..續本文上一頁s happened to us. Something stops in the brain and it is impossible to imagine ever being happy again: we think this misery is forever.

　　In Sri Lanka, and throughout Asia, kataññu kataveti is a cultural virtue; it is highly regarded and cultivated. Being able to support and look after our parents is considered to be one of the great blessings of a life. This is interesting for those of us who come from a Western cultural background, because Western values are slightly different from this.

　　Many of us have had fortunate lives, but although we have been born in fortunate places we can tend to take a lot for granted. We have privileges and benefits, and a much better life than a good portion of people in the world can ever hope to expect. There”s a lot to be grateful for, a lot to feel kataññu for, when you live in a place like Britain.

　　I think back to when I was a child, and the way my parents devoted their lives to look after me and my sister. When I was young, I didn”t appreciate it at all. As a child in the States, we didn”t think about it, we took our mother and father for granted. And we could not realise what they had to sacrifice, what they had to give up in order to take care of us. It”s only when we are older and have given up things for the sake of our own children or somebody else that we begin to appreciate and feel kataññu kataveti for our parents.

　　I think back to my father. He was an aspiring artist before the Depression in 1929. Then in ”29 the Crash came and he and my mother lost everything, so he had to take a job selling shoes. My sister and I were born during the Depression, and he had to support us. Then the 2nd World War started, but my father was too old to enlist in the military; he wanted to support the war effort, so he became a ship fitter in New Seattle. He worked in a shipyard. He didn”t like that job, but it was the best way he could help in the 2nd World War. Then, after the war he went back to his shoe business and became a manager of a retail store. Talking to him when I grew up, I found that he had never really liked that work either, but he felt he was too old to find another profession. The sacrifice of his own preferences was mainly to support my mother, my sister and myself.

　　I had a much bigger choice, much better opportunities. My generation had a whole wide range of possibilities available to us when we were young. However my parents did not have such opportunities; their generation had to get on with their lives and start work when they were still quite young. Both my parents were capable but they did not have the opportunity to develop beyond the ordinary way of making a living.

　　When I was at university in the 1950s, it was fashionable to study psychology. At that time the trend was to blame your mother for everything that went wrong in your life. The focus was on mothers and what they had done to cause ME to suffer now. I didn”t realise then that suffering was a natural thing for human beings. Of course my mother was not perfect, she was not a perfectly enlightened being when she had me, so naturally there were things she could have improved on. But generally speaking, the dedication, commitment, love, and care were all there - and directed mainly to making the lives of my father, my sister and myself as good and as happy as could be. It was a dedication - she asked very little for herself. So when I think back like this, kataññu, gratitude, arises in my mind for my mother and father. Now I can hardly think of any of their faults which used to dominate my mind when I was young; they seem so trivial now, I hardly recall any.

　　However, if we just go on with the force of habit and conditioning we remain more or less stuck with all kind…

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