Santa Clara Meditation Empty Mind – How strict are your parents?
Father. The master of my universe, the proud and scary being, my father. My dad was that kind of person to me. He was born as a Christian. I was born as a Christian too. As far as I know, my father’s father and even his father were Christians. Most of my childhood memories are about Christianity. I don’t go to church now, but I am surprised when a song that I find myself humming turns out to be a hymn.
My father didn’t let me spend money on Sundays. This is because the Bible says so. On Sundays, of course, I couldn’t get on the bus and I couldn’t buy things, even snacks. None of our family members could read a book because of a verse in the Bible saying that we shouldn’t work on Sundays, and all we could do was read the Bible, pray, and sing hymns at church all day long. Even if a funny cartoon movie was on TV, I couldn’t see it, because I had to attend a service for children. I continued this way of life until I graduated from high school.
My dad didn’t drink and didn’t smoke.
Drinking and smoking are taboo in my house. When I was in the 3rd grade of elementary school, my younger brother and my brother’s friend 2 years younger than me, and I secretly stole a cigarette from an uncle living next door and smoked it in a corner of the neighbourhood. This memory has forever filled me with shame, regret, and guilt. When I was a freshman in college, I got drunk for the first time and was so drunk that I passed out, then I was loaded into my father’s car and taken home. I hated this more than dying because my father seemed so disappointed in me.
Korea is a Confucian country, so it holds ancestral rites. My father, who is a Christian, said that he could not serve other gods besides God, calling the Confucian ritual an act of heresy. Usually, Koreans prepare delicious foods, perform ancestral rites, and share their food during ancestral rites. Since childhood, I have been taught not to eat this food because it is a food that was bowed to before the heretical gods. When I was in high school all the students had lunch boxes that they packed at home for lunch time. A friend who was having lunch with me said that her rite was yesterday, and she kept pressing me to eat delicious side dishes. I was childlish, so I refused coldly, saying that my father had told me not to eat the food that was served for an ancestral rite. My friend was hurt because I refused the favor and we had a fight instead of eating.
My dad was that kind of person. Now he has become an old man in his mid-70s with a bent back. He pays when he goes out to eat with family on Sundays. On a trip to Europe, he has wine with dinner. Now, when I go to his house, he comes out of the house to meet me and he asks me to come to his house more often. The stubborn younger man has disappeared and now there is an old man before me with just a few hairs left on his head, it’s pathetic.
As I meditated, I threw away the me that was bound by that terrifying and strict father. I was afraid of my father, I respected my father, I wanted my father to die, I was proud of my father, and now finally I can be free from the bondage of my mind about my father. If I hadn’t meditated, I would have loved and hated my father.
I just like my father now. I respect my father’s life. Since raising a child myself I have come to understand my father more.
