essay and talk

Srimati wrote an interesting essay on motherhood.

It makes me reflect on my essay. Some said it was a bit negative. I focused on the difficulty of meditating while living a full life, with children. Some people have a very profound heart awakening by becoming a parent. For me the awakening was to how important meditation is for me, and how important meditation is for me to be the open, caring and mindful person I want to be--and yet paradoxically, it's hard to meditate with so many demands. It's a crunch of sorts.

I suppose I'm also into expressing the negative emotions of parenting. Most people have a kind of formulaic positive expression of joy. I have those feelings, but unfortunately they are not dominant in me. I experience many negative emotions as a parent.

But what has emerged is to highlight and heighten my struggles--with patience. I was thinking it the other day--I'm intolerant of my own learning pace, I want to learn more quickly.

Also I'm selfish. I'm used to a lot of free time. And I have very little free time now. That has been a hard adjustment. Accepting circumstances is another theme for me in parenting, a more pragmatic need to be pragmatic.

Anyway, I find parenting by Buddhist fascinating, and obviously a theme of this blog.

Finally, there's a new talk by Bante. I haven't listened to it yet, but I intend to.