QUESTION
Dear Venerable Robina,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your wise, direct, and ever-so-relevant-to-modern-life teachings. I stumbled upon your YouTube videos entirely by chance last November (I’m not spiritual or religious) and since then your teachings have guided and helped me. When I encounter a difficult situation (and very often just an ordinary situation) I try and imagine what you might say about it. What would be a response / perspective that would be valid according to you. I can see that this has given me clarity and direction. Thank you again.
I find myself in circumstances that are causing me a lot of distress and try as I might I can’t seem to find a peaceful way to deal with them. I wonder if you might give me some guidance. Let me briefly outline the situation.
During COVID my old parents moved in with me. I have not had a happy relationship with my parents. They did feed, clothe, and educate me till I started earning my own living, but that is about all. I have kept in touch with them all my life more out of a sense of duty than any affection.
They say that they are too old to live by themselves. The problem is that they do not live peacefully in my house. They are critical of my life, my choices, my clothes, my friends, and just about everything that I do or say. I regularly overhear them criticizing me and that makes me very angry. I don’t confront them because I have realized that it is pointless. My sense of duty prevents me from asking them to leave. I can’t change my situation and I can’t seem to find a way to live with it peacefully either. I seem to be in constant torment. I would be grateful for your advice.
With love and gratitude,
V
ANSWER
I am happy to hear from you, dear V.
And thank you for explaining your situation so carefully.
I understand, I really do.
First of all, I want to praise you hugely for doing what you’re doing. Out of duty, yes, but that is still so kind of you, and very courageous, too — all the more because you don’t feel much affection for your parents and because they are unkind to you.
Karmically, we all have a very strong history, if you like, with our parents: there are powerful causes that you created in the past that caused your consciousness to find its way to their egg and sperm at the time of conception. It’s not a random event.
So, what to do? As always, putting it bluntly, there are precisely two options: 1. Move them out; 2. Have them stay.
Is the first option literally an option? Do they have funds? Do not not consider this option out of guilt or shame: really look at it.
If it’s not possible, then you have no option but the second one. And if that’s the case, then the only way you can make it work for you is to continue to work on your mind, find ways to see things differently, paint a new picture of the situation.
Of course, this is hugely difficult but, finally, it is what practice is, certainly from the Buddhist perspective. There’s a saying, “If you can change something, please change it. But what if you can’t?”
There’s a woman called Sunny Jacobs, whom I mention a lot in teachings, who was wrongly accused of murdering two policemen in Florida and who spent seventeen years in prison, mostly on death row and the first few years in isolation.
She is incredible. She talked about how she knew she could not change a single thing, not a thing, but she knew she could change her mind: “They couldn’t take my mind from me.” She worked so hard, gradually disciplining her mind to give up anger, to learn acceptance, to learn kindness and forgiveness. She wasn’t a Buddhist, she had no particular spiritual path, just, it seems to me, the incredible emotional intelligence to know these things.
And the way she put it was: she knew she had to learn to take responsibility for her own mind. Of course, we all live our lives obsessing about the person / the event / whatever out there, justifying ourselves and really not believing we can really change our mind. But the fact is we can.
You’re already doing so well, V, so rejoice in your own efforts!
But a couple of other pieces of advice. One is to stop talking about them to anyone else: this will make a huge difference. Talking about them to others just keeps putting fuel on the fire of your hurt and anger.
Another piece of advice is to realize that their words are coming from their own limited unhappy sense of self, and therefore from their huge anger and aversion that causes them to never be satisfied and to always find fault. In other words, they’re suffering far more than you. Slowly, slowly, if you can see this suffering that they’re causing themselves, you might even have a bit of compassion for them. They’re locked in their own misery. So sad.
And from this comes another piece of advice: do your best to not take their mean words personally. Realize that the source of the hurt that we experience when people criticize us is actually our own attachment to everything being nice and, in particular, our attachment to hearing nice words about ourselves.
This is a huge one, but it’s possible.
And another piece of advice: try your best to find time for yourself, do things that give you pleasure.
What do you think?
Much love,
Robina
QUESTION
Dear Venerable,
Thank you very much for your reply. I can see from your Facebook page what a busy teaching schedule you have and I know you are involved in many other things too, so your reply was special to me.
I have read your email several times. You understood my situation so correctly and your advice makes a lot of sense. Firstly they can’t / won’t move. They have health issues, so they believe they can’t live by themselves anymore.
Some of the advice that you wrote for me I have already figured out through your YouTube videos and have been putting it into practice. And it has done me a world of good too! I have reduced (not stopped entirely, but one step at a time) talking about them to friends and family. That has reduced the suffering in my mind. Furthermore, every time I find myself thinking about something nasty that they did or said or implied, I guide my mind away from those thoughts. I’m getting better at it.
Also, I can see how “they’re locked in their own misery.” I have seen that for a long time. That has not led to compassion, I’m afraid. I am also trying to ignore the mean things they say / do / imply. Again because of your teachings I know that the things they say are only their opinions.
I can see that I’m in a better position than I was last year and I’m happy for it. But things don’t stay the same, do they! I find that as they are becoming older they’re getting more feeble and hence the demands on my time and resources are increasing.
This pattern of supporting them has gone on all my adult life. They have always taken and never acknowledged. I have been able to manage so far by telling myself that whatever I have done was out of choice and so I had no business feeling bad about it. But since they moved into my home I find them impacting my life, time, plans in a way that I was completely unprepared for. I feel angry and stuck many times. I don’t want to feel this way.
Love and gratitude always,
V
QUESTION
Dear Venerable,
I hope you are well.
In my latest email to you I was in the throes of what you’ve described as “self-pity me.” I could see my fate as nothing but being a full-time nursemaid to my parents. Since then I have calmed down, again thanks to your teachings.
I think I am attached to my freedom, my choice to live and travel as I want. Having my parents live with me means that my attachment is thwarted. As you have pointed out in your teachings my mind immediately ran to imagine the worst possible situation – that of being tied to my parents’ bedside.
Since I have calmed down I can see it differently. I’ve realized that working myself up over something that hasn’t exactly happened as yet is a case of my own thoughts causing my suffering and I need to stop doing that. I’m happy I’ve worked that out and have been putting it into practice too. Oh, it is hard!
Thank you ever so much dear Venerable for your teachings. I know I wouldn’t have been able to figure things out without them.
Love and gratitude always,
V
ANSWER
You’re great, V! You’re doing so so well, you really are. You work so hard on your mind, I truly admire you.
And I particularly admire you because at least you don’t fight with your parents — that’s pretty special, I must say.
So just keep moving in this direction. Keep your mind steady, don’t stay stuck in a small view.
And make sure you do find time to do what you want to do, to give yourself a break: make it happen.
Be wise with your money, of course, but don’t be afraid to spend some of it for care for your parents so that you can get some free time.
With an open, flexible mind you will find the way to make it work.
And, please, really rejoice in your efforts, your practice!
Much love to you,
Robina