Passing blame is easy but disempowering, accepting responsibility is tough but empowering Gita 16.02
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Whenever things go wrong, a natural psychological defense mechanism within us is to not want to be further hurt by whatever has gone wrong.
Now, when we say things have gone wrong, sometimes it is that factors beyond our control have made the things go wrong. But quite often, we ourselves have done something that has contributed to the things going wrong. At such a time, it is important for us to begin with what is in our control.
If we let our mind take control, then the mind will, then we will start looking for someone to blame. And passing blame to others, it is easy, but it is disempowering. Why disempowering? Firstly, because we cannot control others.
We cannot force others to take the responsibility for that problem. They may deny it and a lot of energy may go in denying and accusing. And even if they accept, even if we can prove it and they accept it, still they may not work wholeheartedly to rectify it.
And things may not get fixed. And or not at least, sometimes things cannot be entirely fixed, but to whatever extent they can be fixed. Beyond that, if we have played some part in the problem, and if we pass blame to others, then we do not grow, we do not improve, we do not learn much.
So, in this way, in terms of solving the problem as well as improving ourselves, passing blame is disempowering. In contrast, accepting responsibility is difficult because it hurts, it hurts our ego, it hurts our social image, our prestige, our reputation, but it is empowering. Why? Because it shifts our focus from what is not in our control to what is in our control.
And we can make at least incremental changes to make things better, to make ourselves better. And this is the path to improvement. And this is the path that godly people choose.
The Bhagavad Gita, while listing the qualities of godly people, declares that one quality is aversion to fault-finding and blaming. And Krishna says in the various qualities like compassion, so Krishna describes one such quality is so when we learn, we become averse to fault-finding and averse to blaming and we become ready to take responsibility, that can be a hugely transforming moment that will propel us on the path to growth and eventually success. Thank you.
Hare Krishna.