Bhante, Buddhism emphasizes a good and respectful relationship with parents, and the opposite of that can create terrible karma.
But how should a child, now an adult, act when he or she had a bad parent, alcoholic, unfair or abusive, for example?
Well, one of the reasons
There's many different aspects to this question that we have to understand.
The first one, and probably the most important, is the difference, the ability to, or the importance of differentiating between your circumstances and your actions.
So there are, well, the vast majority of us
are brought into this world in less than ideal circumstances.
To say the least, some people are born in terrible circumstances.
It's important not to confuse that
with how you with your responsibility or your your own actions so in other words not to let that drag you down to say i am unlucky or or my life sucks you know my life is terrible and so on and so on and let that drag you down and let that determine how you live your life because that's what we can't control and that is
merely a product of where we are in this moment where we're coming from so it's it could be a curve up and so the things are getting better but then it could be a curve down and things are getting worse we could be at the at a low point
We don't know what the future holds.
The circumstances that we find ourselves in are circumstantial.
So they don't really have a bearing on us, on the quality of who we are.
So the meaning is there's no excuse therefore, there's no benefit in trying to excuse yourself for your behavior based on your situation.
Now it's obviously more likely that people in bad situations are going to behave
Actually, I'm not even sure if that's true.
For some people there's a correlation there, but for some people there's an inverse correlation.
So as people do better in life, they act worse, right?
People when they were poor, they were kind and generous because they understood suffering, they understood what it meant to be without.
But once they attain to luxury, to opulence, to wealth,
they become mean and selfish and addicted to their pleasure so there's no excuse there you can't say I have a bad relationship with such a person so therefore I should treat them poorly I mean that's basically that's the implication here so the
If you were to ask this about an ordinary person, well, let's rephrase the question and say, I know we're supposed to treat people kindly, but what if someone's really mean to you?
Obviously, if you understand anything about the Buddha's teaching, you know that that's not an excuse at all.
The Buddha himself
was our best example of this, how he said his love for Devadatta, his cousin who became a monk and tried to kill him, and on several occasions split up the Sangha, the followers of the Buddha, encouraged this prince Ajatasattu to kill his father, and so on and so on.
The Buddha said, my love for him is equal to my love for Rahula, my son.
And so the idea that you can somehow be excused for treating one person, someone poorly because they're just too difficult to deal with is erroneous.
The point being that it's not about some judge letting you off and saying, oh, that's okay, you know, I understand.
how you could be upset at that person because they're really a mean and nasty person.
Karma and reality isn't like that.
It's harsh, it's cold, it's impersonal.
There's no mitigating circumstance or there's no wiggle room.
If you get angry at someone, whether they're a nice person, a good person or a bad person, the anger, the quality of your mind is the
is a measure of the bad karma.
Now, that's the first thing you have to understand.
It's not the whole answer, I don't think, because there is a mitigating factor to
how strong your bad intentions are going to be.
So if someone's very, very nice to you or very, very kind to you, has done good things to you, for you, and you harm them, or if someone is pure, is good, whether they've done anything good for you, if they're in general a pure individual, if you harm them,
there's a greater disturbance in the force, disturbance in whatever it is that makes up the universe.
In your own mind it requires greater corruption and so the karma that you create will most likely be more powerful.
while there is no excuse for treating someone poorly, you're less likely to be incredibly corrupt when you get angry at someone who is, or you treat someone poorly who is a nasty person.
So, in regards to our parents,
There are two reasons that I can think of or that I understand based on the teaching of the Buddha as to why it's important to be kind to them.
And this should help to answer the question.
The first one is in regards to our roles and responsibilities.
our, not exactly roles and responsibilities, let's put it more those things that lead to social harmony, lead to mental harmony, lead to interpersonal harmony.
which we call our responsibilities or our roles.
They are important insofar as they lead to harmony, both inside of ourselves and in the world around us.
So without having
or the lack of parents, like a parental support is a very, very bad thing.
It's something that causes harm to us.
It's something that disrupts a family, disrupts society when parents are no longer caring for their children, looking after their children.
And likewise, when children are no longer respecting their parents,
It's a disturbance, it's a chaos, and it's a breeding ground for unwholesomeness.
I think you could probably make a strong case for the amount of unwholesome activity
increasing in those families that are dysfunctional.
I think it's pretty much a given that there's a general relationship there, whereas families that are functional, that are supportive, that are respectful, that have a clear sense of respect,
in terms of, and support, going both ways, are more likely to cultivate wholesomeness.
So, in that sense it's going back to where you find yourself.
You find yourself being born into a situation where your parents are abusive, alcoholic, are unsupportive to their children.
Now, that means, here's the perfect family, you're here, or you have lost something of that.
This just means that your family situation is less than perfect.
Now, this question kind of
implies that it would be somehow beneficial therefore, or somehow reasonable to make it even worse.
Or to take what little potential there is for familial harmony, family harmony, domestic harmony, and reduce it.
the point being you still have, you don't have the ability to control your parents, but each individual in the family has the potential to add or subtract, to benefit or to harm the family.
And so this is what you're looking at.
So my answer to this question would be in regards to
the difference between your poor relationship with your parents, which actually makes things worse, can't hope to benefit the family, and your patience and forbearance and kindness and compassion and equanimity,
in the face of an imperfect family situation, which has the potential to benefit the family.
And this is the case with all things.
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade, you can't change what you're given.
But that doesn't mean you should sit back and say, well, I was given a bunch of lemons, so I obviously can't make anything good out of this.
I was given a poor, dealt a poor hand in life, which actually is, as I said, just a measure of where you are now.
It's not a measure of who you are or it's not an indicator of how you should act at all.
So the important thing is how you react, how you behave in regards to the cards that you're dealt, the hand that you're dealt.
So that's the first aspect of this question, is that just as a function of creating harmony, it's just like a relationship with anyone, except that
there is, I think, room for a sort of parental role that one should accept.
So these are my parents and there is a benefit to respecting them no matter who they are in the sense of helping them to fulfill their roles or supporting them in fulfilling their roles even if they're crappy at it, even if they're failing at it.
you don't help them fulfill that role by having a crappy relation, by responding poorly to them.
So anything that you can do to help them to fulfill that role, and you can feel this, you can sense this, it doesn't mean you allow them to be alcoholics or you support them in their alcoholism, it means you find ways to
to mold the family as best you can, at least insofar as it's your responsibility to do so, which means you aren't responsible for the entire family but you can at least do your part.
By doing that, it's much better to act in that way than to act poorly.
So, the first part.
Second part is, I think there is also, that being said, also room for discrimination.
in the sense that the other reason why parents are so worthy of our respect is because they're actually worthy of our respect, that they've actually done something to support us.
So a parent who had sexual intercourse with your mother and you who you've never met, so I mean in the most extreme case, the man who raped your mother,
for that, and who you never met.
Obviously, in regards to roles, it would be great if somehow you could get that person to be the father, but
That being said, a substitute might be, for example, a stepfather.
Now often, due to emotions and relations and connections, that doesn't happen.
Step-parents are often unable to find the same level of attachment or endearment or caring for their children.
But for a person who has been negligent, for a parent who has been negligent, who has been uninvolved with the family, well, the role might be, would have been nice.
Sometimes you have to cut your losses and accept a one-parent family where you're not
at all related with the parent and so sometimes it's just making do with what you have and sometimes the best way to relate to a parent is to stay away from them and eventually in many cases
I think especially as one in most or in all cases once one begins to practice the Buddha's teaching one becomes more and more detached from one's family because eventually one begins to get this universal sense of love where one treats all beings equally and so then it's just a matter of responding to people appropriately and you would respond to your parents
as a child should in whatever society you're in, just as a matter of duty.
But I think for an abusive parent,
there is often, or a negligent parent, there is room to simply say that person's not a part of my life.
And to, I guess, to rearrange the roles or to rearrange the structure of one's family where one says single parent family or no parent family, if one was put up for adoption or so on, I mean, it gets complicated, you see.
So part of it is in regards to the roles and the structure.
The other part of it is in regards to the actual relationship.
If a parent has been abusive or negligent, then they don't really fulfill all of the greatness that is involved with being a parent.
I mean, it's a great thing that your mother carried you for nine months.
It may not have been such a great thing that your father did by inseminating her or
or more importantly in abandoning you at birth or having never met your father or so on.
Definitely, if you can, you want to try to do your best to create a wholesome family environment.
It's just, practically speaking, useful and beneficial and harmonious source of peace.
But practically speaking, you sometimes have to cut your losses.
And as a Buddhist, I think eventually it means less and less to you.
Certainly I think there's a misunderstanding among many Buddhists that family relations are somehow important and intrinsic to the path, and I think definitely they're not.
The teachings that the Buddha gave in regards to family were conventional teachings.
There's no sense that any relationship is really important.
except maybe one's relationship with one's teacher, which has a sense of being somewhat intrinsically important, if you can put that, or in some sense intrinsically important insofar as it leads one directly to enlightenment.
Other relationships are functional and auxiliary and incidental, but important, you know, there's certainly
A person who has bad relationship with their parents will have a difficult time practicing just because of how intense the feelings are and often the feeling, the ingratitude that's involved in that when a parent has been supportive, has tried their best, has done good things.
Or when a parent has been abusive and that affects you and the person hasn't forgiven, hasn't let go and still has bitter feelings towards their parents, it creates a chaos in one's mind.
It creates a depression, a sadness, an upset, a feeling of low self-worth and there's a lot of mental repercussions.
So often forgiving your parents is a part of that and so on.
So it's certainly something not to be taken lightly, but not something to be dogmatic about either.
Parents do have a strong, generally a strong relationship with their children.
Even psychologically, when the parent who's abandoned you
Often it's an important part of your practice just to settle it, to actually go and find that parent and meet them.
So there's no exact science, but it is an important weighty sort of aspect of life, part of life, something that you have to take seriously.