Almost a year

About 2 weeks to go and I can celebrate my 1 year survival.

I've changed.

But the days have still not enough hours to do everything I want to do.

Today a great inspiration in my life has died. He had cancer. Conquered it and then found out it had returned even worse. He didn't manage the year his doctors wanted to give him, even though he tried all he could to believe in healing.

All I do is try to rely on my inner peace. Take each day at a time.
I try to see the world in a positive way (even though that's very difficult. When I see what people do to each other it makes me sick. For instance: the situation in Tibet.)
I try not to judge people, not to manipulate and make my choices as plain as possible.

Last weekend I was at the special day organised around the visit of the Dalai Lama. I was both at the lecture and the public meeting. Next to me sat a wonderful woman who radiated kindness. Her being was so nurturing, that I realised even more what I want, how I want to be.
Strangely enough it makes me feel closer to people and yet understand even more of their behaviour.
Well, maybe that's what compassion does.

What do you think?

Is this Karma?

I've always tried to be an honest and sincere person.
I never cheated at school or university, simply because I couldn't. I became nervous, very self conscious and got a terrible red head.

So why do people lie about me?

As a buddhist I should say it's Karma. Maybe I did something wrong in my past life and now it's time to pay for it.

A buddhist teacher had a good laugh a while ago when I said I had the feeling I was playing a role in the Karma of someone else. Without me, he could not make the choice he had to make.
This person made a huge mistake and I was the victim.

It was a strange experience, because I saw no cause at all why this person should speak bad about me.

Buddhists who are grown up in a buddhist culture are far more accepting of these situations than I am.
It's part of the suffering of life, they say.

Oh yes, suffering it is... but only because I long for the truth: that I'm OK.

How far should we go in accepting injustice?
Should we just accept that people destroy your family life because they think wrong?

Some say I just should bow my head and let happen whatever happens.
But the consequences are not right.

Some say I should stand up for the truth as long as I won't be violent and will be peaceful.
But the person who speaks ill of me feels it as a violation of his supremacy when I go against him.

So tell me, what would you do?

Some thoughts on ego, empathy and choices.

"Being a buddhist is for a large part about being nice", said one of my children a while ago.

True.

Care and compassion are the main ingredients of daily life and communication, and all sorts of good behaviour flows from that including forgiveness, understanding and being kind to people one initially doesn't like.
In fact...the "doesn't like" disappears as soon as the person is regarded with an open mind and compassion.
Most unwanted behaviour is caused by experiences people haven't made a choice for.
When we see that, we see a person who is hurt and in pain, and needs care and a friendly face.
That usually stops a chain of bad events and enables that person to heal, at least partially.

The last year we have encountered, as a family, some people who were guided by their willingness to do well.
They were so very willing to do good, that they lost the ability to perceive the good in people.
They wanted everything to fit in their picture and rather than checking their own perception they fitted everything in the matrix in their heads.

It's what happens when people think they have the ultimate truth in their hands.

It's one way of describing what we buddhists say: "Reality is the way we see it."

Teaching children to deal with people like that has been of the largest challenges of last year.
How to deal with people who speak bad about you, who paint a picture about you that's not how you are, who deny the plain facts?
How to deal with people who read into your words something completely different than you have intended?

Ofcourse I gave my children an insight in how people become that way.
People are products of their own history, of their own wants and needs, and of their own ego's.
But I also gave them the power to stay the person they are, to have faith in themselves, to stay pure and clean in their own intentions.
I can't say how often I told them to listen to their inner voice. I have learned these kids have a very clear intuition, and they should not be misguided by wants and needs, by misperceptions are anything else.

They said they didn't trust a person, and so I learned them how to deal with that.
Help came as a surprise by someone who said there was no need to deal directly with that person, they could write down what they had to say if they wanted too.
Help also came from time itself, as they had so much to do for school that they gladly wrote down what was on their hearts, instead of bicycling to town and lose lots of time.
They would have gone to the meeting otherwise.. with the risk of having their words turned again, like happened before and what happened with my own words and behaviour.
I think an ego was hurt a bit, but sometimes it's time for grown ups to grow up.

When talking with the children it was clear they missed something very important in the other person: empathy.
It's the ability to step out of your own frame of mind, your own wants and goals and perceive with an open mind the other person and to understand that person from the way he is, from his own life.

It was amazing to see what my children could do what the grown up couldn't do. Display empathy.
I think it's inborn and disappears when the ego takes over and grows to be a feeding force for the wellbeing of the person.
When we lose touch with our own inner being and strive for wealth and recognition the ego takes over. In certain jobs ego's are regarded to be of more importance than empathy. It's about being on top of other people, I think.

My children have learned that it's not always possible to keep oout of the way of people like that.
They've also seen how they mold their own reality into something they feel comfortable with, or can gain their own egofood with.

It's a kind of warning too.


When a person grows up he's faced with choices about his own person.
By making a choice for a profession it might be a choice for a certain behavioral climate which might go against the way you want to be.

It's a huge choice.

Young people are not always aware they have that choice.
Older people are not always able to face up to that choice.

How about you?

Buddhism and christmas?

I was asked if I celebrate christmas.

Let's first say that I respect the fact that other people have their celebrations.
Striving for peace within the family and outside the family is never a bad thing.

We're living here in an area where the old traditions are kept, so christmas is more of a festivity of giving hope, that a deep belief that so many years ago a baby was born at a place that was not suited for a delivery.

Because the children go to school and experience many special events during this time of december we've decided not to place ourselves outside of the mainstream, but celebrate with them.
We buddhists use prayer flags and candles and such, so there's no real problem.
In fact, we here smile when we hear about initiatives of hanging leaflets with nice wishes in the tree, as some shops and schools do.

The image of long lines of prayer flags and the silver streamlets in the tree reveals an interesting closeness of symbolism.

Buddhism is noneclusive, which means that we can have our own choice of religion beside the main teachings of buddhism.
So the answer if we celebrate christmas is: "Yes"
At times we have our own symbolism and own interpretations, but none bothers about that.

Enjoying snow

At the busstop people were complaining about the slippery roads.
In the bus someone was complaning about the insurance.
I nearly got in the complaining mood myself and when I was walking again I forgot to look around me for a short while.

I missed the beauty of the snow for these moments.
What a pity.
We've longed so many years to seen snow in these amounts.

I felt grateful for realising that I should enjoy nature a bit more and immediately I was caught by a bird that was picking in the snow and threw bits of snow around.
It didn't look distressed, On the contrary. He made a happy impression.

What have you seen today?

When death comes

 .

When death comes
I'll rest my head
and think of you
the way you smiled
your bear high on the shelf
and your hands resting on my shoulder

When death comes
I know your life
has been fulfilled
with all you wished for
and a little bit more
and I'll remember
how you recognised my voice
after almost 20 years

when death comes
I know you've faced the same
and you didn't want to share
the deepest pain
whereas I tried to reach out
so you wouldn't feel alone

But alone I will be
hearing your laughter
when you played the handdoll
for grown ups and little kids
I'll remember your cinnamom  tea
and hopefully even smell it
while my mind searches
for the melodies I loved so much
I'll remember
how relaxed I could be
sitting against your shoulder
and I felt your smile
in my hair

There's much I didn't do in this life
I was too shy, too hesitant,
too insecure, too caring for others.
I even waited too long,


but I stood up
for those who couldn't do that themselves
for respect between people
against war
and for those who were trusted in my care

I hugged those who needed it
smiled to people on the street
and looked at the stars in the deep dark night

I even looked in the mirror
and told myself to get my chin up
and go on living
right through the worst
when the piercing pain in my heart
was almost unbearable

So when death comes
I will remember you with a smile
and fade away
somewhere to those I knew
to the stars
or maybe
just somewhere
far away
in the sky.

.

When I meditate

I've been asked when I meditate.

Interesting. Not why,but when.

When I wake up I like to take a bit of time to be silent and let the day arrive.
I know it was already there, :), but it has to step into my life.
Often I need to be quick and organised for the children, so they'll be at school in time.
But when they have left I take some time to be silent and bring myself into a calm and peaceful mood.

I express my gratitude for being alive and my gratitude for having another day to practice to become a better being.
I remind myself how.

During the day there are often a few minutes to set myself straight into the person I want to be.

And in the afternoon there's almost always time enough to meditate about a subject.

Before going to bed, however, people will consider what I do as real meditation.
It's the only moment of the day I certainly won't be disturbed by anyone or anything.

To me, meditation is not about moments and time, however.
The way I live is changed from whirling around, not paying attention at all, or doing things mindless, as fast as possible, to devoted attention to what I'm doing this very same moment.

Ofcourse I have to prepare meetings and such. So I have to think about the past and future at times.
But when I slice a carrot I'm slicing a carrot.
I try to keep my attention to the moment and I do whatever I'm doing the best I can.

Some call that meditation too, others call it meditative mood.

Their loss

To my regret I can't afford the courses at the buddhistic centre nearby.
I would have loved to follow them, but alas.

So I thought I'd spend the time I would have used for studies to be a volunteer at the centre.
It was kindly rejected. Maybe I should learn more about buddhism.

Interesting.

Not one question was asked how much I know about buddhism.
About what kind of person I am.

So I guess I have to prove myself as a buddhist.
And in this centre I have to do it through following their courses.
(I guess this is a western approach?)

But how can I do that without money?

Haha!!

All those circles in life that keep people enclosed.

It's all business and money, isn't it?

So I gues that's not the place to be.
There's one other buddhistic group in town, but their meetings are out of town and they are....too expensive, Yes.

Well, let's smile to the Dalai Lama on the wall here, and turn towards my online group.

For those who are interested.

When I was young I studied buddhism with a group of dear friends here in towm nd elsehwere.
We didn't ask much, we just accepted gladly the teachings and tried to live according to what was taught.
I don't remember writers, I don't remember any names anymore.
But I can study lamrim (again) and see what I don't know yet.

Before becoming a meditation teacher I went trough thorough training by a monk.
The fact that he allowed me to guide groups through meditation in which he at times took part himself says something, doesn't it?

Well, when people consider themselves more without really knowing me, I simply say nothing and move on.

I'll share my journey with you, with compassion for those who entered my life.

Grief

My gram used to say that our own grief is the worst grief, unless we're able to let go.

After my daughter died, 2 days after she was born, I experienced exactly what she'd told me.
The world stopped to exist and all I could do is think about her.

But then I was told about a mother who died during childbirth and I realised that not far from us a baby had to grow up without his mother.

In fact this opened up my grief and I realised I was one in the long line of mothers who had to live with a dead child in her personal history and her family history.

This has formed me for life.
Whenever I experience something I realise I'm one of all those people who experience the same.

It's not the grief which is most important, it's how we deal with it.

How to tell others

When I told others about my interest in and studies of Buddhism the reactions were quite diverse.

Those who know me a long time smiled and said they expected me to do so for a long time. (Why didn't they say that before? :))
Some said: "interesting", others wanted to know what brought about the change or what I thought to be more of interest.

And one expressed a concern that I might get stuck in "that sect".

So you can understand I've spend quite some time explaining my views to others while trying not to sound like I want to influence them or want to convince them.

I came on a site which addressed the subject of telling to others that buddhism is important to you.
It's here, at the bottom part of the page.

Morning prayers

When I was young my grandmother taught me to wake up with beautiful thoughts.
She said that there was always something to be grateful for and all I needed to do was look around.

I've kept that habit for the rest of my life and when I bird started it's own habit of sitting on the roof and peeking through my window I always had a smile on my face when waking up. Even on days I knew would be difficult.

It was the joy of the moment that stayed with me all day.
When people would act unkind I could stay kind, because of that small bird that made me smile.
It made me aware to concentrate and focus on what I was doing, not to dwell on the past or future.

Ofcourse I was curious in which way the buddhists greet their day after I realised that my ways were very buddhistic.

Those who chant sutras often chant this part of the Sukhavativyuha Sutra:

Buddhist Morning Prayer

Full of equanimity,

of benevolent thought,

of tender thought,

of affectionate thought,

of useful thought,

of serene thought,

of firm thought,

of unbiased thought,

of undisturbed thought,

of unagitated thought,

of thought (fixed on) the practice

of discipline and transcendent wisdom,

having entered on knowledge

which is a firm support to all thoughts,

equal to the ocean in wisdom,

equal to the mountain Meru in knowledge,

rich in many good qualities....

they attain perfect wisdom.

And many love this one:

A Prayer Upon Arising in the Morning

by: Venerable Master Hsing Yun

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

Today is a new beginning!

It is said that "the morning hours are the best time of day."

On such a fine morning,

I recall past experiences:

I have failed,

But have never been disappointed;

I have been sad,

But have already been able to open my mind peacefully;

I have been wronged,

But have understood

that everything in this world arises and extinguishes 

according to the law of dependent origination;

I have shed tears,

But have deeply believed that tomorrow will be better.

Today, under the blessing and protection

Of your compassionate Buddha light,

I pray to you to grant me the courage

To face all challenges on this day;

I pray to you to grant me the patience

To accept all setbacks on this day;

I pray to you to grant me the strength

To carry out all work on this day;

pray to you to grant me the wisdom

To be grateful for all causes and conditions on this day.

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

Please help me increase my wisdom;

Please help me open my mind.

May I be able to appreciate the wonders of sky and earth;

May I be able to be grateful for the warmth of the world;

May I be able to obtain the assistance of friends;

May I be able to realize the value of Dharma.

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

Please help me become a person wealthy in spirit

Every day, may I give with joy;

Every day, may I willingly form affinity with others;

Every day, may I practice loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity;

Every day, may I treat people with tolerance and generosity.

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

Please help me become a brave person in life:

May I be able to purify my thoughts;

May I be able to contribute often;

May I be able to do no wrong;

May I be able to do only good.

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

Please bless me:

May I possess spiritual wisdom

And the Buddha mind;

May I have prajna wisdom and compassion

And liberate people from suffering.

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

I recognize the presence of your image in my mind.

I realize that I came to the human world to be happy;

I understand that I have entered into society to contribute;

I know that I am cultivating the Way to enlightenment to benefit all.

I vow, from this moment on,

To benefit all sentient beings

And awaken myself and others every day;

I vow, from today on

To bring good fortune and benefit to the nation and the people, and

To liberate self and others every moment.

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

Please accept my sincerest morning prayer!

Oh great, compassionate Buddha!

Please accept my sincerest morning prayer!

Namo Shakyamuni Buddha.

 Have a wonderful day!

.

Looking for a money tree

I hate to talk about money.

I've always lived from a bit.
No car, no posh house, no expensive clothes.
Now the children are almost 15 or older they tell me they're very happy with their youth, because I was almost always at home.
We didn't have much money, but we had lots of love and attention for our children.

I'm happy they see it that way. That they're content people and are aware that a nice label on your clothes doesn't make you feel warmer in the winter.

Because we were able to say "no" to many nice things we never were in debt.
I was so grateful for that.

But the recent attack on our family resulted in a few bills of lawyers with a total of 1500 euro!!
And buying things we wouldn't have bought otherwise, like new clothes for the courtcase and traintickets, made the gap between having and needing even larger.

I'm so worried.

Friends tell me to relax, that we'll solve the problem, but it doesn't feel good.
This makes the injustice even bigger.

So I'm looking for a money tree.
please warn me when you see it growing in my back garden. LOL!

Eyes feel like home

When I meet people who practice care and compassion I feel graceful, respectful and my words are kind and soft, and everything in me smiles.
The best in me surfaces and this creates a great calmness and happiness.

Having experienced the mild and peaceful behaviour of these people has made me more aware of other people and their ways of behaviour.

More and more I sense a kind of agression in people who have a different way of approaching people,
They want the world to be the way they think it should be.
They want to enforce their way of being on others, and even when their mouths speak words of respect,
the hollowness of the word in the way they use it is reflected in their eyes.
They don't smile.

They're not curious, they're not enjoyed, and they don't smile like those of my buddhist friends.

The eyes of my buddhist friends look into the world like they say: "Hej, happy to see you here too, let me see, who are you?"
They feel like home.

We'll be our own truth,

 .
You have written untruth about our family.
Maybe your eyes are troubled by your past.
Maybe your thoughts are troubled by evil you have heard.
Maybe your motives were honorable,
but your ears and heart were not alligned well.

I have to stand up against you
with the truth of our lives you're talking about.
No urge I feel to do so,
because you thought you were right,
your knowledge was just very limited,
and you were imprisoned
in your own frame of mind.

Unconditional care and compassion
is what Buddha teaches.

And so we'll smile,
and be ourselves.
We'll be our own truth,

Let's hope that speaks louder
than the reality you created for yourself.

.

How we live through a difficult time

Some people have asked how we deal as a family with the crisis we're going through.

I'll try to explain.

Right now we don't feel it to be a crisis, but we've gone through hours of sadness and other emotions and I expect we'll be stressed next wednesday.

So giving the right words to the situation helps.

People have created their own perception of our family, their own reality, based on their own past and a lot more we don't know.

At first we were angry, especially at a person who painted a very untrue pictures of our daughters, but soon we realised that even though we don't agree and our friends don't recognise the pictures he painted, he probably thinks he's right.
So in a way he doesn't have more knowledge, and the anger went away.
He won't be our friend, but we won't spend energy on what he did.
He has created his own karma by telling tales about my daughters, it's not up to us to force that upon him.

But we filed a complaint against him at school to stop him doing this again to someone else.

Upon his statements other people have created a more eleborate picture of our family, and they've made choices based on a lack of listening properly, projections based on their past and fears, on arrogance and self-complacency and on the wish to get financial gain. Their intentions were not honorable, even though they might tell that to themselves.

We did what we could to show and tell them who we really are, but they made a conscious choice to cling to their own writings.
These were filed to open a courtcase against us for bad parenting.
Ofcourse it scared the hell out of us as a first reaction, but then we remembered the 6 perfections:

• giving, 
• ethics, 
• patience, 
• joyous effort, 
• concentration
• wisdom

Especially the perfection of patience seemed to be important:

• Having patience in understanding Dharma and gaining faith.
• Being undisturbed by anguish from suffering.
• Practise patience before getting angry.
• Having patience in accepting problems.
• Being undisturbed by inflicted harm.

We realised that trying to give us a bad name is not our action, but theirs.
We have not changed at all, we're still the good and happy family we were, so we should carry on doing what we think is right.
Maybe that radiates and wednesday it shows who we are, and people with wisdom and a good observation skills will see that what we say against the writings is the truth.
We don't need to feel uneasy, because we have nothing to hide. We can be calm and OK.

Today is a calm and quiet day in the home.
Outside a storm is raging.
Nature couldn't have made a better statement of the situation here.

Ofcourse we prepare ourselves for wednesday.
But what has been done is done and is in the past.
We know we're OK and we've done metta meditations, so we can keep working with those who want to bring us down. We won't feel hatred or aggression. Those emotions trouble the mind.
We'll see what happen and try to trust the judge. Somewhere along the line there must be someone who'll see sense.

At first I felt nervous about the consequences of such a bad image of our family.
They wanted to forces all sorts of therapies upon us which were canons shoting at a sandcorn.
One of those therapies might even be harmfull on normal healthy children, so I didn't like that at all.
All I said was: go and get your indication done. (Every therapy needs a certain kind of person or group to have the greatest effect. No matter what they would say, they would never be able to fit us in.)
They turned down their request. Didn't change anything else, but changed that.

Whatever happens wednesday... whatever is said about us, we are still the same good people.
The consequences might interfere with family life for a while, but a broken laundrymachine has the same effect. It costs time too.

So we just see what's going to happen.

After finishing this answer I found this text.
Isn't it perfect?

RECOMMENDATION

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Promise me,
promise me this day,
promise me now,
while the sun is overhead
exactly at the zenith,
promise me:
Even as they strike you down
with a mountain of hatred and violence;
even as they step on you and crush you like a worm,
even as they dismember and disembowel you,
remember, brother, remember:
man is not your enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion --
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone,
with your courage intact, your eyes kind, untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile will bloom a flower.
And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousands worlds of birth and dying.

Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road,
the sun and the moon
will continue to shine.

.

Just being

 .

Just being

standing at the bank of a river

feeling the slow wind move my hair

ships pass faster

without entering my world

It's the sun

smiling in a wave

catching my eye

just for a moment

it's like a bird

flying through my mind

just being

that moment

in eternity

.

My gram

My grandmother was an interesting woman.

As a child of her time, she got 7 children, worked hard and was not afraid to deal with many challenges.
She was in the resistance during WW2, with the rest of her family, and apart from the gratitude of her children and grandchildren never received the acknowledgement she should have had.

She was bot a person with a huge ego.
She lived her life in touch with the people around her and with nature and was happy with that.

She was different from other women though.
She always thought it to be important to stay relaxed, and to develop more of her talents than motherhood alone.
She was a good actress, a wonderful singer and she took each tuesday afternoon off to do something she felt she needed to do. That could be playing cards with her nieces, drinking tea in town with me, or anything else that popped in her mind.

She told me it kept her refreshed, aware of the needs of other people, and able to deal with her severely asthmatic son who wouldn't live long. (He died at the age of 33 in her arms).

My gram taught me how to live. How to deal with other people, how to deal with myself.
She taught me that in order to develop myself, I should never be afraid of thinking my own thoughts. All great thinkers and scientist, all great poets, all those great men and women of history had the same characteristics: the inner need to make the world a better place, an inner need to express themselves, and the ability to discover which thoughts would renew the world.

To me, she was just my gram who gave me chocolate when I left so the sweetness would accompany me on my way home. She was the best person in my life. She saved my life when I was a baby and later, when she was already dead, her lessons saved me from many awkward situations.

Now I realise she was a wise woman. A very wise woman.
.

My mala arrived

It seemed only logical to start a new blog about my path on Buddhism the day my mala (strain of prayer beads) finally arrived from Tibet.
So many things are coming together during the last weeks, so many bad things are happening.

It's like the good and the bad in people clash right in front of my face, after I witnessed a beam of lightning right in front of me a few weeks ago.
Don't worry, I wasn't hurt by that force of nature even though a lot of electrical equipment was down and broken by it.
It has made a lasting expression and it will never disappear from my mind.

A few days later we had bad, hurricane like storms, with forceful fallwinds, before unknown to this area of the world.



It's a time of tremendous change in my life.
I expected to move to Scotland, but instead I was planted on another path of life.



Not an unfamiliar path, as I've been spending a lot of attention on Buddhism during my university years. I even gave meditation classes.

But when I was caught up in life, married and got children, I didn't see myself as Buddhist.
The Buddhist in me, however, never disappeared. It found it's way, made me de mother I was, made me the person I am.




And then, suddenly, I saw an article about mindful parenting and suddenly I knew.


The pieces fell together and I smiled.