Children of Buddhist monks

[Cooperix]

Hello,
I found this article/video in the current Atlantic interesting. The choices and delimmas of being the child of Buddhist monks.

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/in...nding-meaning/



Gassho,

Anne

~lahst~

[Jundo]

A lovely film about Okumura Roshi as Zen teacher and dad of a son.

I posted this once before when the film (made by his daughter, a filmmaker) was posted awhile back ...

============

Questions about being in the present, yet planning for the future with goals and dreams. Sewing and cooking.

As the father of a teenage son myself, I can certainly relate. As a once lost twenty-year-old myself long ago, I can certainly relate.

And I will say this as the father of a 15 year old ... well, so far we are okay. Who knows what the future holds ...


Sometimes there are bad parents in this world. Terrible parents.

Sometimes there are good parents who make some mistakes.

Sometimes there are good parents, and the kids don't --yet-- always appreciate what they have.


No matter how you cut it, the Okumuras are not the first, and I bet ya that the truth is closer to the last.

I know that I regret some of the things I said and thought about my own parents now that, with my own kids, I find myself doing and saying the same things to them that my parents said to me: ("Do it because I said so! As long as you are under my roof, eating my food ... ") I came to realize that dear old dad was one hell of a great guy through thick and thin though he also never said much in words, and mom was always there and meant well despite the flaws.

I will tell you a Japanese cultural trait that I know first hand from 30 years here: A lot of Japanese are not very verbal, even with folks they love. They show love, they do loving things for the kids, but they don't necessarily say "I love you", or have deep talks with their kids or other family members. As one of my in-laws once told me, "Japanese folks show love by being together, living together, sticking together ... and no need to say much more." A lot of Asian kids, raised in the U.S. (in my wife's family too) frequently complain about such cultural divides with their more traditional parents.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheril...b_3788496.html

Some parents push their kids too hard (a lot of that in Japan, where there is a big push to study to pass entrance exams even to get into a good public high school, and even into a good junior high school!)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/communit.../#.V8bLVZh96Ul

So, I just wonder what film this young daughter will make about her parents when she, herself, is a parent. Hmmmm.

Gassho, Jundo Dad

SatToday (then told my son to get a haircut! )

PS - The Altantic article has just a great photo that summarizes so much ...

[Shokai]

I find myself doing and saying the same things to them that my parents said to me:

Ten things My Mother taught me

To Appreciate A JOB WELL DONE:
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.”
My Mother taught me RELIGION:
“You’d better pray that comes out of the carpet”
My Mother taught me TIME TRAVEL:
”If you don’t straighten up I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week”
My Mother taught me LOGIC:
“Because I said so, That’s Why”
My Mother taught me MORE LOGIC:
“ If you fall out of that tree and break your neck, you’re not coming to the store with me"
My Mother taught me FORESIGHT:
“Be sure to wear clean underwear, In case you’re in an accident”
My Mother taught me IRONY:
“Keep crying and I’ll give you something to cry about”
My Mother taught me about OSMOSIS:
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper”
My Mother taught me To be a CONTORTIONIST:
“Will you look at the dirt on the back of your neck”
My Mother taught me about STAMINA:
“You’ll sit there until all those Brussels sprouts
are gone”

Gassho, Shokai
stlah

p.s. I also enjoyed the Okumura documentary, thanks Anne for posting it again.

[Cooperix]

Jundo,

Ahh, that's why it seemed familiar. I must have watched it in your earlier post.
It is a very finely made film.

_/\_

Anne

[Kyoshin]

It's almost as though these Zen Masters are actually regular human beings!

Gassho,
Kyōshin
Satlah

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[Geika]

I am glad to see it on YouTube now, so that I can add it to my VAST collection of favorites! I really liked this one when it was posted before. I related to the father, because Buddhism, but I also related to the son, because I have always been a little aimless in life... and I love video games.

Gassho,

Sat today, lah

[Meishin]

My kids went through something similar as children of psychologists. Once my son said, “Dad will you stop being a shrink and just be a dad?” I tried my best to follow his wise advice. Years later, the kids are okay.

Gassho
Meishin
Stlah

[Jundo]

Ten things My Mother taught me

To Appreciate A JOB WELL DONE:
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.”
My Mother taught me RELIGION:
“You’d better pray that comes out of the carpet”
My Mother taught me TIME TRAVEL:
”If you don’t straighten up I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week”
My Mother taught me LOGIC:
“Because I said so, That’s Why”
My Mother taught me MORE LOGIC:
“ If you fall out of that tree and break your neck, you’re not coming to the store with me"
My Mother taught me FORESIGHT:
“Be sure to wear clean underwear, In case you’re in an accident”
My Mother taught me IRONY:
“Keep crying and I’ll give you something to cry about”
My Mother taught me about OSMOSIS:
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper”
My Mother taught me To be a CONTORTIONIST:
“Will you look at the dirt on the back of your neck”
My Mother taught me about STAMINA:
“You’ll sit there until all those Brussels sprouts
are gone”

Gassho, Shokai
stlah

p.s. I also enjoyed the Okumura documentary, thanks Anne for posting it again.

Oh, it might be a generational thing, but that sounds just like my parents!

Gassho, J

STLah

[Shokai]

Jundo;
You're absolutely right, it is generational and apparently offensive to younger folks. This was humor back in the fifties; my favorite is:

My Mother taught me about OSMOSIS:
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper”

My apologies to anyone that doesn't take it in that light.

gassho, Shokai

stlah

[Jundo]

Hi,

I can match you story for story on my childhood. I am very very sorry for your suffering, and for my own. My house was crazy, mom had issues. Put me in the hospital more than once. Our parents did not know what they did. It also left me depressed and shaken well into my 20s.

I am sorry that this triggered you. You must encounter very many images in media and the like that would have a similar reaction. (I am watching Game of Thrones now, and it is far from politically correct).

The very point of the story was what used to be acceptable to say. That was the point. That's how our parents spoke. One way that I personally deal with a bleak and violent childhood is to laugh about it. Please don't take that laughter away.

We try to be very open and soft spoken around here. But this was not a joke about child abuse or race or making fun of someone other than our parents. There are many expressions such as "you deserve a kick in the butt" or "somebody should slap some sense into you" or "I'm gonna just kill you!" that do not mean that it is acceptable to do literally.

I speak to you honestly. Let us wish peace for all the suffering children and their parents who know not what they do, and let us never lose our humor about the hardest times. Gallows humor is a good way to put such things behind us, and let the past go.

Gassho, Jundo

STLah

[Geika]

I remember when I used to go to my grandpa with a small injury... he would lead me to the tool bench, grab a saw and say, "Well, that's gonna have to come off!" He got me laughing then and it didn't hurt anymore.

Gassho

Sat today, lah

[Jishin]

Ten things My Mother taught me

To Appreciate A JOB WELL DONE:
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.”
My Mother taught me RELIGION:
“You’d better pray that comes out of the carpet”
My Mother taught me TIME TRAVEL:
”If you don’t straighten up I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week”
My Mother taught me LOGIC:
“Because I said so, That’s Why”
My Mother taught me MORE LOGIC:
“ If you fall out of that tree and break your neck, you’re not coming to the store with me"
My Mother taught me FORESIGHT:
“Be sure to wear clean underwear, In case you’re in an accident”
My Mother taught me IRONY:
“Keep crying and I’ll give you something to cry about”
My Mother taught me about OSMOSIS:
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper”
My Mother taught me To be a CONTORTIONIST:
“Will you look at the dirt on the back of your neck”
My Mother taught me about STAMINA:
“You’ll sit there until all those Brussels sprouts
are gone”

Gassho, Shokai
stlah

p.s. I also enjoyed the Okumura documentary, thanks Anne for posting it again.

Hillarious and true.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Tai Do]

The standard punishment that my parents gave me was to sit quiet in a chair staring at a wall and only leave when they said to leave.
So, I guess my parents were my first zazen teachers.
Gassho,
Mateus
Sat/LAH

[Jundo]

Just to be clear on this ...

The joke was making fun of the "old school" parents that some of us had. My father, for example, was the very kind of fellow who would say "I should knock you into next Tuesday," and he was one of the kindest, gentlest, most loving men I ever met. It was a joke, a wink, with no actual violence implied, approved or done. He never laid a hand on me, and rarely raised his voice. He would always say such things with a smile and a laugh.

It was a day and age when parents said "I should wash your mouth out with soap" ... and sometimes did. (I remember that once or twice).

It was a day and age when school principles had wooden "paddles" and spankings were administered sometimes by parents. (In proper hands, the sound was way worse than any sting).

Now, these things are rejected. In those days, they were not. Neither were they "child abuse" even if we generally no longer approve of the use of such "corporal punishments" in the home. "Child abuse" is a very different thing, a line far beyond some "I am gonna punch you in the nose" joke ... I know, because I experienced that too over several years (my mother went through a very difficult time).

The above was a joke making fun of such old school ways. It was not an approval of, or joke about, child abuse or violence toward children. There are lines to cross about jokes making fun of child abuse, race, rape or any number of subjects, and that was not it. The above was making fun of, and lightly criticizing, such "old school" parents and their ways, not approving or making fun of actually beating children.

Some people have personal triggers. We must be understanding and bend over backwards to make everyone feel at home. It is difficult sometimes if someone is particularly sensitive. All I can say is that we will try to be more careful sometimes. As well, the person with the trigger must also reflect on whether they are being too easily triggered.

Personally, I believe that jokes like these help us laugh through some hard times and subjects. I would not want to lose that.

Gassho, Jundo

STLah

[Shokai]

Jundo;
Thank you for explaining this with far more clarity than I could possibly achieve. The fact is that i know folks have triggers, I do as well. We are all human but in different eras. I was raised in war time/post wartime with "old school" education mix with military training. The answer when you got caught was, "no excuse, sir." and you took the punishment meted out.
We are all walking around with some degree of PTS and/or un-resolved grief; granted, some more than others and we should strive to determine how to help others. May we all know peace and embrace all conditions of life.

gassho, Shokai
stlah

[Geika]

Well said, Shokai.

Gassho

Sat today, lah

[Shinshi]

Well said, Shokai.

Gassho

Sat today, lah

Gassho, Shinshi

SaT-LaH

[Washin]

It was a day and age when school principles had wooden "paddles" and spankings were administered sometimes by parents. (In proper hands, the sound was way worse than any sting).

I was born a left-hander. I still remember how during the first year in the elementary school the teacher would hit me on the palm with the board pointer every time I grabbed the pen by the left hand. And ouch it hurt! It sounds foolish and way abusive today but in those days it was a kind of norm as we were all taught to do things "right". Just different times... One thing I'm thankful about this though, is that today I may write and draw with both hands almost equally

Gassho,
Washin
sat

[Meitou]

I loved that film Anne, thank you for posting it here, I can now bookmark it.
Shokei, regarding those things our mums used to say, it's not just generational but international. I was 'never too old for slapped legs' even when I was 30, so those childhood words really were just words. I consider that I had a lovely childhood, full of endless summers and exciting snowy winters, I don't ever recall feeling inferior or lacking, even though we were poor, and I don't remember feeling anything but loved, even though I had my share of threats, shouts, slaps and tears.
I agree also that we all carry some kind of trauma, I have carried the burden of guilt all my life for something I unintentionally triggered between my parents, but I was just a child and they were just young adults unable to resolve their relationship difficulties,with money problems and two young children. I think as Jundo says, it's difficult to understand our parents until we are parents ourselves, or in my case as a non parent, until we are mature enough to see that our parents were people in their own right and the world isn't actually Me-Centred.
Gassho
Meitou
Satwithyoualltoday lah

[Tairin]

Thank you for posting this Anne. I’ve seen it before and as a parent I have very mixed emotions regarding the topic. I totally agree that our children need to find their own way. I feel my parents did a fantastic job of raising my brother and I. They gave us space to find our way in the world. At the same time I do feel a parent’s role is to encourage and sometime nudge our children forward. I would find it quite challenging to have an adult child living with us and showing very little ambition beyond video games.

Something for me to sit with.


Tairin
Sat today and lah

[Kyonin]

Hi guys,

Just a small comment and point of view from me. Here in Mexico, Spain and other places in the Spanish speaking world, things are different. Even if its not as common as it used to be when I was a kid, most children here get shouts, hits and sarcasm. It's part of our culture and despite some folks are indeed abusive, most of us don't make too much of it.

At least speaking for me, I got my share of spankings, correcting and shouts. Even more so because my parents are from a place famous for this. It's more like a cultural thing. That said, I had a wonderful childhood, I knew my parents loved me and did all they could to rise me as a good person.

I am not saying that violence with kids is fine. Thankfully things are changing and we see that kindness and communications are better now than they were when I was a kid.

We even make comedy from La Chancla



Gassho,

Kyonin
Sat/LAH

[Jundo]

As a follow-up to this, we are looking at a Koan in our study of the Book of Equanimity today (in our Treeleaf "No Words" Book Club) ...

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...NIMITY-Case-81

To make a long story short (it is a complicated Koan), the gist of the Koan is something like that the past is gone and done, yet the past is fully present now and today. For Zen folks who are used to experiencing reality in simultaneously true, but very different, ways, we ca encounter and experience things as here yet gone.

As part of that, some folks wrote about past trauma, and I wrote the following. I post it here too as I would like to share it:

I had a rough childhood too (more psychological abuse than physical, but some of that too) stretching over 10 years. Mom was perpetually depressed, angry on a daily basis and sometimes suicidal, like living with a hurricane. I was depressed and angry with terrible darkness and headaches until mid-twenties. Nothing sexual apart from one sexual assault by a baby sitter during elementary school that I clearly recall.

In any case, I sometimes am asked to advise people with ugly times in their past. I usually say that, as best one can, recognize the scars and any pain that remains, honor that fact, but also let it go too. As we do in Zen, it stays yet it is gone too, we wear it (sometimes we have no choice) as part of us in our bodies, but we release it like river water and let it wash away all at once. I even laugh about it with that dark survivors humor that people of Jewish culture and others are prone too (why do you think that there are so many Jewish comedians?)

Is that not something like the "yesterday's celebration" in the Koan?

I counsel folks to remember, that it is okay to be a bit angry (it is the ordinary human reaction) but also to release anger and forgive at once (Zen folks can be angry and not angry at once, as we always function two ways at once, like the "gone not gone.") We try to recognize that the people who did wrong or acted badly are actually themselves victims of their own excess desires, anger and division within (we tend to say in Buddhism "there are no bad people, only people who act badly because they themselves are victims of the real wrongdoers of excess desires, anger and ignorance"). That does not mean that we can completely "let them off the hook" but it is a step to understanding and moving on, like those "reconciliation committees" they had in South Africa and elsewhere.

https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/desmond-tutu

Mom had her own demons and was herself a victim of her father's violent abuse ... and I assume he was mistreated by his father ... and on and on.

I am glad that the abuse stopped with my kids. That is the end of the line for the anger and violence. That is the most important thing ... now, for though the past is present, the past is gone.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

By the way, I have thought about this thread a lot, and something I wrote in it ...

One way that I personally deal with a bleak and violent childhood is to laugh about it. Please don't take that laughter away.

I mean that. If you take the dark humor away, you rob me of my humanity, and we let the abusers win. What is the source of my saying so? A bit more on dark Jewish humor (and, again, it applies to many ethnic groups besides Jews) ...

Laughing Through the Tears: The serious roots of Jewish humor.

Humor is one of the most effective ways of confronting adversity and coping with difficult situations, especially when we have little control over them, or none at all. “By laughing at our fate, it is as if we were stepping out of a situation and looking at it from a distance, as if we were outside observers, so to speak,” writes Rabbi Reuven Bulka.

By so doing, we gain the ability to transcend the circumstances, which may be the cause of our anguish. Theodor Reik, a disciple of Sigmund Freud who settled in New York in the 1920s, remarked that life is often tragic and sad. By joking about it, we succeed in transcending the tragic character of an event and bringing it under our control. “By using humor, the lament often turns into laughter,” remarked Reik (Jewish Wit, New York, 1962).

What do you suppose makes Jews joke so much about adversity? “It is the instinct for self-preservation” says Ausubel. “By laughing at the absurdities and cruelties of life, we draw much of the sting from them. The jester’s bells make an honest tinkle, and his comic capers conceal his inner gravity. His satire and irony have one virtue: you never for a moment suspect that his barbs are directed at you. And so you laugh boisterously, feeling superior to the poor shmiggege, while all the time, it is you who are the target!”

In Jewish humor, comedy and tragedy are intertwined and it is often what you might call “laughter through tears,” or as we say in Yiddish, “a bitterer gelekhter!”

Jewish humor is unique, not only because it pokes fun at our shortcomings and weaknesses, but because it reflects upon the history of our people. Let us consider, for example, some of the anecdotes and jokes that express our determination to stay alive in spite of everything and our resolution to overcome the threatening situations in which we find ourselves. ...

A classic story, illustrating the instinct of survival, is an anecdote quoted by Reuven Bulka:

A Jew in Russia falls into a lake, and, not knowing how to swim, he frantically screams, “Help, save me!” But his calls are totally ignored by all present, including a number of soldiers standing nearby. In desperation, the Jew yells out, “Down with the czar!” At that moment, the soldiers immediately jump in, yank the Jew out of the water, and haul him off to prison.

...

Because they faced discrimination and anti-Semitism so many times in the past, Jews had to find ways of responding with dignity — but often also, with a certain amount of biting wit — to these unwarranted attacks on their personalities. One of these stories brings a Jew and an anti-Semite face to face:

An altercation takes place at a royal reception at Buckingham Palace, between the Jewish philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore, and an unfriendly Russian Grand Duke.

Shocked that a Jew should have been invited to an aristocratic gathering, the Grand Duke slyly remarks to Sir Moses Montefiore that he had just returned from Japan, and he had been intrigued to learn that in Japan, there were neither Jews nor pigs. Sir Moses calmly responds to the Grand Duke, “This is indeed quite interesting. Now, suppose you and I were to go to Japan, it would then have one of each!”

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/art...ugh-the-tears/

I am sure that is why I find Shokai's joke so painfully funny and tears in the smiles true. If you take that away, you hurt all folks who learned to laugh bleakly through the tears. To take the joke away is a kind of re-abuse for some of us too, truly.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Kyotai]

I work at a hospital as a housekeeper / porter. Many of my paramedic/nursing friends in particular have a very dark sense of humor, and I believe that is needed to balance out the awful traumatic circumstances they find themselves in, almost daily. In the same way in fact, one goes to the gym, goes for a brisk jog, to relieve stress. Humor does something similar to the mind.

Gassho, Kyotai