Ask The Teachers

I am having great difficulty practicing tolerance and compassion towards my mother, who has had mental health problems since I was ten. She is in her mid-fifties and last year when my father died, we sold our house and moved in to care for her. (I have a husband, an eight-year-old son and a sixteen-month-old baby.) I get frustrated because my mother has no concept of baby safety and feeds him food she has been asked not to. My eight-year-old can’t cope with having to keep correcting his grandma, and his marks are going downhill. He’s now seeing a child therapist! My time for meditation is almost nonexistent. I am trying to practice dharma in daily life but every day I wind up in bed feeling my good intentions have gone out the window. How can I get through this with a Buddhist view?

Blanche Hartman: I wonder if you feel that you have somehow failed in your practice, that you are not meeting some standard of loving-kindness and compassion that you have read or heard about. On the contrary, you have a very open heart and practice has a value to you; both are evident in your question.

You cannot “fix” your mother. Her mental illness is her state in this life. Your kindness is to be there for her. But “being there” will include many states of mind and body: compassion, frustration, anxiety, love, sadness. All of these states are practice.

As for the practices of loving-kindness and compassion, all of the great teachers say that these begin with oneself. We so often overlook ourselves to take care of others, but how are we different from them? We think our suffering is somehow less, but suffering and pain are exactly that—no matter what the circumstances. Therefore, as you lie in bed at night and breathe a few deep breaths, extend compassion to yourself and say, “May I be happy and free from pain and anxiety,” until you feel cared for and calm, and then extend that freely to others around you.

As much as we would like to be motivated only by compassion, in difficult and frustrating situations, the afflictive emotion of anger may arise. If so, it needs to be acknowledged and cared for. (The Mindfulness Sutra says, “When anger arises, the monk says, ‘Anger has arisen.’”) Whatever afflictive emotions arise (frustration, anger, resentment, self-pity), can you give the physical sensations you notice (contraction, heat, tension, tears) your kind attention, offering them breath and awareness with an intention of caring for them rather than pushing them away? Cultivating compassion for the suffering you are experiencing in this moment is not selfish; it can help you cultivate a greater capacity to be with the suffering of others.

“Practice” in Zen is directed toward clearly seeing just what is, as-it-is, so practice also includes clearly seeing the practical considerations. For example, can you enlist help from some experts (mental health professionals, social workers, family doctor and so on) to help you evaluate whether living with your mother is the best solution for the family? Are there other alternatives? Have you spoken with your mother’s mental health practitioner to make sure she is taking the right medications as prescribed? Is there a social worker who could help you find a facility where your mother could go for some respite care?

As you are cultivating loving-kindness, compassion and patient endurance of the actual circumstances of your life, please do not set up an impossible ideal and castigate yourself for not being able to live up to it. Please just do your best and credit yourself for doing that in difficult circumstances.

Tulku Thondup: The most powerful way to strengthen compassion is to remind ourselves of the right way to think. If we experience true compassion, patience develops spontaneously.

We often see parents working themselves to the bone for their children—getting up many times at night for their babies or working two jobs to pay for schooling. Why? Because of love. Certainly you are in a challenging situation. But you are fortunate to have your mother, the universal symbol of love and the giver of life, as a constant source that inspires compassion. It is so sad that she is so helpless, barely able to distinguish right conduct from wrong. But now is the time when she most needs your understanding. If you appreciate her unfortunate state with a caring and understanding heart, your challenge will transform itself into a golden opportunity for you to enjoy true love and patience. Just as a starving person who is offered the best and healthiest food should not pass it up, you should seize the opportunity before you! You may not have time for formal meditation, but now your whole life can be a meditation. Generating love towards our mother is the most profound dharma practice. We can then apply the same feeling towards all mother beings. Saying gentle words to cheer her up is the most important prayer. Looking at her with eyes of love and a heart of appreciation is the most important meditation. Serving her with great care and respect is the most important ritual. Please don’t try to exchange such a great practice for some insignificant or unattainable meditation. As Shantideva says, “For making merits, the mere thought of benefiting a person is much superior to making offerings to a Buddha.”

Through meditation you must program your mind in the system of compassion and patience. First recall the most inspiring images of your mother and feelings of love and caring affection for her. Think and dwell in the feeling of her unconditioned love by meditating on it again and again. Put yourself in her shoes and feel the hardships that she has suffered, day-in, day-out. When your mind is filled with appreciation for her love and sadness for her hardships, it will become easier to tolerate her shortcomings. Of course, feelings of frustration will still arise. To keep them in check, use the guard of mindfulness throughout the day. Whenever you catch yourself becoming upset, stop that thought and remind yourself of the right way to think. Opening your heart of love to your mother does not mean that you should not take necessary precautions for your children—just don’t blame your mother for not being able to provide for them. If she could, caring for her grandchildren would have been her greatest joy.

Narayan Liebenson Grady: It might be helpful to keep in mind that there is a difference between our actions and our inner experiences of mental states. You may feel that you are not as kind as you aspire to be. However, the situation that you describe is not an easy one. It may be useful to notice that despite your inner experiences of frustration and intolerance, you are surely doing the best you can. If your intention is to act and speak as kindly as possible, you will be cultivating kindness, even though you may be feeling the opposite way.

As you know, an aspect of practice is learning how to care for all beings, including yourself. Although you feel that you are failing to meet the standards you hold for relating to your mother, please remember that your standards are mind-made. The gap between how we should be and how we actually are can be painful. The healing of this gap comes about not through condemning or condoning our thoughts and emotions but through accepting them.

Acceptance allows us to relax and look more deeply; this, in turn, can help us to see options that we may have been too tense to notice before. To determine how to better protect your requires a kind of creativity that may arise when the mind is more relaxed and spacious. As well, when our minds are relaxed and present, we can respond more attentively to what is being asked of us in the moment.

Meditation has everything to do with working with the conditions we find ourselves in. This is easy to say and difficult to do, which is what makes it a practice. For instance, in taking speech as a practice, it may be helpful to notice whether you are speaking unnecessarily (which would deplete much needed energy for everything else that you have to do). Consider whether you are trying to explain things that your mother can’t understand because of her mental fragility.

As the conditions in our lives change, it is usually necessary to examine and refine our definition of what it means to meditate. Sometimes because of the demands upon us we’re not able to spend as much time in formal practice. Instead of relying on your zafu, can you stop for a few moments from time to time throughout the day and observe your breathing? These moments of stopping can be very powerful. Try not to dismiss them as unimportant. Also, be sure to try to practice while lying in bed before going to sleep at night. Replacing thoughts of worry with thoughts of loving-kindness is a very wonderful way to practice.

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