Shoshin-Zazen

From The Saddest Thing I Own: A collection of life’s saddest objects, their sad stories, and our reasons for holding onto these sad things.

The saddest thing i own is the last mother’s day card i gave to my mother. The card contained a poem that said something like:

Draw a bath, light a candle
There is nothing you can’t handle
Close your eyes, dream a dream
Change your horses in midstream
Tell your feelings they’re ok
Let your soul come out to play,
Mother, in all that you do,
Take care of you.

I was taken aback by finding this card in the shop as it said exactly what i wanted to say to her in the nicest way.

I grew up thinking that not being happy about anything was normal. My mother never seemed to be happy at all. I can’t remember a single time or period growing up when I could say that she was happy. She always seemed like she wanted to be doing something else with her life and felt trapped with her situation. I tell you growing up with this mess of a mother was hard, particularly as I loved her with all my heart. I sometimes imagined life without her and it scared me to the point that I was in tears. I went from being very young and thinking that being sad all the time was normal, to being a little older (11) and thinking how can I change the way my mother is …. I wanted her to be happy so bad. I wanted her to be happy despite my own feelings of being completely sad and depressed. She used to say things like….I wish I could go out and get knocked down and killed by a truck….and the very sad thing is …. I thought this was what normal moms say….how fucked up is that!

I grew up with no self esteem. It was sometimes noticeable to others but I did all I could to hide it from people. I cried myself to sleep all the time. I was the smiliest child growing up. Smiling was like a defense mechanism for me. But inside I was dying. I didn’t want to be alive and I didn’t know why….I wanted to come to an untimely death from the time I hit my teenage years. I prayed to God to let me die. I never tried to kill myself but I hoped and prayed that I would die and it would all end.

I went through high school and got good results, but my low self esteem kept me from playing any sports, or just being a normal boy. Still no one knew of this because I kept on smiling.

I went to university because that’s what my parents thought that coming from a poor household, this would be a great achievement. I struggled through university..taking 6 years to complete….I couldn’t care less about it.

My mother kept on struggling too. The kids were all growing up and she had no one to focus on anymore. You would think that at this point she would find some stuff to keep her busy , or get a job to help us out financially but she didn’t she just stayed home and be sad. She continued saying things like ‘my life is over’ and ‘I have nothing to live for’

After university I got a job, things started going well for me…but I still carried this ultimate darkness with me wherever I went….hoping that I wouldn’t have to live for very much longer. The situation deteriorated with my mother.

I moved back home at this point, but I quickly began feeling stifled just like her. I wanted to get out of the situation. . She depended on me for everything as my dad was ill at this point (he had some mild stroke or something and stopped working in his early 50’s….i wanted to knock some sense into him as all he claimed to have was some minor memory loss..he is completely fine now)
At the age of 27 I left our family home to go abroad. I was at the point that I couldn’t take any more. I should have been dating but I felt that I couldn’t let anyone into the equation until I knew that our family life was sorted out. I felt as if I went abroad, I could get settled and then I could send for my mother….just so that she could see and experience new things (we come from a small island and it is a big deal to go abroad!). She didn’t want me to go but she didn’t stand in my way. She was sad that I was going (and fainted at the airport!) but I think she realized that I needed to make a few changes.

I went away and a month later, my mother suffered a massive heart attack at the age of 55. This surprised me as I talked to her the day before and she was fine….she seemed chatty and talked a lot….there was something different in her voice, almost like she had come to terms with me leaving. I got a flight home the next day and went straight from the airport to the hospital where she was. She looked really young and even though she was uncomfortable, she was conscious and she told me when I got there that she is ‘really ill’ I told her to stop talking and save her strength. She was in intensive care but she seemed fine to me….I didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation I suppose. We left her that night because we all needed to talk about if she needed a pacemaker etc…and how we were going to afford it. She was in good hands we thought as one of our best family friends was the nurse on duty that night. I was prepared to come back home to take care of her if I had to. I was really exhausted from the 9 hr flight and really needed to rest. Five minutes after I lay down, the phone rang and it was our nurse family friend calling to say that we should come to the hospital. When we got there my mother had already died. One of the orderlies there said that she kept calling out for me and thought that I was him.

My world fell apart….i was not expecting this….i went into involuntary shock….i started crying and couldn’t stop but I still felt like I wanted to scream out loud for all I was worth. Where I come from it was customary to have funerals quickly after someone dies . So she died on Monday morning shortly after midnight and the funeral was to be held on Wednesday. I went to make all the arrangements on Monday with the support of my mother’s brothers. I couldn’t stop crying…I don’t know if you could even call it crying. It was like when a toddler frets about something and can do that for a while almost out of breath…it was like that. It was quite funny indeed. There I was choosing a casket and fretting, having lunch and fretting, having a conversation and fretting. It was the first time in my life that I couldn’t control my bodily functions!
Any way I digress. After the funeral I went back abroad and I’ve been here ever since. I took to grieving for my mother on my own without my other family members. I felt bad for my brother as he is 8 years younger than me….but I wanted to be alone.
My life has been filled with ups and downs since then but the one thing that has changed fundamentally is that I no longer feel like dying everyday! I still have the odd day that I feel like I want my life to end but no where near to what I was before.

I’m 35 now, married to a wonderful woman and we’re expecting our first baby this year.

I miss my mother dearly….its been 7 years since she died. I wish she could be here to share this with us. At times I just want to talk to her.

The saddest thing in my life is that my mother didn’t live to enjoy life. I sometimes wish I could go back in time to her childhood and fine tune whatever made her so unhappy…to make her happy. I know that would probably mean that I wouldn’t be here today but so what (back to the future comes to mind!)

The struggle continues but I’m doing ok.

I have to hand it down to my mum when she told me,

Don’t let this incident propel you to become ascetic.

As much as I would like to retreat to the himalaya mountains to mediate on the question of “Who am I’, I can’t do that because I have so many great friends, who do great things like throwing me into the lake at 3 degrees in the night.

Please take note that this activity is condoned by my program coordinator in stockholm (shes in the picture) but she ran away before we could thank her for it. She was obviously concerned that I was shivering, only wearing shots and no shirt on when she asked me, “Zhihan, any last words?” before I got thrown in.

Mum, only time will tell. In the meantime, I MISS YOUR FRIED KUAY TEOW!!!!!

After receiving the greatest teaching I have ever experienced, I gave three bows with tears of joy flowing down my cheeks.

Great teaching, great realisation. Keep don’t know mind.

Nevertheless…what a fool I was. Thank you for removing the cream covering my eyes

I had eyes but could not see;

ears but could not hear.

This fleeting life merely is,

a candle in the wind,

lightning in a summer cloud.

A star at dawn,

a phantom and a dream.

Removing thus from delusion,

function just like this.

Coming and going,

with no shape or form.

Liberated,

absolute and free.

Sad.

As I prepare to write a post on one of my travels in the Swedish Archepalego, I hear…

Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,
How can ye blume sae fair!
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae fu’ o’ care.

Thou’lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
That sings upon the bough;
Thou minds me o’ the happy days
When my fause luve was true.

Thou’lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
And wist na o’ my fate.

Aft hae I rov’d by bonnie Doon,
To see the woodbine twine,
And ilka bird sang o’ its love,
And sae did I o’ mine.

Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose
Frae off its thorny tree;
And my fause luver staw the rose,
But left the thorn wi’ me.

I wake up in the morning, gave a big stretch and saw the sky was still dark at 7.30am. I stumbled out of bed and took three bows in front of a piece of paper that was pasted on the wall. It writes “What is my great bodhisattva vow today?”

How fickle the mind is! Everytime when I wake up and go to bed, I have to remind myself of a purpose in life which goes far greater than feeding and cleaning this unpermanent body. To keep independent of any feelings of happiness and sadness that might arise from my mind, lest it pulls me back into the unsafe realm of suffering.

We all need reminders. But some of us do not even realise we need reminders - until its too late.

From the enlightening portraits taken by Walter Schels, and his partner Beate Lakotta

Rita Schoffler, 62
First portrait:
February 17 2004
Rita and her husband had divorced 17 years before she became terminally ill with cancer. But when she was given her death sentence, she realised what she wanted to do: she wanted to speak to him again. It had been so long, and it had been such an acrimonious divorce: she had denied him access to their child, and the wounds ran deep.

Second portrait:
May 10 2004
When she called him and told him she was dying, he said he’d come straight over. It had been nearly 20 years since they’d exchanged a word, but he said he’d be there. “I shouldn’t have waited nearly so long to forgive and forget. I’m still fond of him despite everything.” For weeks, all she’d wanted to do was die. But, she said, “now I’d love to be able to participate in life one last time…”