Alan Senauke: 04-02-2014: Nobody’s Fault But Mine — The Practice of Complete Responsibility Without Guilt

Summary: Episode Description: Sensei Alan begins this wonderful talk by placing it in the context of other recent Upaya Dharma talks, particularly one offered by Brian Byrnes on March 26th entitled, "What Do You Do Then?" Sensei suggests that "what we do then" is what we are trained to do. Another way to view spiritual practice is as training. In the Buddhist traditions, there are many ways we train. One way is through the use of "slogans" such as the Tibetan verses on mind training, the Lojong. These mind training slogans originated with the 12th Century master Atisha, and came to the west primarily through Chogyam Trungpa ("Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness"), Pema Chodron ("Start Where You Are"), and Norman Fischer ("Training in Compassion"). Sensei Alan focuses on one of these slogans, translated by Chogyam Trungpa: "Drive all blames into one." This difficult training is about taking responsibility for everything that happens to us, but taking full responsibility without guilt or self-loathing. It is about taking ownership of our lives, while recognizing that not everything is our "fault" and that others are not free of responsibility. We habitually divest ourselves of responsibility, so this slogan is an important, albeit uncomfortable, way to train our minds. The talk concludes with an excellent Q&A and a song entitled, appropriately, "Nobody's Fault but Mine." BIO : Alan Senauke is vice-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center (BZC) in California. Since 1991 Alan has worked with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, where he presently serves as Senior Advisor. He continues to work as a socially engaged Buddhist activist, most recently founding the Clear View Project, developing Buddhist-based resources for relief and social change. In another realm, Alan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for more than forty years.