HOW MEDITATION VIEW AND MAHAYANA/VAJRAYANA CAN HELP US
I distinctly remember the first day my two small sons boarded the school bus. I lay down on the grass, arms wide, looking at the morning sky and thought ‘This must be something like what Liberation feels like!’ For the first time in my life, since the age of 12, I faced a day ahead that I could structure any way I liked.
After seven years of travelling through mouldy temples, hordes of desperate beggars with children on my back to ‘get’ the teaching, after seven years of wiping bottoms and noses, camping in Africa with wild animals just outside the mosquito screen, was I free? Was I free, finally, to do my prostrations without a small boy laughing and throwing himself down on the mat in front of me, daring me to do a prostration on top of him? Was I free to meditate in quiet without a small figure slipping into my lap to waggle his fingers upwards towards my nose to see if he could disturb my concentration?
I thought so. But it was not true or not true yet. Many years of practice were to pass before I could definitively make the statement of Awakening and have it confirmed by my teachers.
But living within the family dynamic has been part of the practice and my training, an invaluable and precious jewel. Others before me and alongside of me have made different choices: they have chosen the celibate path or have found themselves unable to have children. I see their path as legitimate and valid and well supported by history. My journey has been otherwise.
I have come to the conclusion that our children can be the most significant teachers we can ever face. They show us the heights and depths of experience. There are moments of great fury, great frustration, great love, great doubt, great sadness, and great loss. The textbooks of Awakening talk about the ‘Great States’ and yet the early ones talk as if women can never be liberated. Perhaps these men of old didn’t realize, because they couldn’t experience, that women go through an incredible dynamic of development through raising, developing and relinquishing their children. The fullest dynamic of suffering is encompassed within the full experience of motherhood.
It is equally true that one of the fullest experiences of ecstasy can be found in motherhood. The arrival of my youngest child, a daughter, was accompanied by a time of deep love in my life. I remember a time when, gazing at her sweet face as she slept in my arms, there was such a wash of ecstatic communion with the world that I felt moved beyond my own personal depths to a place of deep peace and unity with all existence, completely open, expansive and without significant form. I have only ever experienced such a state when, much later, I became adept at the states that eventually accompany Dzogchen meditation.
The very act of giving birth can be a time of great change for a woman. As her body opens ‘like a purse’ (as Julian of Norwich wrote in the 1600s) and new life gushes forth, a deep spiritual opening can occur. If unprepared, a woman can become overwhelmed by visions and she may experience agitation and delusion. It is called postpartum psychosis and attributed to the shift in the hormonal balance within. But there will be cases, I am sure from my own first experience of birth, where the visionary states, if prepared for and understood, could help women to advance spiritually. Those who survive and are committed to developing on a genuine spiritual path are those for whom that birthing experience acts as an incentive as well as a cautionary note for the rest of their lives.
Breast feeding is another area where women can experience the ecstasy that the mystics speak of. The channels that produce sexual arousal can mysteriously be activated as the milk begins to flow. Truthfully, a woman at this time is giving her very life essence to her child. Her body has become the tool of survival and development for another. She inherently understands the Bodhisattva vow, that putting all others before herself, she is contributing to developing a compassionate world. This is the world of Tantra.
As children grow and become independent, other motifs arise. A mother learns to let go, first of her own needs and wants (starting with sleep), then of her wish to be always ‘there’. Understanding the need for the child to develop, she moves out with him or her to the world: play groups, friends over and then SCHOOL, the first major launch away from her skirts.
Tantrums test our patience to the ‘Nth’ degree. School reports that say ‘Unsatisfactory’ test our discrimination and skill. Emotional upheavals challenge our openness to opposing points of view. Sick children require our constant vigilance and consistent energy. Dana, sila, ksanti, viriya, prajna: all the paramitas are required by us to develop. Is it any wonder that the Mahayanists portrayed Discriminating Wisdom Mind as a woman?
Once off the breast, raising children becomes the territory of both parents. We are turned into teachers, first at the physical level, encouraging them to crawl and walk, to run and swim. Later at the emotional level, we teach them how to control negative emotion, to understand it and to let it go or resolve it. Then we teach them how to plan, to see consequence. And finally, we surrender them completely: to their own lives whatever that may bring. We learn to stand back and let the world and others instruct them, hold them, harm them or help them. We must deeply let them go. Completely.
Throughout this great journey, we can and should, indeed must, meditate. We need to develop the calm, the awareness, the openness and the divine pride of the deity mind. We need the compassion of Chenresig, the support of Tara, the clarity and wisdom of Manjusri and the depth of Amitabha to help them to walk free but also to walk free ourselves. We need to learn to forgive ourselves for our own shortcomings, to celebrate our victories and to see and understand that the lives of our children, their karma, their future is theirs. We are there to protect, to harbour and then to let go, to free all the birds in our care, no matter the outcome.
Sometimes, we have deep rewards from our parenting, sometimes we have deep sorrow to face. The fires of hell in which the loving heart is forged can seem unfair, inexplicable and confusing. At these times, the wisdom of the Prajnaparamita can serve to re-balance us, to help us be open to whatever experience is arising, to let go into the mystery of creation and dissolution.
When we are tempted to feel extra pride in the accomplishments of ourselves or our children, we need the humbling mind of prostrations and the Guru tree teaching to see that we exist in a long line of seekers that stretches backwards and forwards through time and space for thousands of years. Whatever our practice: whether Christian, Buddhist, Sufi, Hindu or something else, we are only one small part in that line, granted an illusory sense of specialness, but really just a dust mote in the space/time continuum.
In the end, may we never forget to see all beings as our own precious, most beloved child. May we weep with those who have fallen; may we celebrate with those who have triumphed and may compassion mark our footsteps each and every day of our lives.
Sarva Mangalam