This is the second of a four part essay on "Parenting and the Four Noble Truths." This essay discusses the second noble truth as initially presented by Shakyamuni Buddha.
Last month we looked at the first noble truth, which is that life - when we struggle against life’s inherent challenge - always involves suffering in one form or another. We struggle with our child not listening to us. We struggle with not getting enough peace, quiet, and SPACE as what we might expect in our family “down” (!) time. We struggle with not knowing what to do, both as a parent and in our life altogether. Feeling so bewildered and lost by the suffering, we often can’t even see how common, how nearly universal this truth of suffering is. The first noble truth (as bleak as it may first seem) is a true friend, able to bring us out of our own feelings of unworthiness and incompetence.
“I can stop being so hard on myself for struggling, because it’s happening to all of us.”
This is the doorway to helping our child accept their own feelings of fear, anger, and other challenging ways to feel. Instead of “Don’t be sad,” we can empathize with our child and respond, “I can tell you’re sad; I’d be sad too if that happened to me.” We can start to help our child distinguish between their basic feeling - which is always accurate and good for being just what it is - and how they subsequently work or don’t work with that feeling effectively.
This leads to the second noble truth, the cause of suffering. Sylvia Boorstein articulates the truth this way:
“The cause of suffering is the mind’s struggle in response to challenge.”
It is not the challenges of life itself that are ultimately problematic, just like it is not feelings that are the culprit –but rather how we respond to our feelings. Do we accept life’s challenges or rail against them? How do we respond when our child is disrespectful to something or someone? How do we work with being late for the umpteenth time since being on time and having a family can be an oxymoron? In that ups and downs are a natural part of life and a super-natural part of parenting, it makes more sense to accept the challenges and focus on our relationship with the struggle. Trying to get our parenting ducks in a row is insane. Instead, if we stay present in life’s instability, we ride the ride instead of being ridden by it.
How does this impact our parenting? First, by seeing change, growth, and disobedience as a normal part of child development, we fight less against our child and instead look for the underlying need that is being expressed by the behavior. “My child is acting out in the restaurant because they are bored, so instead of only fixating on the misbehavior, I will set limits while offering a truly meaningful way for them to belong in the restaurant (conversation, special toy, game, etc).”
As climate change becomes more and more of a reality for ourselves and particularly for our children, being attached to external circumstances is even more of a set-up for suffering. The key is to cultivate non-attachment rather than detachment, to truly care for what’s going on while being open to what happens next. How to go about being non-attached, and hence free of suffering, is the subject of the last two noble truths. But the first step of non-attachment, whether it be for our child or for ourselves, is to accept our attachment with loving-kindness. “I can tell you’re really sad you lost your truck. I know you really liked playing with it.” Once we empathize, then we can move toward a solution. To jump to the solution without connecting to the present feelings is akin to “mansplaining!”
Ponlop Rinpoche has taught “We won’t have much compassion to give others if we’re not being kind to ourselves.” This applies to having compassion for our own attachments. If we don’t make friends with losing our own “toys”, i.e., our material possessions but also our identity to being a “good parent” and other solid things constantly at threat by life’s impermanence, it will be harder to help our child make friends with their loss. This is therefore a great incentive to do what we can to be kind to ourselves, loving the totality of our challenges, our joys, our insecurities, and our brilliance.
“I can tell you’re really frustrated that you can’t do that.” “I can tell you really want that.” “Wow you’re really mad, aren’t you.” “You seem excited!”
Making friends with life’s vicissitudes doesn’t mean we won’t or shouldn’t feel a certain way. We will feel a certain way. Can we begin to make friends with the full expanse of our feelings, and with the full expanse of our child’s feelings? As we make friends with our raw emotional responses, we become more and more capable of working effectively with those feelings and with the challenges of life altogether. As our child makes friends with their emotions, their capacity to work with life’s occurrences also grows. The only way out is through.
