to undertake because fear of blame, we're not good or bad, whatever. When these two forces dominate our actions, which they often do, they also, all of our relationships, our relationships become something else. They're there to lift us up and to protect us perhaps from lane. Other relationship is not in my sense what I would call a true relationship. It's a relationship of convenience. We're kind of using another person to either make us feel good about ourselves or to protect us from the opposite rather than enjoy the simple pleasure of honesty and that is a great pleasure. Naturalness, spontaneity, simplicity, just being with another person as we are, rather than enjoy that we become imprisoned by our need to be approved of and not thought ill of. When others start to blame us. As I said before, often we joined them and we tear ourselves down or we stop what we're doing. We just stopped cold. I've heard over the years, many people say to me, I start something. I'm so happy. I'm so excited. Then boom, I stopped cold. Why? That's the fear of blame arising or self blame arising, or it's the hunger for praise, which is the other side of the fear of blame arising. Will this be good enough? Well, I make the grade danger. Danger.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We put an end to what we were doing sometimes simply because it doesn't fit into someone else's agenda. Wow. Wow. Someone may not like what we're doing. They may not perceive the whole picture. They may, if not, maybe not be congruent for their life. Okay, but what about your life? The hunger for praise and fear of blame set up an agenda for all our actions. It's like a railroad track. They keep us going right along that track and there was so much we dare not to explore, look scared as we fear the century of others. You know, when we're little, when we were born, you look up beautiful little babies, so I've very blessed to have some beautiful, beautiful little grandchildren. You look at them, they play, they're curious. They're excited. A simple thing happens in their eyes opened wide. A block rolls around on the floor. They can't get over it. They're so filled with wonder and curiosity, natural curiosity, natural excitement and delight at being alive and exploring this really amazing world that we live in. But as we grow older, become socialized, we are very into being approved of when needing that, that that praise or curiosity or excitement or wonder slowly, slowly goes undercover. I won't say it ebbs away because it doesn't ever ebb away. It's there waiting to be renewed. It's there in every single one of us. It's who we are. That wonder, that excitement, that, that, that love of life, that love of exploration, the curiosity. So when we look closely, it's easy to see,
Speaker 2:okay,
Speaker 1:that when we're hungering for praise,
Speaker 2:okay,
Speaker 1:oh, we're fearing blame. We're not protecting ourselves as we think we are. We're actually doing the opposite. We're limiting ourselves greatly. So how can we grow in this way? How can we try new things or speak our truth or make an evitable mistakes? That's an all other topic which is really interwoven with this. Oh my goodness, I may make a mistake and then of course I won't be praised. I'll be blamed on and on and on. Such a fear of making mistakes because that's all woven into this. But I have to say this, and this is not what I'm saying. I'm just sharing what my zen practice has taught me when I've learned sitting on the cushion firms many, many years. Mistakes are not bad. They are our friend. In fact, why call it a mistake? Who calls it a mistake? Who Labels and action a mistake. It's just something we did and we have a consequence from what we did, something we did something, something happened. We didn't get the outcome we wanted, so we beat ourselves up. We call it a mistake, but mistakes are our friend. How are they our friend? We learned from mistakes. We discover New Territories. These children would never learn to walk if they don't fall down again and again and again. They get up and they fall down and they laugh. How wonderful. I was watching a little one do that the other day and not that, oh my goodness, this is pure sand practice. Did you get up wobbly around, fell down again, giggles. That was fun and got up and tried again and sooner or later the balance comes in the child walks, but they have to fall down many times before they get the balance and the ability to walk and this nothing wrong with it and we to fall down many times inevitably and it's fine. It's part of the practice of getting our balance, knowing where we belong, growing learning. If we're not gripped, and I mean gripped by hunger for praise and the fear of blame, it's fine. We can try new things. We can get up and we can fall down again. We are not stuck in one spot for a very long time. If you can't get up and make a mistake and fall down and have people laugh at you and you laugh, maybe you could laugh too. It's funny you fell down. It doesn't mean anything about who you are that there's something wrong with you. You just fell down. So what if we don't become able to do this? Then we end up being stuck in one spot, unmovable, or in one relationship that might not be healthy or in one world that might not be right for you. Now we can stay stuck in that for a very long time. So how do we escape this or how do we, maybe escape is the wrong word here. How do we work our way out of this hunger for praise and this fear of blame? Well, we've just started, so to begin with, it's tremendously liberating to see, just to notice the enormous effect, praise and blame have on your life, noticing it, becoming aware of it. Wow. That begins to put it into its running. You unconsciously. That's what we do on the cushion. We sit there and we become aware, oh wow, I didn't know that. We can't run away. We don't move. We don't try to change anything. We sit and we become aware of what's what could be a little alarming sometimes what we're aware of, but then once we're aware of it, it changes. It transforms. We all. Another way to begin to work through this snare so cold is to see that that praise and blame are not beneficial to you. They're not. We think they're good. They're not. They cripple and distort you and the quality of your life living for praise. So we then give up. What did we give up? What price do we pay for that? Wow, what would you do? Here's a little part of the exercise. Now, what would you do if you weren't living with a great hunger for praise from others or fear of being blamed by others? What would you try? What would you undertake? Who would you be? Who are you? Now also, this is part of a wonderful part of the exercise as we talk about praise and blame, take a look at how it works. Your relationships, my goodness, all pervasive. They're all pervasive. So many of us are even afraid to enter a deeper or a more sustained relationship because we're just afraid that the praise, the love, the kindness will turn to blame. We'll turn to disappointment, will turn to something sour or unhappy. They're afraid of it. They're so afraid of that negative blaming mind. So if you to begin with just, let's see, the huge effect this has in your relationships. That's not a relationship. Having someone there just to keep propping up your ego or your sense of your sense of yourself. That's not really a relationship. That's two people using each other to feel good. There was another way to be in relationship or to have a relationship. And I'm going to go into that a great deal more very shortly because it's so important.
Speaker 2:Okay?
Speaker 1:So just take a look at your relationships. And when you see yourself blaming someone or blaming yourself, you are also someone. Just stop it. Stop it cold. It's blaming them, notice it and say no more blame, no more blame away with it once and for all. And when you see yourself hungering for that praise and you're not getting it, notice it. Just notice. Let's start with really noticing this. I noticed the effect it has upon you. And maybe you might say no more praise once and for all, you become addicted to praise and we come addicted to the fear of lame. So let's try it that way for now. Well, I have more to say, but it's getting to be a bit late now. It's a long talk today. I want to thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for so many really wonderful fun emails. I love hearing from all of you. I really do. And um, this Sunday morning I will be out at Malloy College if at eight 30 in the morning till 10, we have our zen meeting with all our friends and talk. And then for those who could stay an extra hour, I'm going to be offering a really fun workshop called Zen play where we're going to act out the cones, really take the different roles and all the parts of the Koans and then have a wonderful discussion about it. It's, it's a process. I've been doing a bit here and I really love it because we get a chance to embody all these different roles than these wonderful stories and look at it from so many through so many different eyes and points of view. So, um, if you're interested in joining us, if you're out on long island, send me an email, his top t o p speaker@yahoo.com it said 1000 Hempstead avenue. Um, Helen Burke Hall. This is a beautiful, wonderful zen group, which I recommend to everyone to join in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. Thank you again for being here today and for listening and for responding. And I really, today's exercises, today's talk can hit this spot. So take it in and see what you can do with it and let me know. Have a great day. See you next week.