It isn’t possible for me to think of all the possible reasons or descriptions of the illness which keep us away from becoming the Buddha we inherently are. Up to this point I have described a few of the ones I see most frequently manifest.
Returning to the parable we have presented to us in the Lotus Sutra we have a physician who is the parent and his children who have gotten a hold of some poison causing some to refuse to take the cure that is offered to them. I wonder how it is they got into the poison, and I also wonder what the nature of the poison may have been. As I think about this a story comes to mind.
There was a young boy who for most of his early childhood years adored his parents and was very obedient. When the boy was ten his mother became very ill and soon died from cancer. The father was left to care for all of his five children he and his wife had as well as two others they had adopted. Seven children to be cared for by this single grieving father. The young man, let’s give him a name shall we, Erin was the oldest of the seven children, a good boy really.
When Erin’s mother died he really missed her tremendously, but he never had a chance to really be sad, at least not on the outside. Immediately his whole world changed, suddenly he was responsible for more and more around the house, things he never had to do such as laundry, or fixing all of the lunches for his brothers and sisters. There weren’t any sisters in the parable but let’s add some in our story shall we? He didn’t mind doing these things so much but it left him no time to just be sad, and of course he couldn’t cry because, well you know boys cry but men don’t and he needed to be a man now, even though he was only ten. There was a lot going on inside his head.
His father was a well respected doctor, the only doctor in the small town in which they lived. In spite of the death of his wife the father also had no time to grieve and so really couldn’t help Erin in his process of loss. Every day and many times at night the father was called away from the home to attend to various illness the town folk had. Sometimes he even had to cure the illness of sick farm animals. As much as the father wished he could be at home for his children, the needs of the town seemed to always compete with his desire to be there for his children. He was very thankful that Erin was able to do so much.
The years passed by, five years flew by and things on the surface seemed good. The children were growing and Erin who is now 15 was managing around the house taking care of his younger bothers and sisters. His school work always showed he performed well, he always seemed to get either A’s or B’s. Gradually though as he met knew friends and his intellectual expansion grew he began to chafe at his responsibilities and how unfair it all was that he had to do so much around the house, his father was never at home, and he resented the fact that his mother died and left him. These are not so uncommon feelings but for Erin and his father they were confusing and their ability to communicate with each other declined to the point of either arguing or not talking to each other.
Slowly Erin began to ignore his chores around the house, and his school grades began to decline. His father noticed this and as one would expect he became frustrated with his son. Even though he was a skillful physician and loved by the community at home he found it increasingly difficult to be a father to his children. He did the best he could, he did what he thought a father should.
Erin began staying out and away from the house more and more and he stayed out later at night. He had met some new friends and he enjoyed his time with them. They provided a community, a family if you will, that would listen to him and would also share with him. They would hang out late, their parents didn’t seem to mind them being away from home, but Erin’s dad was worried. The more this happened the more Erin’s father would get angry and the two of them would yell and fight, with Erin storming off to his room slamming the door and playing his music loud. The father would try to calm things down for the other children, but they knew. Late at night the father would sit in the darkened living room longing for some reconciliation between himself and his son. Nothing he did seemed to make it any better, and he was afraid.
Erin couldn’t understand his father wanting to control his life. Since his mother had died he had been in charge and it seemed his dad never bothered to be involved, at least that was his perception. He didn’t hate his father yet he did resent his interference in his life when before he didn’t seem to care.
