had been a confrontation and that I had been hurt by
it. On the other hand, it wasn’t a letter in which I
went to the other extreme and lashed out. For the
first time, I felt I had experienced what it meant to
exchange oneself for other. When you’ve been there
you know what it feels like, and therefore you can
give something that you know will open up the space
and cause things to keep flowing. You can give some-
thing that will help someone else connect with their
own insight and courage and gentleness, rather than
further polarize the situation.
“Drive all blames into one” is a pivotal slogan
because usually driving blames into other comes
from the fact that we’ve been hurt and therefore
want to hurt back. It’s that kind of logic. Therefore
the exchange—putting ourselves in someone else’s
shoes—doesn’t come from theory, in which you try
to imagine what someone else is feeling. It comes
from becoming so familiar and so openhearted and
so honest about who you are and what you do that
you begin to understand humanness altogether and
you can speak appropriately to the situation.
The basic ground of compassionate action is the
importance of working withrather than struggling
against,and what I mean by that is working with your
own unwanted, unacceptable stuff, so that when the
unacceptable and unwanted appears out there,you
relate to it based on having worked with loving-kind-
ness for yourself. Then there is no condescension.
146 Compassionate Action