cont....Demands on time

Continue…. In recent years, the African nation of Rwanda has gone through a bitter and cruel civil war. In one family, the children lost both parents, only they and their grandmother survived. One of the older boys had to drop out of school to take care of the rest. He was so sad about not attending school anymore that he often cried through the night. His other siblings still in school would share their lessons with him when he came home from work.
   But if that were the whole story, we’d have to conclude that everything depends completely on our environment. That’s not the case. Life and the human condition aren’t so simple. Buddhism teaches that true freedom is connected to one’s inner condition of life. Someone with an expansive life-condition is free even if confined to the most restricted prison on earth.
   Natalia Sats, former president of the Moscow State Musical Theater for children, who fought against oppression and was jailed, also turned her prison cell into a place of learning. She encouraged her fellow prisoners to share their special knowledge with one another. One lectured on chemistry, another taught medicine. Mrs. Sats, who herself was a singer and entertainer, sang songs and recited verses by Aleksandr Pushkin, infusing everyone with courage and hope.
   I’m sure you know the story of Helen Keller. At the age of eighteen months, she lost her sight and hearing. Her loss of hearing also made it difficult for her to speak. But by working together with her teacher Anne Sullivan, she eventually learned to read, write and speak, and she graduated from Radcliffe College in Boston.
   Surely no one could have been as restricted as she was—unable to speak, hear or see. Her world was one of darkness and silence. But she drove the darkness out of her heart. At the age of nine, she finally spoke her first sentence:” It is warm.” She never forgot for the rest of her life the astonishment and joy she experienced at that moment. She had succeeded in breaking out of the prison of silence that confined her.
   Being human, however, at times she would feel forlorn and disheartened by the long hours she had to spend studying, having all of her textbooks painstakingly spelled into her hand, while other students were singing and dancing and enjoying themselves. In the story of My Life, she writes:
                                    I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still,
                             I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I loss
                             My temper and find it again and keep it better. I
                           Trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get
                           More eager and climb higher and begin to see the
                          Widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.

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Demands On Time

With school, homework, chores and other demands, I have no free time. It’s making me feel restricted.
   While there is no denying the pressures of one’s schedule at times, I believe that to regard the things you mentioned as merely unpleasant demands on your time is an incorrect perspective. If you think about it, it’s only because you enjoy great freedom that you have an opportunity to attend school and to study.
   Do you look at going to school as a right or as something you’re forced to do? As a liberating activity or something that stifles you from doing what you want? It all depends on your personal philosophy, on your wisdom. If you are passive, you’ll feel trapped and unhappy in even the freest of environments. But if you take an active approach and challenge your circumstances, you will be free no matter how confining your situation may actually be.
   The stronger you are, the freer you will be. Someone without a lot of stamina may have great difficulties climbing even a small hill. Someone sick might not manage it at all. But a strong, healthy person can climb even a mountain easily, with zest and enjoyment. To climb the mountains of your life goals, it’s important to develop your strength. Build a strong enough self so that you can be active in school and in your outside activities. If you have strength and capability, you will have freedom.
   The same is true of sports or music. To pay your chosen sport or instrument with complete mastery and ease, you have to gain an adequate level of proficiency, you have to be prepared to make some sacrifices so you can practice to the degree necessary.
   Children who suffer from serious illnesses or who live in war-torn countries often can’t go to school even though they may want to. Many children in more fortunate circumstances, who do have the opportunity to attend school, never fully appreciate how free they really are. Having the opportunity to go to school—is a sign of the most incredible freedom. And it’s a mistake not to realize it.
   I’m reminded of a story I recently heard about a young man who had multiple myeloma, a disabling and painful form of bone cancer. In the last two years of his life, with his entire body encased in a cast because of multiple bone fractures, he visited local high schools in his wheelchair to talk about the terrible effects of drug abuse. He would say to the students:” you want to destroy your body with nicotine or alcohol or heroin? You want to smash it up in a car wreck? You’re depressed and want to throw yourself off a bridge? Then give me your body! Let me have it! I want it! I’ll take it! I want to live! During the war in the former Yugoslavia, according to one account, children talked about their dreams. One said,” I had many dreams, but the war is robbing me of all of them.” And another said, “Our dream is to live an ordinary life with our friends, to be able to go to school.”continue……

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Open Families Are Strong

It is most important to remember that the future of the family depends on skillful, wise handling of the reins by the person who is in charge of managing the household. That is usually the wife, who is also mediator of the family.
     If there are differences between the children and the older folks, the mother is often better at smoothing things over by talking them out. If there are arguments among the children she becomes an impartial judge. If the storms of malice whip up within the family, she can bring calm by wrapping them in love. When trouble does arise she provides the warmth and harmony to prevent it from getting worse.
   The type of woman most desirable is the one who gives unswerving effort to develop mutual trust and confidence between herself and the man, who will work for the exchange of love and respect between her and her children, and who will continually develop the bonds of cooperation between brothers and sisters. The housewife who is like a ray of sunlight in her family, who is wise, and filled with love and compassion is the one to whom I would like to entrust the future family and society.
   Some people see the family as an oasis in society. Others see the family as a place to relax, and also as a consumer. I would also bet that there are many young people who regard the family as a castle for themselves and those closest to them.
   I agree with all of them. Anyone living in a family which brims over with love and trust, where food is prepared fresh and economically and the parents are happy and cheerful will know what the true meaning of joy is. The senior members of the family experience the delights of age, the husband and wife restore their vigor for another day, and emotional warmth fills the hearts of the young children. I believe it was Fukujawa Yukichi who once said, “ There are many beautiful things done in a family, but the most precious of them is the family discussion where everyone talks things over openly, without reserve. “ Enshrine these words in the form of a picture and the scene would be magnificent.
   But there are times when happiness may be blown suddenly away, like the leaves in a sudden gale. Rising prices and dreadful  economic conditions may chill the wife’s warm smile, the whirlwind of unemployment may cause the husband to bolt from his family. The source of the storm may lie in a traffic accident, children’s illness, anywhere where sudden mishap occurs. And sometimes it may brew within the family.
   If a person looks at his family as a nook nestled in some secure corner of the world, isolated from the rest of society, it may at first glance seem a happy place, but this is the kind of home that will not be able to avoid sudden collapse.
   There is no group as vulnerable to unhappiness as a family that is closed off from the rest of society. I would like to see the kind of family equipped with a strong life-force which will allow them to gauge and cope with the powers of the storm, even while buffeted by the rapid change in society. That family would be always open, ready to fight the evils that fill society. Families such as these in a society are like the white corpuscles and antibodies that fight disease in the human body.
   Since the open family would allow itself to make direct contact with the adversities of society, It would derive the wisdom to sustain itself. If the people making up the family do not have a creative sense, then the family will not be able to cope with the repercussions of society and politics, no matter how great the love that passes between them.    

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