Metta In Action

I was very angry when my father didn’t allow me to go for the one-month retreat in May Myo. I told my brother: “My decision is final. I shall go, whether our parents give consent or not. I life my life my way, and I will not allow anyone to control me.” I was very hard and uncompromising at that time. Even though I knew right there and then that it was very childish of me to react this way, I have yet to find a way to respond better. Not until I read the book “Metta” by Sayadaw U. Indika. As I read, my mind flashed back to the incident in the afternoon. As my heart softens, my attitude and feelings towards my parents follow suit. I started to think that I need to take care of their feelings, and whether or not I am allowed to go for the retreat in the end, that would be fine. It is such a contrast to my attitude in the afternoon.

Later on, as I reflected further, I told myself: No, I don’t want my pursuit of the path to be tainted by my unskillful responses that give rise and strengthen the defilements in myself and in others, especially my parents. If I continue on this way, I may complete cut off the path of Dhamma for my parents. Instead of giving them the opportunity to see the beauty of the path and the taste of Dhamma, I may actually make them feel resentful for the path whose pursuit takes their daughter away from them, despite myself. Instead of offering kindness, openness and understanding, I come down plain hard on them, closing my ears tight, thinking: “They simply don’t understand what I give all my heart for and there is no way for me to bring them to a common understanding.”

Even though now I have yet to find a way to talk them into allowing me to go for longer practice, I have come to terms with the fact that they don’t understand what I’m pursuing. I will try my very best to offer them kindness, respect, understanding, acceptance – the very things in the practice that attracted me in the first place. That is a more real way to practice: to see it and practice the Dhamma in every way and every part of my life, rather than limiting it to only the meditation cushion.