Let's talk about parents and the attitude towards parents that leads to your happiness and that maximizes your happiness.
So it's not like,
Oh,
Let me be the perfect,
Beautiful daughter.
Let me be the perfect son and be kind to my parents.
That's not the angle here.
What can you do towards your parents mentally in your head so that you're happy?
Feeling annoyed with parents is understandable because like the mind is irritated by basically everything.
The untrained mind,
The mind that doesn't meditate,
The mind's default is like angst,
Anxiety,
And being irritated by reality.
Being annoyed at parents is also normal because it's how we were brought up culturally in the United States,
Especially thinking that something is wrong with our parents has been fueled and fed and encouraged by the latest trends in psychology for the last 50 or 60 years.
And there's a lot of trends in psychology that come and go.
Not all of them are helpful or conducive to our happiness.
So there's been this fad since the 1970s to think about and mull over and suffer over and emphasize everything that our parents did wrong to really fixate on it and blame our parents for like everything in our lives.
According to research,
The U.
S.
Leads the world in judgment of parents.
Not a good statistic.
Research also suggests that releasing your parents from judgment correlates with a lot less depression.
So this tendency to judge and over judge and be kind of condescending to our parents and thinking of everything they did wrong,
It's harmful to our happiness.
It causes depression.
This is a kind of resistance to reality.
And resistance to reality is where suffering comes from.
Also,
Our parents,
They're part of our past.
They're always part of our history.
As long as we think that something is wrong with the past or our history,
We keep reliving it and trying to make it right.
If you think something is wrong with your parents,
You will find yourself in similar situations and in similar relationships,
And you'll try to make it work,
Even if it doesn't work.
I think the only way to be free of any difficult dynamics in your parents or in your past is actually to not judge them,
To accept them,
To accept them with a full heart.
The attitude that Buddhist theology offers is this present moment is the perfect moment for my growth.
And this past moment that I experienced was the perfect past for my growth.
Whatever growth I needed,
I got the perfect parents for that.
Accordingly,
There's nothing wrong with the past or the present.
And I love this Buddhist view because it eliminates so many inner conflicts.
It eliminates so much resistance and it eliminates a lot of suffering.
Here's another way we resist our parents.
Maybe at some point you thought,
My father,
He just doesn't deserve my mother.
My mother,
She's so wonderful.
She does all these great things.
She's such a great person.
She is so beautiful.
My father is just not that great.
He does not deserve her.
Or the other way around.
My father deserved so much better than my mother.
He wasn't treated well at all.
He wasn't appreciated.
He didn't get what he deserved.
He was just the best.
The Buddhist view would say that they met,
They were brought together by the compassionate universe in Mahayana Buddhism,
Because your mother was the perfect person for your father's growth and your father was the perfect person for your mother's growth.
So in that sense,
They were absolutely perfect for each other.
No matter how much they fought,
No matter how their relationship ended,
If it ended in the cosmic sense,
They were perfect as a couple for their growth.
And when you look at absolutely any couple in the world,
Before you try to break them up or matchmake or set them up with someone better,
Remember that we only start romantic relationships in which there is enormous potential for our growth as human beings.
And for your father and your mother,
It's the same.
And you were absolutely 100% the child they needed for their growth.
So if you have guilt over being a difficult child or ruining your parents' life or something like that,
Let that go completely.
You were exactly the child they needed,
And you're also the adult child that they need right now.
And they're the parents that you needed for your growth also.
So what are some of the reasons to offer compassion to your parents?
I'll give you three.
One,
There's no such thing as compassion to all beings without compassion to our parents.
And the goal is compassion to everyone,
Equanimity,
Warmth,
Acceptance,
Compassion toward everyone.
That is the path to happiness.
That is what makes you happy on the inside,
A calm,
Welcoming acceptance of reality as it is.
Two,
The path towards self-compassion needs to include our parents also.
So subconsciously,
Even if we don't think about it,
Our psyche knows that 50% of our DNA comes from our mother,
50% comes from our father.
If we don't accept them,
We just can't do it for ourselves.
It's like if you hate all clay and you think clay is a very,
Very,
Very bad thing and you just happen to be a clay vase,
You're going to have a self-compassion problem.
You're going to have a lot of self-hatred.
So compassion for parents is a necessary part of the journey.
So the third reason is that if we don't accept our mother and our father,
We don't accept ourselves,
Our talents,
Our nature.
If we don't accept our roots,
We don't accept ourselves.
So I have this glass of water here.
I have this glass of water in my hands.
It's important to drink lots of water,
But that's not what we're going to talk about.
Judging parents,
It's like if I had to hold this glass of water up like this,
Let's say I had to hold it up like this,
Always.
How much do you think it weighs?
It's not that heavy,
But if I had to hold it up like this in this position all the time,
I would be under a lot of stress and in pain.
I might not even notice it right now.
I might not even notice it later because I would get used to holding it like this,
But I would suffer.
My arm would probably get paralyzed.
Judging parents works in the exact same way.
There's a part of you that will always be blocked and paralyzed as long as you're judging your parents.
A part of your heart is always closed.
It's a huge weight that you carry all the time.
So judging parents and holding grudges,
Like I'm holding a glass of water,
Holding grudges,
It's like always having to do something really heavy and really unnatural.
The most natural attitude towards parents is,
Thank you for giving me life.
I am alive.
As long as I'm alive,
I can do anything.
I can make anything happen.
Thank you for giving me life.
So I want you to have your inner freedom,
Including freedom from any grudges and heaviness that you're carrying with you towards your parents.
