Families with a conviction: ‘We chant in Pali to show our gratitude’

“As a child, I heard my father meditating in the next room. He kept making the same sound ‘buddho, buddho’, a reference to the qualities of the buddha. I enjoyed listening to it and fell asleep feeling safe. When my father used to go on a three-week retreat to Thailand, I noticed when he returned that he was calmer. He became less angry and seemed to have a better sense of what I needed. A few times as a child my parents took me to a monastery in Thailand, to their meditation teacher. I was deeply impressed by everything I saw there.

As a teenager I was restless, looking for meaning. “Why do we even exist?” I asked my father. “What’s the point if we die again?” He talked to me and showed me how to meditate. I’ve been doing that for half an hour every day since I was seventeen.

Peaceful life

For me, Buddhism stands for meaning, a support in life that I can always fall back on. Things happen every day that leave you with an unpleasant feeling. Think of anger, disappointment and other negative emotions. The cause can be anything. Big things, but also small things, such as the stress of shopping with the children, unfriendliness in traffic or busyness at work. Meditating ensures that I find peace in myself again and that I can let go of those negative emotions. My husband is also Buddhist. It is a way of life for us; try to live peacefully, to be kind to others, to be attentive and patient.

“With a toddler in the house, being patient is quite a challenge.”

With a toddler at home, that can be quite a challenge. Of course there are also moments when I get out of my shell and yell: ‘Now stop it!’ But still I think Buddhism helps me to develop more calmness and patience. My husband and I also go on separate retreats for one week a year. You don’t speak and you meditate for ten hours a day. It’s unbelievable what happens to you then. You achieve a deep internal silence that allows you to see things in your life from a different perspective. When I return to the ‘normal world’ I realize again how many stimuli we continuously get and I especially feel the need to, for example, take a walk in the woods with my family.

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happiness and health

In addition to meditating, we chant before food in Pali, the ancient language of Buddhism, to show our gratitude and wish those around us happiness and health. Our oldest now recognizes the sounds and sometimes joins in. He also regularly visits the meditation room in the garden shed behind our house. It is full of Buddha statues, which he thinks is beautiful.

I try to teach our boys that you have to be kind and respectful to all living things and that killing a mosquito just like that has consequences. I also want to tell them that they keep a certain softness towards themselves and others. When they are older and in need of it, I can teach them more about Buddhism, but only if it is something they want. That’s how my parents did it.”

This article appears in Kek Mama 13-2021.

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