This is Karen Igita. Hello. Domo warriors, how do you become a warrior? What weapons do you have? What tools do you use? What areas are you working in? What's your battleground? We've got a series of battlegrounds that we work in, a series of areas that are engaging with. We engage at work, we engage with our families, we engage. Working down the street, we engage with the planet as a whole. So we've got a series of symposia, talks from different perspectives on each day. It just means different people giving their perspectives. So if you stay full the whole morning, you get a bigger perspective. So today's area for them Domo warriors is parenting. It's an area that I'm guessing most of you are familiar with. But technically as a child and probably as a parent, you've found yourself in this area at what you do, how do you practice, what's the best way? Karen Igita has got a book coming out in the autumn, growing as a parent, what Buddhism has to offer. Fantastic. So she's going to be talking about that. Okay, thank you very, very much indeed. I just want to start by saying a bit about how I came to be standing here, really. And sort of going back in time to when my first child was born, which was 1994, by then I'd already been around the FWBO and going to retreats and meditating for about four years. And it was a big part of my life and a real priority for me. I didn't call myself a Buddhist, it took me a very, very long time to start throwing myself as a Buddhist, but it was really important in my life. And then when I had my first child, for the next sort of two and a half years probably, what I did was I managed to carry on doing that. You know, I carved out space from life as a working mother. You know, whenever my baby went to sleep, that was it, I went straight to meditate. The city winds about 18 months old, I went back on the tree. It felt like I was very fixed on doing this. I need to keep on doing this, I need to keep meditating, I need to keep going on the tree. I need to keep up as much as possible with my spiritual life as it was before I had children. But then I had another baby, after about two and a quarter years, and one sort of surface from that, I realised it just wasn't possible, you know, so there wasn't that time, there wasn't the baby goes down for the nap, I can meditate, baby goes to play, but I can meditate because one went and the other was still there and the way it could, you know, I wanted to play. When I went through this feeling, you know, the other thing is before she was born, you know, I would do this, okay, I could meditate because he's in this space, but quite often something would happen. He'd wake up early, he wouldn't sleep, it wouldn't work out the way I planned it all. And then I'd get, like, quite frustrated and quite resentful. I was quite focused and if it didn't work that way, I'd get quite sort of twitchy, or if I missed my meditation, I was quite irritable and it was all a bit tentative. And anyway, once Ella was born, that all fell apart, I couldn't do it anymore, it didn't work anyway. And I went through this high, brief phase of like, ah, you know, so what do you do? And then this sort of thought came up and, you know, it just felt like a thought, you know, when there's thought to come up from somewhere in your body rather than your mind. But it was like, well, I can't step out and go and do Buddhism anymore, I'll just have to bring Buddhism into my life, you know, and at the time it just felt like this sense of resignation is like, oh no, I can't do that anymore, so I'm going to have to do it differently. But actually, what started then, which was nearly ten years ago, was, you know, a journey of exploration that hasn't by any means culminated in writing this book and given this talk, but it's very much ongoing, but it certainly has formed me to this point and it's been quite a journey. And throughout that journey, you know, that whole process of writing, for me, has helped me sort of clarify and confirm and feel much more positive about the context of being a parent and also trying to have a spiritual life to develop spiritually. But throughout that exploration, the whole question has been like, well, how? How do you do it? You know, it's very much a sort of practical thing. You know, I know it's possible, but how, you know, I know it's quite easy, but how? And so it was quite about exploration. I volunteered to do a book for Wintours, which is coming out in the autumn. And during the process of that, I've interviewed a lot of Buddhist parents, about 25 or so, quite a few of whom, well, some of whom were in this room, and many others are somewhere else wondering around in this festival. So what I did was I interviewed lots of people. I also, obviously, have been trying to do this in practice for years. And then drew all of that information together into sort of seven themes, which form the chapters of the book. And what I've decided to do today is just pick out three of those themes to talk about just because seven is far too many to have, all in one go. So with the each of those themes, it's very much about all of them being to, like, opportunities. They're all opportunities to develop spiritually in the context of being a parent. And most of them also have with them their own sort of pitfalls, you know, there's also pitfalls. So throughout this process of exploration, it's about, well, how can we make the most of all the opportunities that are actually there and, you know, embrace those and enjoy them and benefit from them without spending too much time, sort of, so deep in the people you can see beyond the surface. So I've chosen three areas from the book to talk about today. And the first of them is love, about love and about letting go and those two things are taken together, because love and letting go is so much part of being a parent. And when we talk about spiritual growth or spiritual life, I mean, what we're talking about is growth's opening in wisdom and in compassion and love. So love obviously is, you know, fundamental to the spiritual life. Love is one of the great gifts that is sort of, like, handed on a plate, if you like, by becoming a parent. And in fact, the Buddha draws on the sort of parental love, mother love, in a very famous center, where he talks about, when he likens, just as a mother protects with her life, her child, her only child, it's that much love that we're aspiring to feel for all people for the whole of the universe, all of the time. It's unconditional love. I mean, what parenting gives us is an insight into what it actually means to love unconditionally. I mean, one of the fathers that I interviewed for the book I've actually never met, so he may be here. It was on the phone. One of the things he said was, in Italy, he was saying, well, my life began when my son was born. And I was like, well, how do you mean, you know, what began? And he was paused for a minute, and then he said, my heart, you know, it's my heart. And he just felt like his heart had suddenly opened and really engaged with life for the first time when his, when his son was born. And it's that love, that strength of love and unconditional love, in a way that that's the natural order of things, that's what we're capable of feeling for all beings, for all of creation, for everything around us, all of the time, and actually being able to feel that in response to our children just gives us, even if it's momentarily, I mean, it's not something we live all the time year in, year out as parents, but even if it's just flashes at times, that gives us an insight into what we're actually capable of feeling all the time. And so one of the things emphasized really is district setback is a gift, you know, it's a heart opening, it's a gift of heart opening, and really embrace that, you know, and use it and draw on it. And also I think, you know, if we're living our lives in the context that we are on a spiritual journey, we're on a spiritual path, we're looking to develop spiritually, you're feeling that love in the context of, you know, this is what I am aspiring to feel, you know, so you don't just see it as, this is just my mother, child or father, child bond, it's like, this is love, this is what I'm aspiring to feel for everybody all the time, and you can just take moments sometimes to reflect on that, because obviously it comes with a pitfall, you know, like one of the pitfalls is it's also threatening out there and I love this being so much, you can sort of close down to a little family unit trying to sort of seal off everybody else around, because it's always so threatening. So it's about using it, you know, making the most of the opportunities really, and it's not about will instantly radiate love to everybody, just because they're parents, if that was true, the world would be a really different place, because so many of us are parents, but you know, maybe about, you know, you suddenly know, so you're getting a bit more tolerant, a bit kinder, every so often with people that irritate, and link to love very closely. One of the things that Buddhism teaches us is that we cause our own happiness so much of the time by trying to hold on to and hold fixed things that aren't, things that we can't own, we can't own anyone, we can't own anything, we can't hold on to them, we can't expect them to be ours or to stay the same forever, you know, you can't hold anything fixed as it flows past. And that's what we try and do so much, we love somebody, you know, it's an actual human condition tendency to want to hold on, but actually everybody changes all the time, and I think again one of the great gifts of being a parent is that we live that reality so much of the time, because you see your children change before your eyes, they've changed and grown, you know, maybe not from day to day, but by asking my children for a week or two weeks, which I quite regularly don't, because I'm separate from their father, then they seem to change just in that time. So we're living that reality that, you know, we love them hugely and unconditionally, yet we can't hold them fixed, we can't hold on to them, it's you have to love, it's like loving with an open hand, you have to love from the moment they can walk, you know, they're walking, you know, off down this field, away from us, to things that are more interesting or whatever, they're constantly, you know, they're moving away almost from the time that they have motion. So it's a constant sense of loving and letting go. I mean I want to read out a bit that I've put in the book about this sort of letting go, because I think it is something that's very, very important. Which is about, it's just a reflection I had when cleaning out the toy cupboard, which is probably something, again, those of you who are parents will do every so often, you know, there's a sort of a wave of things, do you know. Periodically, Ella and I tackle the toy cupboard. We make piles of what she and her brother have grown out of and take them to the local charity shop, relegate them to the being or pass them on to other people. It's a process we enjoy together, harmonious teamwork, spice with nostalgia and roll with a satisfactory outcome, a clear space, a job well done, and some forgotten gains rescued from the depths to happily occupy the following hours. And one morning I did this alone, basically, Ella wasn't there and the buddhist center needed a lot of toys. So without that or there, you know, I found myself lingering over these toys, wanting to keep them just a bit longer, you know, in case one or both of my children were to regain experience joy in building a brightly coloured house in the garden of Duplo blocks. Remembering my delight at witnessing that cooperative and creative play, my satisfaction with all was as it should be, it was easier to drop a couple of macho robots into the bag. The contrast highlighting to me my own expectations of how children should play. I left the pirates from their ship in the unlikely event that I would want them once more in the imaginary games, and still plays in the bath, or was it me that was not ready to let them go. So more than anything, that sort of periodic process epitomises for me this thing of letting go, each stage of my children's life is like with each clear out of the toy cupboard you're having to let go different phases, you know, somehow the baby toys are easier to let go of. But now it's like the stage my children are at now, which is 10 and 12, as soon as they won't be a toy cupboard, it's clear at all and it contains games that challenge me rather than train sex and Lego. So what I wrote here was in my heart I feel a mixture of sadness, excitement, delight and pride as I watch them grow into themselves, but it's the sadness that's most present as I decide that I will, after all, take the big box of Duplo blocks to the Buddhist center. So that's one of the great areas really of opportunity for us as parents is this mixture of unconditional love that we can feel and insight into our capacity to feel love, combined with this need to keep letting go, to do it with our hands open, and just something very powerful about just living that reality day in and day out. The second area of the three areas I wanted to pick out to talk about today is about awareness because awareness is fundamental, certainly within Buddhism but within spiritual life within spiritual development and fundamental and including awareness of ourselves both in terms of how we are in the moment and also knowing ourselves and what makes us tick, what presses our buttons, what makes us react. And I do think this is something, you know, an area that I find really exciting because there is something so powerful and just knowing about what presses our buttons that means it gives us a bit more space, it gives us a bit more choice. At that moment you can think, ah yes I know this is something I reacted, it just gives that little gap to be able to choose to react slightly different at least at times. And I think this again is another great gift of children, I mean children are the perfect mirror, you know, I stopped swearing the moment when I started talking, you know, that's the most simple level, whatever we say comes back again, what we do comes back again. And that's not only swearing, I mean like Ellen went through a lovely stage recently where she would kiss me on the forehead, you know, which is something I very much associated with parent to child sort of thing, but it was just something I did to her and she would do to me and greet me with good morning gorgeous, obviously then I did to her. So there's that very immediate level of a mirror that's happening all the time, but also there's a deeper level of which, you know, just being able to know our own buttons. And I think again that's another area where having children is very powerful, I mean throughout writing this book I've been thinking, am I writing, growing as a parent, what Buddhism can offer, or am I writing, growing as a Buddhist, what parenting can offer, and I think it's obviously a bit of both, and I think this is nearly very much which parenting can offer in terms of our own growth, because we are pushed to react in a much broader spectrum of emotions than we might be otherwise, you know, I can go out in the world in all sorts of ways, and I'm mature, I'm calm, I'm reasonable, you know, but actually there are moments, you know, with my children where I'm not, you know, and I have been pushed to react, you know, both in terms of real delight, joy, pride, excitement, but also the other end of the spectrum in absolute, you know, rage, you know, one of the things particularly when my son was small was tantrums and willful destruction, you know, he'd have a tantrum and he'd be, you know, throwing things to actually destroy them, and every time I reacted, you know, and I would be absolutely curious with him, and it always got much, much worse. And then I just remember there was one moment during it where he did this, and there was, it was one of those moments where you have awareness, you know, awareness came in, you know, as if from the outside and said, "This is the sort of thing you react to, and you know what's going to happen when you react." And so it was something about that awareness that just gave me that moment of space to be able to stop and think, "Yeah." You know, and just say, "Okay, when you've finished, you know, I'm going to go away now, shut the door, when I've finished, I'm going to make you pick up everything and just go away and shut the door." And there was something in this awareness. Actually I found my main experience was like humiliation. I could then see, you know, this four-year-old or three-year-old being that was willfully doing this. He was making me do it. But he knew that button worked, so he was pressing that button to get a reaction. And that was quite a humiliating thought, you know, but it's that awareness that helped me then sort of shift how I reacted to that, and he gave up quite quickly. He's a very bright child. As soon as I stopped reacting, he gave up doing. So there is this thing where, you know, it's awareness of our own tendencies. I know I do that, so that helps to do it. And also awareness of how, you know, we can sort of see, like, what do we draw on when we're with parents, you know, so the tendency would be without awareness, is either you just repeat what your parents did or you do the complete opposite because you didn't like it. So again, there's awareness that needs to come in in terms of being able to do something, to find our own path with that. I also think there's something extremely galvanizing about this idea that, you know, children do copy us. They do learn, you know, by imitating us. You know, and I found that sort of very galvanizing that reality, you know, in terms of one point having this image of myself puddled over a computer working too hard, feeling stressed, reacting, because of that, and just thinking, "Is this what I want for my children? Do I want them to be 40 years old and doing this to themselves?" Now, I don't, you know, and that is the biggest incentive I can find in myself to want to change that as well. I mean, obviously awareness is such a huge, huge area and very rich. It's an area that I find completely magical, the fact that when you do have awareness, things do start to shift. It's not like you have to actively do something differently, you have to remember all the time. Things do shift once you become aware of them. And I do, yes, I find it quite magical. And just as an aside quickly within that, I think one of the things that, again, that I love about Buddhism is the teachings on kindness and also forgiveness, because if we are going to, you know, embrace parenting as an opportunity to know ourselves, to know ourselves fully, you know, in the heights and in the depths, in the depths of the race, the frustration, the irritation, then we also need kindness and we also need forgiveness. And Buddhism has wonderful teachings on how we can actually recognize, acknowledge, sit with, feel remorseful when we've done things we don't like. But then let them go, forgive ourselves and just let it go, rather than sort of feel guilt or beat ourselves out. It's about, okay, that didn't work that time. Why didn't it have us that feel what affected it have, and then being able to let that go? So it's not about avoiding it, but nor is it about guilt. So that's love and awareness and the third area I want to talk about today is about growth in wisdom, wisdom and insight. I mean, fundamental to all teachings of Buddhism is that everything arises independent on certain conditions, and when those conditions are no longer there, it ceases. Everything is interrelated. Nothing comes into being, you know, completely separately. And because of that, everything is constantly changing, nothing is staying the same. And we can say that, you can sort of say that, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that, that's absolutely true, no problem with that. But yet that's not necessarily how we respond to life, is that sort of sense that everything changes, nothing stays the same. And it's because we respond to life, if it was more solid ground under our feet, more fixed, more dependable, that's why, you know, that's what causes us pain. And I think again, that parenting offers a huge gift of opportunity within this to just see the reality of life as it is, and to see things changing, for example, I talked already about how children grow up, so we're watching them change day by day, but there's a couple of other areas I wanted to pick out in this. And one of them is about the reality of being in touch with death. It's not an easy subject, the one that people necessarily want to reflect on, but I think there's a real truth that actually being a pair of means that you do stay more constantly in touch with the reality of death, because you fear it all the time. It's more constant. It's not like you hear some people, you know, somebody dies as opposed to them. And there's this sense of amazement, because you haven't sort of thought that would happen. I think as a parent, we do hold that reality much closer. And we've all had instances where far too narrow a dividing line between, you know, child holding hands by side of road and, you know, you know, there's so much that we can just, the what if scenarios that can go through our minds, even if there's nothing actually dangerous our minds can conjure up fears out of the depths. And again, you know, I think there's so much of this opportunity of an imperative. It's not that per se that helps us, but it's what we do with it. And again, I think if we're honest for a total path, it's like, how do we use that reality to reflect more on the preciousness and the transience of human life, not just our child's life, but obviously our own life and lives of other people around us. So basically, it's embracing the fact that we are not holding down to the more embracing the fact that we are more in touch with that reality. And another one linked to this also is this thing of letting go of being in control, which was a big area that a lot of people talked to me about in interviews as well, which is that, you know, the reality is that we can't control everything. You can't set it all up nights in these few life, but actually, sometimes before we have children, it almost feels as if we can. You can set things up a certain way in terms of work, friends, how you use your time, find a routine that sort of works for you. You can kind of see this illusion if you like, but for a while, that's okay, you can control it or let's say, I can live with this. But I think as parents, we can't, that illusion becomes so quickly shattered. You can't, you know, you can't sleep through the night just because you want it or you've set it up that way or whatever. And one of the instances I was reflecting on when I was writing this bit was about Ella, my daughter, when she first learned to cycle, she was quite late learning to cycle. And just going out for cycle road with her, and we live in London, and just going on quiet roads, and I'm very close, just behind her, but she's cycling along and I hate it. I can't bear it, you know, because it's like, I don't know what's going to happen. I have to trust her to break. I have to trust the traffic to do what it's supposed to do. There's so many things that it feels like I can't control. I don't want to stop her doing it because I don't want her to be frightened. I don't want to spend my whole life time saying, Oh, don't be careful darling, she'll get all frightened. I don't want her to get that from me. So it's just having to keep cycling with this sense of I can't control this situation. I can't hold it. It's not being predictable. And I think again, it's the fact of being on the foot of the park and just actually smiling at myself and thinking at some level, this is good for me. At some level, it's good for me, you know, to be letting go of that ego that wants to organise and control everything. I'm in this situation that feels I'm having to live that reality that I can't. And linked to that, I think one of the key things that has helped me the whole time with a sort of reflection on parenting and how do you do it in the context of being a parent. I just wanted to close with him. He's, I've had the line of a song in me since I was on a treat in January actually. I don't know if any of you are saying that it was this dreadful song that way, you know, it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. That's what gets you there or something like that. Gets results, that's banana round. Thank you very much. Wow, that's an incredible I'm seeing. Okay, I've had a banana-rama song line in my head since January. You know, and I think that is what's key for me, is it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. You know, so whether we're raising children, whether we're out in the world, whether we're stopping traffic in protest, whether we're being a dentist, whatever we're doing in our lives, in terms of spiritual life, it's not actually what we're doing, it's how we're doing it, how we're sort of embracing those opportunities in terms of embracing a half opening and the love holding our hands open and letting go and letting be as we do that, whether it's embracing the opportunities that come with our children mirroring back to us and that awareness, whether it's embracing the opportunities for wisdom and insight, as we see everything change and we are unable to hold it fixed and control it, and many other ways as well. So it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. Thank you very much. [Applause] (audience applauds)
