“How come our family is such an unhappy one?” My brother once asked.
Brother is now in deep depression, rejecting any interaction with us, am writing this hoping somehow this words can reach out to him.
Dear brother,
Why? I want to know too, here is why.
Mum has been the caretaker of her family of 12 siblings since she was a little girl, all her brothers and sisters got to go to school, but she was the one staying home taking care of all things, while grandma and grandpa busy working, busy being angry with each other, and busy drinking when they were too tired after some hard day’s work. They are good people, I love them all the same, but that was how it was back in those days. Mum being the goodie reliable and hardworking daughter, was entrusted the job of taking care of the home. She really hope to go to school like all her brothers and sisters and friends, but no she didn’t get the chance until she was over age, grandma finally enrolled her when she was 10, but only for 3 years, that’s all she got, over the years, she had learnt to suppress her own feelings and needs, at a tender young age she had accepted her life to be the caretaker, putting herself last behind everyone else, and worse of all she think she was loved, by the society standard, a daughter aught to just be appreciative that was all that she knew, well, that was not wrong, but that has become her survival coping stunt – in order to be valued, she gave herself up, she took care of everyone else, but herself. I knew this had to be true because when I asked her, since she feels she was being loved, can she name a few things that she felt really appreciative of grandma and grandpa? She couldn’t utter a word, she couldn’t even think of anything to say, written on her face was just ‘suffering’. She felt frustrated and just dumb founded.
Mum’s frustration is an old energy buried inside her since she was a little girl, it could well be since some past life episodes, who knows. She tries all her mights to love everyone, you know she is such a lovely lady everyone knows she is kind and helpful, but who ever know she had embodied a lot of anger and frustration deep in her? You and I, who live with her, and father who had passed away. In our family, the air was filled with frustration, anger, unhappiness, all these have their root course. You and I grow up with seemingly lots of care and love but it was secretly fuelled with lots of anger and frustration, don’t you find it confusing growing up? It was like everything was normal on the surface but somehow we were unhappy. Mum could’t help it too, she doesn’t know this been going on in her too, can we blame her? She worked hard and really took good care of our needs. And growing up we have witness enough how she also have to be carefully tiptoeing everyday to make sure father did not become angry.
Father’s story was not a nice one too. This side of the grandparents were equally unconscious, anger, fighting, gambling, poverty were the ingredients father had to grow up with. At the age of 6, father was playing in a pond with his 2nd brother, do you know we had a 2nd uncle? I didn’t know, because he was drown in the pond, while father was rescued by grandma, the grandma who was known to be super short fused and could shout over a few streets. Poor little father, I can’t imagine how scared he was, probably was being accused for causing the death of his 2nd brother. I don’t know for sure, but what can be seen is father’s extreme lack of sense of security all through his living life. Looking back, I can’t imagine living a life like his, great sense of suffering everyday as though the whole world was unkind to him, including his own family, including us he couldn’t trust. I am sure you remember how hard it had been to show him that we love him, all we get in return was always criticism, hurtful words oh my god my heart still ache just to think about that, why? Because thats the only reaction he knew, he couldn’t feel comfortable being treated nicely because that was not how he grow up, that was not familiar to him. Anyone bringing gifts to our family was seen as someone having some hidden agenda. I thought he was being really ridiculous, but I was too young to understand him. He just kept on rejecting love till the day he past away. The time when he was down with prostate cancer, all his fear and insecurity showed, I used to think, for this man to really feel our love for him, maybe it has to be when he fell really sick and we all stick around to take care of him, then he could realised how we want to love him. That day really came true, but the walls around his heart were just too strong and thick, we couldn’t penetrate them, mum was the best, she put down all the past, came back to take care of him night and day, I have tried all that I could, down to the last drop if tears and last drop of energy, until my body couldn’t take it anymore and ended up in the ER, and you have also soften so much just faithfully did what you need to do as a son, and in the end, he past away, all alone, just exactly how he didn’t want to.
Why we are not a happy family? How could it not be?
Just a few days after their wedding, mum started to cry for her fate, at 24, left home to live with her new husband, and realized she married a man with no love to offer her. With such a set up, we were born.
Here is a practice to share with you from our teacher Thay.
Recognizing feelings and emotions.
Lord Buddha, thanks to practicing mindful breathing and walking, we are aware of what is happening around us. We can recognize different mental formations as they arise. We know that the wounds of our ancestors and parents, as well as the wounds of our childhood until now still lie deep in our consciousness. Sometimes painful feelings associated with painful memories rise up in us, and if we do not know how to recognize and embrace, and help them to calm down, we can say things and do things that cause divisions in our family and community. When we cause division around us, we also feel divided in ourselves.
Lord Buddha, we are determine to remember your teaching, to practice mindful breathing and walking to produce more positive energy in our daily life, we can use this energy to recognize the painful feelings in us, and help them to calm down. We know when we suppress these feelings and emotions when they come up, will only make the situation more difficult.
Lord Buddha, thanks to your teachings, we know that these feelings and emotions were the most part raise from narrow perceptions and incomplete understanding. We have wrong ideas about ourselves and our parents. We have ideas about happiness and suffering that we cannot let go of. We have already made ourselves suffer a great deal because of our wrong ideas, for example we have the ideas that happiness and suffering come from outside of ourselves, and are not due to our own mind. Our way of looking, listening, understanding and judging, has made us suffer and has made our loved one suffer. We know by letting go of these ideas we will be happier and more peaceful in our body and mind. Letting go of our narrow ideas and wrong perceptions, our painful feelings and emotions will no longer have a basis to arise.
Lord Buddha, we know that we still have so much wrong perceptions, that prevent us from seeing things the way they really are. We promise that from now on, we shall practice looking deeply to see that the majority of our suffering arises from our ideas and perceptions. We shall not blame others when we suffer but we will return to ourselves and recognize the source of our suffering in our lack of understanding, we shall practice looking deeply, letting go of wrong perceptions, and helping other people letting go of their wrong perceptions, so that they can also overcome their suffering.
What has happened since the April sojourn been first really sweet, beautifully surreal, dramatically wonderful, uplifting and just as though someone been coming along with me everyday planning for me all the ingredients and experiences I needed for learning, and the people I needed to meet. As far as impermanence goes, which nobody can ever escape from, all the wonderful encounters described above just would not stay forever so, now months later, the challenge is to pull out the ability to let them go and come back to earth.
In the heart sutra we read, that once we can penetrate and meet with the perfect understanding, we can overcome obstacles and fear, and know that everything is empty. The thoughts and the fear, appears to be solid and real, but inside them, we only see temporary formations, we can see many many separate conditions that have came together from all directions to make them possible, but the controlling human in us take them to be ourselves and identify with them, we have ignored the fact that we really have no total control on all the conditionings that could come from all directions. And so they became our old stories and fear that we hold on tight. We hold on to them because we have lost touch with love, the Buddha nature which is waiting in the here and the now, which has the capacity to overcome these stories and fear. Hence the sutra also says, when we have met with the perfect understanding, we know that everything and anything in this world is empty as such, no solid identity, they are all formations, they cannot be produced or destroyed, they are not good or bad, they are mere formations that come together and passing away – this is the lesson for the human. When the human have look deeply enough with mindfulness and concentration, in touch with the loving energy, insight will arise, the human will know there is no need for investing any despair or superiority, because non of all the phenomenon are representation of us, and finally we can let them go, and meet with the being, and we will know it is actually always here at home. So come here, stop being pulled back, stop running forward, all we need to do is just come back here, to arrive at our true home.
But I know I am so lucky at this point of challenging time, suffering the death of my past and welcoming the birth of the new, for I have the dharma to keep me on the path, to keep to the practice of accepting what is, for happiness is to know everything I need is here, because I have arrived at the very spot life wants me to be, so the ego, the conflict, the anger, the hatred, the self doubts, the craving – are all my teachers, learning to live peacefully with them shall be my lesson, simply to stay curious without judgement is not too strenuous after all, I should be able to do it as long as I remember to be mindful.
“I regret all the unwholesome thoughts, speech and actions I have committed from the beginningless time due to ignorance and defilements, I am aware, as all phenomenas, these regrets are results of formations and conditionings, nevertheless they have formed the karmic energy for my existence, governed not by any higher power, but by my own consciousness, attachment and wrong perspectives that have had me holding on to it. Now, I am willing to let them go, so that they have a chance to transform to utmost wholesomeness, to loving kindness, compassion and understanding to take good care of myself, to free myself from suffering, so that I can cultivate the capacity to also help others to be free from suffering. Lord Buddha, all the Buddhas and boddhisatvas, help me please.”
Like so many people, I have great admiration for 
Trapped in the rain, this has not happened to me for such a long time. The rain is not stopping for me, I know this is a time and space created for me for a purpose.
Coming to this realization has taken tremendous soul searching since I was about 30. My remedies has been so much, yoga, vipassana, 
by Carrie Bergman, Creative Director
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle reminds me to be aware of my ego-based thinking, and that we all have a greater purpose to serve for all, and more so for ourselves, as a fellow human species. Reading the book had been a chain of pleasant surprises and findings of delightful answers to the questions I been asking since God knows when!
Breathe 