Everybody on the planet gets blame. Or maybe I should change that, a one day old baby who dies, maybe they don't get blame, but every adult at least and most kids, all get blamed. Sometimes the blame is deserved, we did something wrong. Sometimes the blame is not deserving, we didn't do anything wrong. But it doesn't matter in the sense that every one is basically going to get blamed. Even the Buddha got blamed! People blamed the Buddha.
Here is a very odd example: the Buddha and many of his disciple monks were staying in an area of India that was having a drought. The people were very poor, they didn't have that much food. The Buddha and his monks would go on alms round to get food every morning even though the people were poor and didn't have that much food at all. One day a person came up to the Buddha and blamed him. He said, "You should not be here, these people are poor, why are you here, you are useless whatever, taking food from them, etc. etc." The Buddha closed his eyes, and as the story goes, opened his eyes and said, "I can see back seventy thousand eons and I can not find a single person who ever suffered from giving alms to a Buddha."
He was actually in that area to help those people make more Dana/generosity to improve their bad Kamma they had, which was the reason why they had the drought. That was his actual intention for being in that area, to help these people. If they gave food to him they would have made such good Kamma, that then they would have good fruits coming later and the drought would be over sooner. But he got blamed for doing something so nice. Even the Buddha got blamed.
Blame is part of life. We can get blamed for doing really nice stuff. Rosemary and I get blamed. "What are you doing that for? You were such a good swimming coach, why don't you go back and coach swimming?" Yes That was one of the weirdest types of blame I ever got. That's just life, you are going to get blame. That's the first thing to reflect upon.
In working with blame, you have to reflect that it's going to come. Ah, what a relief. Because our idealism says, "I shouldn't be blamed ever, never, not me." But we will get blame. So to actually reflect on the fact that "yes, we will get blame." That's helpful. Then, when it comes, we don't automatically get angry back. Instead we want to look at the blame and consider is this justified or not. Is this helpful or not? That's important. There's a lot of blame that comes to us which is just simply good criticism that is meant to help us. Not to hurt us, but actually to help us.
But often we are going to reject it because we don't want to admit inside that we made any mistake. Yet, it's okay if we can actually reflect, that, yes, we are going to make mistakes from time to time. Also when we get blame and it's helpful criticism, be thankful, thank the people who blame you. They are doing you a favor.
Sometimes people can go, "Oh yes, okay, I can understand that, but it was how they blamed me." They accept the blame but they still reject the person, because the person said it the "wrong" way. Be careful about that. Separate the person's personality from what the person is saying to you. The person may not have perfect relationship skills to say it in a way that makes it sound nice and sweet, like M & M chocolates! It may not come out sweet. But it doesn't matter if it's sweet or not sweet. When you were sick and you took medicine, did it always taste nice? No. Maybe the medicines today are all sweet and sugary, but when I was a kid they were not. Sometimes it was so bad , you had to hold your nose and take it real quick. We didn't like it, but we would take the medicine because we knew what was going to happen, it was going to help us. We wouldn't blame the medicine for being yucky. It simply was just yucky, that's all it was.
So if you get blamed in a yucky way, but it's still helpful, can you take that and be happy for that?
On the other side, what if you get blamed and it's not right, it's not justified, you did nothing wrong? This person is blaming you for something you didn't do wrong. Can you understand they are just making a mistake? You have heard me say that in the retreat. The other person is just making a mistake at that time. Can you have compassionate understanding to realize they are making a mistake? Can you have equanimity towards the blame? Knowing t that you don't have to take that blame, it's not for you. Sometimes in these instances we would actually say something back. "Excuse me, but you are wrong, it was that person over there you want to talk to". But we don't have to get angry. If it's blame that's unjustified, and if we have compassionate understanding and equanimity together, we don't have to worry about that blame either.
Those are a few different ways of working with blame.