In martial arts, we learn how to be a great partner. This means instead of just trying to beat each other, we help by challenging one another and keeping each other safe. In BJJ, when someone taps us, we learn from it. In Tai Chi push hands, when we get pushed, we accept the energy and play with it rather than just resisting.

This is something the world—and our country—sorely needs today. We may need to resist at times, yet we also need to listen to each other. By listening, we can move beyond blame and take real responsibility.

Eating the Blame

There’s a great Zen story called Eating the Blame:

Circumstances arose one day which delayed preparation of the dinner of a Soto Zen master, Fugai, and his followers. In haste, the cook went to the garden with his curved knife and cut off the tops of green vegetables, chopped them together, and made soup, unaware that in his haste he had included part of a snake in the vegetables.

The followers of Fugai thought they had never tasted such great soup. But when the master himself found the snake’s head in his bowl, he summoned the cook.

“What is this?” he demanded, holding up the head of the snake.

“Oh, thank you, Master,” replied the cook, taking the morsel and eating it quickly.

Blame is often something we heap on others and ourselves, compounding mistakes and making them worse. Like in meditation, when we have an errant thought and instead of letting it go, we beat ourselves up for having thoughts—which of course results in even more thoughts.

This story shows how a Zen master—here, the cook rather than the one in charge—deals with blame and cuts it off at the head, just as he accidentally did with the snake. The snake can symbolize blame or other insidious negative emotions. When faced with his mistake, he immediately eats it, simultaneously accepting it and making it disappear.

If only we were all so quick to accept and move on from our failures. He likely even enjoyed the taste of the snake’s head, since it was the flavor that made the soup extra tasty that day. Though Zen monks aren’t supposed to eat meat, this act of indulgent acceptance was a win-win.

When Blame Replaces Responsibility

There is so much blame going around in the world today. Blaming others is a great way to avoid responsibility—if it’s somebody else’s fault, then it’s not mine and I don’t have to do anything about it. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in politics, and even where basic human rights are concerned, many people in our country and around the world seem more interested in blaming others than taking responsibility.

Our economy is in trouble? Blame immigrants.
We have a flawed immigration system? Blame the other political party.

When the news is filled with terrible examples of how this is being handled—and the violence and death that meets people who are trying to take responsibility by protesting or helping others—it feels easy to give up, get angry, and blame the whole thing on someone else.

Even when I get my more-or-less unslanted news from centrist organizations, it can feel like we’re headed toward some kind of civil war in America. Seeing things in extreme ways is tempting because it makes everything seem simple and allows us to blame “the other.” The truth, of course, is far more complicated, and that makes taking responsibility even harder.

We can’t just sit back and wait for war to break out. Many of my friends and family would likely be on the other side, which makes that outcome feel unlikely anyway. That leaves us with the difficult work of having real conversations with people we disagree with and coming together to craft policies and laws that actually work.

The Taste of Responsibility

This kind of compromise will necessarily involve some eating of the blame. We cannot move in the right direction without accepting some responsibility for the way things are. While it may seem distasteful to swallow the head of the snake, we may discover a secret savory flavor—an umami inherent to responsibility.

If we’re willing to take it on, the blame that is so rampant in our world today might just get gobbled up before it spreads.