I suggest you stay with here, after all your mother is getting
old and you as a son has a duty to be filial by taking care of your
mother. Lots of people are actually moving to live with their
parents or moving closer to their parents in order to take care of
them due to their age.
And it is a great opportunity to practise metta and patience. It is
impossible to practise this without the right people (people that
make you angry and impatient). You cannot practise it with friends.
So the more you should have gratitude to such people for giving you
an opportunity to improve yourself and cultivate.
It is also important that you put down whatever has happened and
focus on fulfilling your duty as a son in being filial. Forgiveness
is important. We should also cultivate mindfulness and freedom from
the mind.
The Power of Forgiveness
Everyone has experienced the sweet release of forgiveness, as well
as the hard coldness of not forgiving. You know the difference, and
you know the investment in the story that keeps a lack of
forgiveness in place. You also know the relief when you actually
forgive and let go of the burden.
Our parents were not perfect. They consciously or unconsciously did
things that were harmful to us, as our grandparents did things that
were harmful to our parents. Our lovers, our children, our
governments, and our competing tribes have harmed us. Now is the
time to forgive.
Horrible things are continually being done all over the planet, in
our own individual minds and in the collective mind. To forgive
these horrors does not necessarily mean to forget. You can forgive
and let go without forgetting. A huge learning and humbling occurs
when you are willing to see the story of humanity in all of its
horrors. Yet you can also recognize how much effort is needed to
hang on to the story. You can see that all the effort and attention
put into hanging on are already a meditation on not forgiving. The
stories continue to replay, with an obsession over what should have
been done or what might be done again. Continuing to replay the
story saps your energy. It is exhausting.
I honor the need to remember and to witness the horror that has
been done and ist still being done. But usually we bring to that
memory more hatred, suffering, and misery, which ensures even more
hatred, suffering, and misery.
After the war in Yugoslavia in 1999, I saw a news clip of a home
video filmed by a man who said he was making the video so that his
children could see what had been done to them, and so that they
would never forget or forgive. The horrors occurring at that time
were themselves in retaliation for what one group of people had
previously done to the other.
The futility and the waste of this kind of tribal warfare is going
on within our own minds as well: "I'm not going to let go of what
they did to me because it was wrong."
Yes, wrongs have been done and are still being done. There is no
need to forget or deny the wrongs that have been done both to you
and by you, but you can let go of suffering over them. "Forgive
them, for they know not that they do" is the truth. Any war that is
going on because of what happened yesterday is the result of
ignorance, of holding on to some idea of revenge.
It is very tempting to hold on to these kinds of views because
there is some pleasure in it, and that pleasure must be recognized.
It is the pleasure of egoic righteousness.
When you are unwilling to forgive, and you are holding on to a
story of your suffering and who did it to you, you are cursing
them, whether consciously or unconsciously. You must be willing to
stop the karma within yourself, be willing to say, "No, this time
it goes no further than me." This is the willingness to be at
peace. The willingness to forgive is a natural outgrowth of the
willingness to be free, and gives you the clarity to recognize the
temptation to hold on.
I once called my mother on Mother's Day. My mother was a sarcastic
and mean alcoholic. Alcohol was poisoning her, shifting her whole
personality. I had had some space from her for years, and I decided
one year that I would call her on Mother's Day and simply lie to
her and tell her what a great mother she was. She was old and sick,
and she didn't have many years left, so why not? I called her and
told her what a great mother she had been to me, and as the words
came out of my mouth, they were true. I didn't mean she had treated
me well, because she hasn't. I didn't mean her intentions were
great; sometimes they were, and sometimes they weren't. But as I
told her that she had been a good mother, my life experience was
finally augmented by my relationship with this very difficult
woman. My difficulty with my mother finally contributed to the
richness of my life. In that sense, she was indeed a good
mother.
What a relief there was in telling her this. Concurrently, my
ability to forigve myself for having hated her for so many years
arose. It was such a simple act. I had no idea I would see such
ramifications of healing.
finally, to be able to forgive this whole experience of humanity,
with all of its functions, drives, aggressions, and desires, is to
recognize what is untouched by any of that, what remains pure,
innocent, and free even in the grossest of stories.
In our desire to hold on to revenge, we actually keep ourselves
from the experience of freedom. As with everything else, in our
desire to hold on to one thing, we keep something else away. In the
desire to give something, we actually receive.
You can inquire directly within: What am I not willing to forgive? As
you do this, you find another opportunity to bring to consciousness
what is not consciously seen, what might still be holding your mind
in bondage. No effort is needed here, only the willingness to be
completely honest.
Once you have honestly seen what you are not willing to forgive,
you might also find it helpful to ask yourself: What am I willing to forgive?
Recognize forgiveness and savor it for a moment. It is important
not to force anything,
just to welcome all into the heart of consciousness. Can you
forgive? Can you accept forgiveness?
~ Gangaji
www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Features/2002/May02/packer.htm
...The listening to, the awaring of the me-story is
not part of the me. Awareness is not part of that network. The
network
cannot witness itself. It can think about itself and even change
itself,
establish new behavior patterns, but it cannot see itself or free
itself.
There is a whole psychological science called behavior modification
that,
through reward and punishment, tries to drop undesirable habits and
adopt
better, more sociable ones. This is not what we're talking about.
The
seeing, the awaring of the me movement is not part of the me
movement.
A moment during a visit with my parents in
Switzerland comes to mind. I had always had a difficult
relationship with my
mother. I had been afraid of her. She was a very passionate woman
with lots
of anger, but also love. Once during that visit I saw her standing
in the
dining room facing me. She was just standing there, and for no
known reason
I suddenly saw her without the past. There was no image of her, and
also no
idea of what she saw in me. All that was gone. There was nothing
left except
pure love for this woman. Such beauty shone out of her. And our
relationship
changed; there was a new closeness. No one changed it. It just
happened.
Truly seeing is freeing beyond imagination.
~ Toni Packer
