Enlightenment, Us and Family

You know Thich Nhat Hanh? He is a well known Buddhist monk and the author to various best selling books. He is a Vietnamese and talks about various subjects related to our life and spirituality.

I just started reading his book 'No Death, No Fear'. Though he was talking about death he touched the subject of body, ancestors and parents. And whew! There come the knowing, the fact of our relationship with us and family. Yes, life brings a series of relationships. The most important relationship we have is with ourselves. Not family, not friends, not spouses but us and only us.

Yet, our relationship with us is so heavily based on our notions, beliefs, emotions and feelings towards our immediate and closest members, who are none other than our family and ancestors. I say heavily because we carry our beliefs, notions et. All with us till we die. Who knows, even after death!!! Anyways, I was reading about how you may see your own body as the temple and home to all the ancestors and parents, body as Buddha himself. That is outside is inside. Something to ponder upon. If you really get to understand this, better still are aware of this light of truth, believe me, you won't need to know anything else. You will be Enlightened, The Buddha yourself.

Coming back to the point. We were talking of our bodies as the home to our ancestors, parents , Buddha, everyone in this world whom we know and we don't know ... Here is the catch. We are on our spiritual journey doing various things for our progress, to know our essential nature. We have done a lot of affirmation and cleaning up work, telling ourselves, 'I accept myself as I am. I love myself wholly and completely'. We reach to the point where we feel Buddha and world in me, as me, outside me. But! Yes, but we really cannot feel this for few selected people (our parents, siblings, grandparents, ancestors, people who did something bad to us ... Most of us our parents and siblings ...), then our purpose is beaten. We have failed to acknowledge our relationship with them as that of prime importance to us.

The essence of knowing the oneness is Unconditional Divine Love.

So, our purpose is beaten. We stand in front of the truth that we are yet to reach the bottonline, I mean our true essential nature. If the acceptance of the parents and siblings doesn't come through, it simply means that we are in denial of ourselves. Simple reason is that we are constituted of them. Scientifically and spirituality, not just our DNA, blood, body cells but also the shared memories, experiences and spiritual journey of our parents and their ancestors. The moment we feel that this body is one with whole universe except family members that very moment we start pretending. We create the utopia of the knowing, awareness and enlightenment. Whereas the truth is that we are still standing at the same place from where we started. All we have done is created an imagination to satisfy our ego.

It is easy to pretend, to create knowing, but actual knowledge come only through acceptance of all pervasive including us. It's difficult but not impossible!!!

Love, light and Aananda

Mansy