Respecting Others

Respecting Others

My mother died. She didn't have much faith in anything, but was nominally Buddhist. 

When a Buddhist dies they go into the first bardo. A trance like state where they do not know death has occurred.

As my mother was brain dead a while before she passed and I knew I could not reach her physically, I went a bought a small statue of Buddha. I cleared my altar and placed a new cloth on it.I lit two new white pillar candles and placed a photograph of my mother and the image of Buddha in alignment.

I anointed the forehead of the statue with lotus and sandalwood oil and my forehead too.

I sat and meditated using three different mantra. for about two hours the first night.

The altar stayed through out the day but I moved the Buddha onto the mantel piece so our feet would never be higher than his image.

The second evening I moved the Buddha to face the picture of my mother while I meditated and chanted for the same again. I burned sandalwood the whole time too.

The third the same as the first again.

It is oddly comforting to embrace things from my childhood, though I never used mantra then, though it would have made even more sense to me.

I do not know if she has reached the second or third bardo.  I don't know if her childhood Methodist kicked in. I just know that she would have preferred this to what ever monstrous funeral arrangements my nominally Catholic sister will make. I am certain I will have no say (as usual) if I even get told when it is.

I have had to make peace with this. My own health has suffered greatly due to the natural rage at her appalling lies and behaviour. I can not change her. I am not sure the child I once knew is even in there any more. I can just show my mother's spirit the respect she deserves, not as my mother but a human being.

Bright Blessings xx