This ties in with the meditation I plan to give you at the end of this question period. You have to reflect on the eight worldly dhammas, and as far as undeserved blame we have to examine our intentions behind what we are being blamed for. We try to see whether the intention that we had behind our speech and actions was based in compassion or good intentions. If it was, then we can examine it a little bit more and see whether it was based in Right Understanding, or whether we lacked some understanding in that situation. If we examine that and we see that the person is blaming us unjustly, then we can take it less personally by understanding that they are the owner of their Kamma and we are the owner of ours, and that we will receive the results of our intentions. Then we can leave the words of blame with the other person.
Even if we were perfect we will get blamed. It is not possible to get by in this world without being blamed. I had a lot of idealism at the beginning of teaching, thinking that somehow if I could say it just the right way or express it, be compassionate enough, then people wouldn't blame me. I found out it was impossible, and that even if I tried to do the best I could people would still blame me. Yet, others would praise me, and then I realized that it doesn't always matter what I say, it depends on the person who is listening, as well. Then I reflected on the Buddha, that even if I was perfect I would get blamed, because the Buddha was perfect and he got blamed. If it is all right for him, it is all right for me. Even if I was perfect I would still get blamed, and I am not going to try to be better than the Buddha. Understanding that even the Buddha got blamed helps us take it less personally, understanding that some people like this and some people like that.
Another thing that's very helpful to remember is that sometimes we may remind the other person of someone they don't like, for example I might remind someone of their stepmother and Steve might remind someone of their stepfather. This has been the case in the past. In these cases, we don't have to take things personally.
Another way to help you not take things personally is to try to use the Four Noble Truths, to try to get our personality out of the way and just see Dukkha, the cause of it and what we understand about it. Then when others are putting something onto us that doesn't really belong to us, ask yourself, "How am I dealing with my aversions?" Remind yourself of your own responsibility.
If it is deserved blame, it can help us. If we look at our intention and we see that it was unbeneficial, then a bit of blame can caution us about repeating such unbeneficial intentions, because we are going to receive the Kammic result of that. So actually they are helping us at that moment. So it helps us to reflect, "Well, is it deserved or is it undeserved?" If it is deserved, then they are a friend. They are helping us, cautioning us. If our intention was good but we lacked understanding about the situation, they are still helping us.
We can look at our intention and see, yes, it was beneficial but we did lack some understanding in this situation and this person is trying to increase my understanding.
So it doesn't mean that we become indifferent to blame or praise, we actually want to investigate and use our wisdom to see whether it is deserved or undeserved, whether our intention was good or not good, whether we lacked understanding or we had understanding. Then we can use these situations to increase our wisdom and compassion, and take care of ourselves.
For example, if a person praises you, it doesn't necessarily mean that what you did was good, because they might be praising you for an unbeneficial action. This could be dangerous, because it may prompt you to do it again. So we have to have wisdom and compassion in the situation, this helps us to take it less personally. The more we use our wisdom faculty of the mind, the discrimination factor of the mind, we are less likely to become emotional about it.
One thing one of our assistants said helped him greatly is a phrase I said in an interview, "Don't trust your first reaction." Look into your first reaction to anything and see whether it really is appropriate or wise. Sometimes our first reaction, especially to something like praise or blame, may be just our conditioned past responses. By questioning it, not believing our first reaction, looking at it objectively, we will often see whether we are just falling into our past conditioned responses, and whether it is a skilful or an unskillful reaction.