While on a cab with two colleagues to AMK Hub after today’s Pure Land class, we were chatting among ourselves when the cabbie suddenly gestured violently at the driver of the car that he drew up to. He wound down his window, yelling while pointing to the front – ‘It’s him! Not me!’ We weren’t paying attention earlier but I guess that driver was honking him when behind, before deciding to overtake him, while it was the driver before the cab that was holding up the traffic. I kept saying, ‘It’s okay! Relax! Never mind la!’ But the cabbie kept insisting the honker to be unreasonable in having ‘blamed’ (read: ‘honked’) him.
I remarked, ‘Maybe he just didn’t know (that it’s not your fault).’ That said, it was the cabbie’s fault for flaring up. It’s really senseless to be mad at those who were probably not deliberately ignorant. The cabbie’s road rage was not unlike an adult being angry at a toddler who, say, utters a rude word accidentally, who simply didn’t know it was rude. Anyway, there was no way for that driver to notify the specific ‘guilty’ road-hogging driver to hurry up, other than to honk at whoever’s in front.
Here’s the super irony. Because the cabbie stopped his cab to yell at the honker, the cabbie got honked at – by yet another car behind – for hogging! The wrongly accused one is now truly guilty! Thankfully, the cabbie didn’t get angry at the new honker! When we’re too focused on the faults of others, we lose focus of our own faults. And this itself is a huge fault! When the ‘dam’ of mindfulness that prevents misgivings is left unchecked, a flood of misgivings might just strike!
Look not to the faults of others,
their omissions or comissions,
but rather look at your own actions,
at what you have done and left undone.
– The Buddha (Dhammapada)
Do note that the above verse is not about turning a blind eye to, rationalising for, or being apathetic to the obvious mistakes of others; it’s about the priority of guarding ourselves against making mistakes on our part, in contrast to the spending of excess efforts doing fault-finding in others. Darn! I wish I got the email or snail mail address of the driver to send these reflections to! I hope he doesn’t get into trouble with his rage. Left unchecked, it’s really a time-bomb that might explode under the right (or rather, wrong) conditions.
Related Article:
Are You Causing the Train Chain Effect?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thedailyenlightenment-realisation/message/113