“Oh? Why should we do that?”

“We have to take care of the earth. The earth is sick,” he announced in between bites of his cake which he helped to bake earlier in the day.

He had just returned from the kindergarten, after spending three and half hours in the afternoon on a daily basis. I knew the kindy teachers must have talked to their students about Earth Hour (March 28^th, 8.30pm).

My son is rather shy in school and not particularly very participative in the movement and dance activities. During the first few weeks in the new term (In January), I had often stayed on to accompany him during the daily assemblies at the school hall where 200 children aged three and six years gathered for group exercise and “current affairs education”. My boy would usually stand observing everyone in action; quite rarely he would attempt to join in. However, he is completely different at home. He has performed for me all the songs he learnt in school. Most of the time whenever I ask how the day has been for him, he would reply, “wonderful’ or “fun” or even “amazing”…probably picked up the word from his favourite story book titled, “The Gruffalo”. So, it is indeed a pleasant surprise that he could remind me to switch off the essential lights for Earth Hour on Saturday, 28^th March.

This kindergarten, operated by the Soka Gakkai Cultural Group, has never failed to enlighten me about education and its purpose. In January, during one of the assemblies, the school supervisor presented a slide show of birds flying in the sky and then followed by an aeroplane. Then she narrated about the courageous pilot who did an emergency landing on the frozen Hudson River, in the United States, thus saving over a hundred lives. She explained that some birds were sucked into one of the plane’s engines which caused its failure. As she spoke in dual languages (English and Mandarin), photographs of the rescue mission on the Hudson River were shown on the big screen for the children. Then she told the children that no one was injured because “everyone listened, lined up one-by-one and followed instructions to safety”. She emphasized the importance of such instructions during emergency. The school was, at this time, educating the children about fire drills. My son, like many others, was also learning about being in a queue for the first time. Before she concluded the session, a portrait of Mr Barrack Obama came onto the screen. “Children, do you know this man? He is a very important man and tomorrow he will be making history in the United States of America and the world. Let me tell you all about it tomorrow.”

With such a teaser, even I wouldn’t miss it for the world. So, I found myself at the hall again the next afternoon. I wondered what the school’s message for the children might be? The supervisor prepared her material well. Without getting into the complexity of the serious affair, she highlighted Mr Barrack Obama’s key message in his inauguration speech as the 44^th President of the United States of America: be friendly to our neighbours and everyone in the world. Through tolerance and understanding, we can achieve peace and harmony together. What a lovely way to present it!

My two older children (now aged 11 and 9) had also benefited from this school’s philosophy. When the Iraq war broke out, the teachers revised a huge part of the curriculum to concentrate on educating the children about atrocities of war and the importance of peace and harmony through creative approaches. Similarly when the tsunami came and changed the lives of millions, the school proactively educated the children about generosity, kindness and love. All the their lessons were done at the level of the children’s development.

School like this is a rare breed. So far, I have yet to come across another kindergarten which would go to such lengths to instill good virtues in their students. Kindergartens in my area are more concerned about making a child write and count and recite the ABCs. They are given homework (writing pages of the alphabet and memorizing words for spelling tests) and examinations. I once protested about examinations and homework to a kindergarten teacher who operates a mere 50 metres from my home. I was told that they requested by parents. Parents, apparently would worry if their children cannot read or write at age 5 or 6.

I asked for two types of curries (to go with the bread) and repeated my order of five pieces of bread to her. Behind the huge hot plate, a cook was flipping six pieces of well done bread. My eyes were drawn to the cook as he piled the six pieces by the side; silently hoping they were meant for me.

Just then, the owner came over to help. He reached out for the the warm bread. When the girl finished packing the curries, she asked in surprise why I hadn’t asked for the freshly cooked bread. It dawned on me that the man had packed the bread for me and not for another customer who had come earlier. I turned to the man but he gestured my order was already packed.

In that split of a second, I debated whether I should ask for the fresh bread.

I did have a choice: ask for the best (i.e. the freshly cooked steaming hot bread) or settle for second best (i.e. warm bread). I accepted his offer and while waiting for my change, I learnt one of the most important lessons in my life: what I give is what I receive.

Had I been giving my best all the time?

If I expect to be given the best (without having to ask for it), I ought to ensure I give my best; in whatever work I do, whatever service I render and whatever words I speak.

Since that moment, I have been keeping tabs on my actions. Honestly, it hasn’t been easy. However, whenever I caught myself trying to cut corners or justifying half-hearted efforts, I remembered my second-best bread.

It is also the same with parenting. Have I been doing my best as a role model for my children? It isn’t about achieving perfection, rather the energy behind the efforts. Instead of making any judgements about my children’s work, both my husband and I guide and encourage them to do their best. Their efforts are applauded and appreciated. I can see this means much more to my children.

I felt honoured to be counted upon as a trusted friend by this couple, more so because they stood by their principles. Her husband, John, resigned as a non-executive director because he didn’t agree with some management decisions on their public-listed company. Apparently that didn’t go down well and my friends had been getting late night nasty calls to their home and mobile phones.There was nothing else they could do after making numerous police reports about the threats.

Here is an excerpt of my email reply to her:

“For standing up to your principles and having your conscience clear are what make you and John the best members in our community and the best parents for your children. Try not to allow fear to overpower you both…when people are motivated by greed, they lose all judgement. They make mistakes and resort to nasty ways to “keep alive” – as they have wrongly perceived that they needed to do that for survival.

We are all motivated by the basic instinct to stay alive and to protect what is most dear to us. You and John and this man are reacting and responding the same way except that you are from the opposite ends.

My feelings are that to allow the wave to ride away. Keep the boys safe and tell them to take extra precautions when they move around at school or college – not instill fear but just be extra careful. Come home early and inform parents where they will be.

I know it is most challenging to try to keep a calm mind – but you could try to wake a bit earlier and sit in silence. Maybe just to contemplate on peace and safety for family members and the world as a whole. Imagine a white protective light surrounding your house and all family members. Invoking the blessings from the Goddess of Mercy, Kwan Yin might also be helpful.

Your boys can come and talk with me anytime they want to. Take good care – when we stand by the truth, that in itself will protect us. May you and family be safe and protected always.”

“Bloom where you are planted.” That is the motto of Jacqueline Kramer, who believes mothers can attain enlightenment right in their kitchen while cooking dinner or doing the dishes.

The motto comes from a poster where she had a retreat many years ago, said the author of Buddha Mom , a book on the spirituality of mothering.

“It dawned on me that I didn’t need to go to far-off places or engage in strange unfamiliar practices – I can become enlightened right here where I am, right now, as I engage in mothering and house-holding. ”

Motherhood is often glorified to silence women’s self-realization urges. Homemaking and service is also often demeaned as a symbol of female subjugation and weakness. For Kramer, motherhood is a perfect spiritual practice.

“Motherhood is a beautiful container of the virtues we need to develop our spirituality,” she explained.

“While monks and nuns in different faiths devote themselves to develop unconditional love, selfless service, good will, joy for others’ happiness and the ability to let go, these are actually what mothers do in their everyday life.”

If mothers do their selfless nurturing while practising mindfulness – being constantly aware that whatever arises will pass away naturally without being lost in the ups and downs of emotions – then they can grow leaps and bounds spiritually, she advised.

Writing from her own experiences as a single mother and a meditation practitioner, Kramer’s Buddha Mom : The Path of Mindful Mothering has inspired many mothers to bring spirituality into their lives.

Recently in town to receive the Outstanding Buddhist Women Award, Kramer, 56, has also set up free online classes for mothers who want to grow spiritually and can study more deeply about the Buddhist teachings or share their experiences at their own pace, in their own time.

Born into a Jewish family, Kramer says she is blessed to have a mother who allowed her and her brother to explore their own spirituality.

It was her brother who first showed her the power of mindfulness practice. “I saw he returned from a retreat clear and calm. So I decided to give it a try.. I was amazed at how calm I felt,” she said.

From there, Kramer started learning more about the teachings, which made her realize that meditation is more than a stress relief technique but a spiritual practice to understand Nature’s law of impermanence in order to transcend the false sense of me and mine.

It came to a point when she wanted to be ordained. But her meditation teacher asked her to consider setting an example for lay female householders instead, which has been her life mission ever since.

When she started a family and became pregnant, Kramer already had practised mindfulness meditation for three years. Being in the present moment helps to do away with the fear and anxiety many women experience during pregnancy. The big mindfulness test came in the delivery room when the pain of birth hit her in successive waves.

“I just watched the pain, being aware of each moment without thinking. I just experienced it and surrendered. I eventually became relaxed and soft when I gave birth, being happy and in the present.

“It taught me that we cannot escape pain but suffering is an option ,” she added.

Mindfulness has taught her that happiness is a choice.

“When confused or in a bad mood, don’t deny it. Just see it, observe it, don’t fight against it. Surrender and watch it without judgement, and the dark feeling will miraculously dissolve by itself,” she continued.

Being in the present moment in whatever one is doing, be it cutting vegetables or washing the dishes, the mindful state will create a space between oneself and the problem. ” With space, you can look at things fresh, and solutions will come from that ,” she said.

Motherhood, she says, embraces all shades of metta ( loving kindness ), karuna (compassion), mudita ( appreciative joy ) and upekkha ( equanimity).

“Motherhood gives us a glimpse of unconditional love. It expands our capacity to love, to give and to empathize with others in difficult situations,” she added.

Meanwhile, the joy of watching one’s child learn how to talk, walk and progress through each step in life – a practice of mudita – helps make the difficulties in parenting bearable and everyday life fulfilling.

When a child grows older and becomes a teenager, however, “that’s when equanimity comes to our rescue“, she mused.

“Upekkha , or onlooking equanimity is the ability to observe struggles, joys and all other states of the mind with open and loving detachment,” she explained.

“Upekkha comes from the realization that pain is part of growth and human condition. It is the courage to look on lovingly at things we cannot change. It’s the courage to let our children be who they are, to accept that we don’t have control. That we can only influence,” she said.

This process of letting go is an important aspect of Buddhism. ” That’s why mothering is a direct path to spiritual insight,” she affirmed.

Equanimity is also the courage to resort to “tough love” when need arises.

“Tough love demands letting our children experience the consequences without interfering but with deep love in our hearts,” she said.

Be it about sacrifices or tough love, the spiritual mother spoke from her own real life experiences.

Kramer became a single mother when her daughter Nicole was three. Choosing to fashion her work around her daughter’s schedule, she sacrificed a job as a professional singer, which would have required her to be away from home on tours, and decided to work as a part-time singer and nurse’s aide.

While mothering teaches her selfless love for her child, it has also taught her, through tears and laughter, she needed to have enough loving kindness for herself  too, in order to be able to forgive herself for letting negative thoughts and emotions take over.

Such mistakes are frequent. And without self-forgiveness, one cannot possibly go on trying again and again to undo ingrained habits that unleash hurtful words and actions that one later regrets.

What to do when challenged with an argumentative child? Kramer’s advice : Be mindful. And use anger as a meditation object.

“Everything that happens can be used as a gate to enlightenment,” she explained , drawing from the teachings in Buddhism.

“If angry, use it as a gate. By not resisting it, not thinking that you or your emotions are bad, by just letting it be, watching it without feelings of stress or fear, there will be space around the emotions. Then you won’t have the reactions you used to have.

“By not resisting it, it disappears. By not giving anger any more power, it fades. It’s incredible. Then there will be more peace in the home,” she explained.

Anger does not disappear overnight with meditation , however. Things that bugged you still do but not as strongly, which is why continued practice is all the more important. As part of her daily practices, Kramer has turned everyday life routines into mindfulness practices. ” While I was watching vegetables, for example, I was aware of what I was touching. I felt the knife go through the vegetables. I watched my thoughts, my feelings, my words.

“By being mindful, no matter how your life is, what’s before you is always fresh and new.”

To help with daily practices, Kramer also does her retreat once a year to deepen the calmness and insight needed to cope with the challenges and uncertainties each day brings.

By being mindful, she has discovered free will to choose to be happy or unhappy. There are always good and bad sides in all things, she said. “Our free will gives us the power to choose what to focus on. This is the greatest power we ever possess.”

By being in the present moment, she also has stopped blaming others for her problems. “I’ve come to realize that my happiness does not depend upon the environment. It is something I carry inside me and I am responsible for my own happiness.”

Meanwhile, she has discovered that the life of service, both at her home and at the nursery, is a boon to her spiritual practice. “I learned that the surrender of ego must precede selfless service,” she said. From that springs generosity. “Joyful service also connects us with those around us.”

Focusing on helping others also takes one’s mind out of one’s problems. “By taking a break from my negative thinking I can shift the course of my thoughts from destructive to productive.”

Despite the joy of motherhood, parenting for her is not always a pretty picture. “By the time Nicole was 14, she was totally out of control,” she recalled. Out of “tough love” she decided to send Nicole to a camp for attitude adjustment.

“There is a fine line between equanimity and coldness,” she noted. “But out of love, you need to do what we have to do to instill strong discipline with loving support.

“Back then, I lit a candle each night when not having control to remind myself that I’m here for now, and to hold on to love as a mother, knowing that nothing can change that love.”

While a spiritual practice can help a mother calmly cope with the child’s teenage angst, sports, music, any forms of passions will provide some discipline, which will help them through to adulthood against negative peer pressure and media influences, she advised.

“Remember, the child learns from who you are. It won’t show when they are teenagers. But it will show itself.”

While the teenage years are often stormy “the good news is that they eventually come back to you”, she said, beaming. She and her daughter, now 26, and a mother herself, are closer than ever before.

Now, for Kramer, it is time for sharing. And time to give motherhood its due respect. Both in the society driven by material success and in the realm of Buddhism.

With society looking down on service, women who are happy to serve her family and community are under-appreciated, undervalued and underpaid. Kramer knew it firsthand. Describing herself as a homemaker most always guaranteed a disapproving look. “And when I worked as a nurse’s aide, I was treated like a second-class citizen.”

But service is a core aspect of feminine psychology and spirituality, she pointed out. It requires generosity, endurance and selflessness – all the important values all faiths say are necessary for a happy society.

“We need the balance between yin and yang , between femininity and masculinity to create a happy society,” she added.

When competition and conquest – often defined as masculinity – has become the world’s obsession , the imbalances have generated violence in both personal lives and society at large. For Kramer, the first step to strike a balance is to respect the value of service and those who serve.

As a lay female Buddhist, Kramer’s other mission is to prove that female householders can also attain enlightenment. So far she has not yet found any such stories in the ancient texts , although it is impossible to believe that it has never happened.

“Why haven’t their stories been passed down ?” she asked. “Is it because women were illiterate , too busy to write, or is it because they lacked meditation access ? Whatever the reasons , it is now time to gather stories of mother’s enlightenment experiences for our daughters and sons.”

It is not out of pride. Rather, it is an effort to make spiritual practices more women-friendly by recognizing women’s nature and conditions in order to make spirituality possible through their own specific experiences.

For mothers, it is empowering to realize that raising a child is a spiritual service and mothering is a model of selfless service. Knowing that they are actually on a spiritual path, they can turn their home into a temple, use everyday challenges to develop mindfulness and loving kindness, and use their own children as their teacher of impermanence surrender and letting go.

“Children grow. They change every minute. And they leave us one day. They are not ours. No one is. They are temporarily in our care.

“Things are always changing. And when I am aware of the fact that the situation I am in will change , then I can keep a sense of humour. I can take a deep breath .”

With that, whatever seems unbearable lightens. Enlightenment may be many lifetimes away, but spiritual mothering – as Jacqueline Kramer has found – will make a long journey joyful, here and now.

Source : http://www.bangkokp ost.com/270708_ Outlook/27Jul200 8_out001. php

For more information, go here: I Create Joy

What All Children Want Their Parents To Know

Teach me to love and care for myself
Through your positive example
I will learn much more from what you do
Than anything you could ever say.

Tell me more about your life
Your hopes, dreams and successes
So that I come to know you as a person
And can call you as my friend
As well as my parent

1996 by Julia Loomans and her mother Diane Loomans

Heck, I thought, she should go for the third round and try to win more of the prize money. Why? So that Ye Eun could have the best teachers and better opportunities. But this courageous and larger than life woman (I am certain now, she is really on the right path to sainthood!) taught me a beautiful lesson in her simple reply: “We shall stop our challenge at this stage. We want to keep good memories from this. It would not be good if this becomes a burden to Ye Eun. We will end it here, and let this be a beautiful memory. We are very grateful to Star King.”

Had I been in her place, I would have succumbed to my greed. My excuse would have been: I was doing it for my child. The money would give her a head start. And, hey, I have got a genius in my hands. The world should see her.

Ye Eun’s mother humble response taught me two powerful lessons: unconditional love that transcends greed, fame and recognition. In other words, the practice of unconditional love that transcends the EGO. And the grace of gratitude.

Bless her and Ye Eun. What a great mother and an inspiration to all.

I drove home after my visit in deep thought. I knew deep down, I would keep and raise my baby (and no, baby was not an “it”) regardless. Despite that conviction, I still had a wee fear and some anxiety about a possibility. Later that day, I shared my anxiety with my husband. Not only did he assure me of his commitment to his role as a parent, he reminded me to stay positive. I am fortunate to have partner like him. Perhaps the woman who gave birth to blind girl some years ago in South Korea wasn’t as lucky. Maybe her predicament was beyond her competence. She gave up. She gave her baby up at birth. Five years on, today, that little girl is the pride and joy of another woman. A courageous woman whose love is truly unconditional. To raise one own offspring who has special needs requires tenacity (and a host of other attributes) but to adopt and accept a child who has a disability, to me, is a notch up the parenthood scale (ha, as if there is one in existence – but I am sure you know what I mean). Dare I even suggest, it is another possible path that leads to sainthood?

I would like to share with you this beautiful story of a five-year old Korean girl and her mother. I have watched this video many times and each time, it always tug at my heart strings and get those tear ducts working without fail!

By some stroke of luck, a few months ago I found myself in a 10-day meditation retreat. Since becoming a mother a decade ago, there had only been three times I was away from my children – the longest trip was over four nights. Guilt was mostly the chief cause. I never went anywhere on my own before the retreat. Ten years of living as a wife and mother, I was getting weary. Don’t get me wrong. I was (still am) happy with my marriage and three children. I just felt a certain “emptiness” within – sort of like an inner child that wanted some much needed attention.

It wasn’t easy the first few days in the retreat and it was worse in the nights – I was missing my youngest, three years old, who was still co-sleeping with us.

As talking was not strongly encouraged and because the women who shared my room were strangers to me, it became easy for me to slip into a different role – just being me!

In those 10 days, I was neither a mother, wife, daughter, sister, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, niece, granddaughter, a friend – just me! Not living to anyone’s expectations; just my own, or not to live to any expectations.

There was no need to rush to do the things I had to do to fulfill all my roles. It was indeed a relief (I must confess, the relief only came towards the sixth day) – a respite from all the busyness of a worldly life.

In the 10 days of silence (except for the 10-minutes of daily reporting to the meditation teachers), I had a pervasive glimpse of insight: how my thoughts had shaped my personality.

The nature of my dealings with others; my judgements; my critical thoughts about everything and those around me. I came to understand that the judging, criticizing, blaming could be put to an end. By noting the thought process, I experienced that nothing was permanent – everything was changing and in a state of flux.

When the judging, criticizing, blaming stopped, I felt like a weight had been lifted off. Something got thrown off. The drama of my interactions and disharmony and discord with others, that had happened oh, so very long ago, returned to taunt me. When I finally got weary of the never-ending soap opera in my mind, in that moment I made a resolve to put in a little more effort into the noting of the thought process. The moment I became alert to the story of the drama, it came to an abrupt end. It was like, a snap decision to turn off the TV. Relief. Peace.

The retreat had been an excellent way for me to return to my inner being; to be in touch. And, to understand the role of the ego in our lives.