Okay, go ahead.
Should you communicate with your parents if they engage in illegal drugs, go to jail frequently, have dangerous friends and constantly feed their defilements?
Thank you.
I think it's even more important that you communicate with your parents but
It's not so much about communicating as being a presence in their lives.
Because a great part of our direction in life has to do with the people we associate with.
The Buddha said association with good people is the entirety of the holy life.
It's everything.
And so if you're the only good that they have in their life, then by all means you have to stick to that, cling to that fact and be that good thing in their lives.
But of course you have to be strong.
A better question would be, should you communicate with your parents if you're angry, frustrated, worried, scared?
about the fact that they engage in illegal drugs, go to jail frequently, etc., etc., etc.
In that case, no, you've got a problem.
If you react to, or maybe if you're also engaging in those things, then you're a bad influence in their lives.
But just because they are, the fact that they are engaging in all of those things
isn't in and of itself a reason not to interact with them unless it's affecting you as well.
So in a sense you have to balance here because you have some kind of potential duty towards your parents in the conventional sense.
In a real sense you have a debt to them for whatever good they did for you
But you have to balance that with your own well-being and with the situation, the circumstances and reality of the situation.
If being around them is not helping you and is not helping them,
which in the end turn out to be very much the same thing, then no, you should probably step back.
But if you find that it's helpful for both you and them, for you to be near them, then yes, by all means, by all means continue.
I guess the point is that you often can't get away from your parents.
And so rather than wishing you could get away from them,
You should be steadfast and mindful.
The only way you can really get away from people is by working out your karmic
involvement with them.
Maybe that's not even fair, because you can break through that by attaining enlightenment.
You can free yourself from your karmic, even potential future karmic involvement.
So yeah, I mean, in the end you can break free from those.
There's nothing wrong with not having contact with people.
You shouldn't feel, hey, maybe something's wrong.
Why am I not involved at all with anyone?
But you shouldn't feel that.
There's no reason to be involved with any certain individual.
But our attachments that are often due to feelings of gratitude and indebtedness towards our parents, it's very strong and it tends to lead us back to them.
It led Sariputta back to his mother.
Before he passed away, he went back to see his mother and he was already in Arahant.
Because he wanted to, he thought, how can I go into Parinibbana without, how can I leave the world without having helped my own mother?
But I guess the point is that there's no hard and fast rule.
Often this question is asked when actually the case is that you're trying to get away from them and feeling bad that you can't, that you're always pulled in.
But if you're pulled in, it means you're a part of the situation and you have to
extricate yourself from the situation through mindfulness, not through running away.
It won't help.
It won't make things better.
You'll just end up running back to them once you pendulum back and forth.