who_will_feed_the_mice_-_ajahn_amaro.pdf

8/11/2019 Who_Will_Feed_the_Mice_-_Ajahn_Amaro.pdf

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Who Will Feed the Mice?

by Ajahn Amaro


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To the memory of

Pat Horner 19202003


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Who Will

Feed the Mice?


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Who Will

Feed the Mice?

by Ajahn Amaro

Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery


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This small book is lovingly dedicated to

the memory of my mother, Pat Horner.May the afterglow of goodness that

she left in the world continue to shine for many generations.


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The early teachers is a term for mother

and father. The early deities is a term for mother and father. Those worthy of worship is a term for mother and father.And why? Parents are of great help to their children, they bring them up, feed themand show them the world.

Anguttara Nikaya 4.63


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The following is based on a talk given on

March 29, 2003, at Abhayagiri Monastery,Redwood Valley, California.

This is probably the last Saturday night talk that Ill be giving forquite a while. As the resident com-

munity is aware, but visitors probably arenot, I received news from my sister in En-

gland that our mother is extremely ill, andthe signs are that she wont live for morethan a few months. So I plan to be flyingto England in a week.


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The Buddha once said that if you wereto carry your parents around with you fortheir whole livesyour father on oneshoulder and your mother on the othereven to the point where they are losingtheir faculties and their excrement is run-

ning down your back, this would not re-pay your debt of gratitude to them. But you could repay the debt if your parentswere not virtuous and you establishedthem in virtue; if they werent wise and you established them in wisdom; if they were stingy and you established them ingenerosity; if they had no faith in the spiri-tual path and you led them to it.

(Anguttara Nikaya 2.32)One day many years ago, I spoke of

this teaching very matter-of-factly with my mother, assuming that she would be as


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one, she was the mainif not the onlysource of my being able to see that whichwas noble, worthy, and good in the world.I didnt grow up in a religious householdEngland is a very nonreligious countrybut both my parents were very good

people, especially my mother. She really embodies unselfishness, kindness, and gen-erosityand a tremendous harmlessnesstoward all living beings; she is physically unable to hurt any creature. When I won-der where I got the inspiring influences orthe inclinations toward that which is goodand wholesome and useful, I realize thatthey came almost entirely from her.

After my mothers father died, she toldme that shed received much of her guid-ance and direction from him. She deeply respected her inheritance of his gentleness,


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self-effacement, and benevolence towardall things, and she passed on those quali-ties. That was really my main spiritual in-fluence before I went to Thailand: any-thing that kept me operating somewherein the neighborhood of balanced human

behavior was thanks to her. So Ive devel-oped a great feeling of gladness and grati-tude toward her that I was fortunateenough to receive this.

Another realization that has becomeclearer as Ive been meeting people andteaching over the years is that thosewhove come from broken homes, or whohave had very unstable family situations,

assume that life is unsteady and unpre-dictable; they often have a deep sense of insecurity. I remember being struck dur-ing my first few years of meeting and liv-


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ing with such people, and there are a greatmany in this world, that I never wouldhave conceived of the experiences theydhad, let alone had them myself. Eventhough my parents had plenty of faultsand our lives were not easy, an astonish-

ing stability and reliability had beenpresent, particularly on my mothers part.(My father was often kept busy, first withthe farm and then travelling with hiswork, and besides, I think it was RobertBly who defined the Industrial Age fatheras that which sits in the living room andrustles the newspaper.)

Ive begun to reflect on the sense of

security that arises from this intuition thatlife has a reliable basis. In stable families,parents impart this. If one doesnt have it,then one has to find it later on in other


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ways. For a child, the parents are a kind of substitute for the Dhamma, that basisupon which everything rests and aroundwhich everything revolves.

I didnt always get on with my parents.But they never argued in front of us and

they were always there, establishing a con-tinuity of presence and support. Andthinking about that, Ive seen that they reflected the qualities of Dhamma that areso crucial: Dhammaniyamata the order-liness or regularity or patterned-ness of theDhamma; and Dhammatthitata the sta-bility of the Dhamma.

In a way, thats the job or role that par-

ents have, the archetype they embody: be-ing stable, the rock that things rest uponand exhibiting that quality of regularity,orderliness, or predictability as the prin-


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ciple that can be relied on and that we canbe guided by.

Incidentally, I was the only son and the youngest child, so I can also see the down-side of having an ever-present, totally lov-ing mother: you might actually believe that

you are the center of the universe! I sus-pect I can also attribute, can also blame,a certain amount of my narcissistic ten-dencies, an over-inflated view of myself,on my always-caring mother.

My parents tried very hard to look af-ter us, but we lived on a small farm andhad gone bankrupt when I was about six.After we sold the farm my father eked out

a living as a small-time reporter for a dogmagazine, and even though my sisters andI were sent to private schools, we were only able to attend them thanks to scholarships


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and my mothers parents shelling outwhatever fees had to be paid.

When I was about twelve, some of my mothers extraordinary qualities becameapparent to me in a very powerful way. Iwas a growing lad who had a cooked

breakfast every morning before going off to school and would come back in the lateafternoon and then eat cream doughnutsfor tea and an hour later scarf down hugeamounts of food at supper. I was turninginto a burly youth. And every afternoonmy mother waited in her car at the busstop at the end of the lane, a mile away from our home. One day I got off the bus

and she wasnt there. I thought, Thatsstrange. And I walkedI thought maybeshe was a bit lateand walked and walkedbut she didnt appear. I got all the way back


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to the house and she wasnt there either.When my sisters returned from school, wefound out that our mother had collapsedand been hospitalized; she was found tobe suffering from malnutrition.

For months shed been living only on

tea and toast. None of us had noticedbecause wed all been so busy gobbling ourmealsthat shed been trying to make thefood go a bit further by not eating. Shednever made a fuss, never said anything. Andthe next we knew she was in the hospital. Ithit me like a ton of bricks that she wouldactually starve herself while feeding all of us and not complain. And when we went

to visit her in the hospital she apologizedas if she were wasting our time! After all,we could have been doing our homework or out somewhere enjoying ourselves.


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I think that was the first time I becameaware of the kind of qualities she had andtried to be more alert to the possibilitiesof following her extremely powerful andnoble example.

Just the other day I was reminded of

another significant story about her. OneChristmas she had been given a beautifulnew vacuum cleaner by one of my sisters.She was very proud of it, as she had nothad a new vacuum since her wedding inthe early 50s.

By this time (in the 80s) the family was not in such dire economic straits, somy mother went on holiday in January, as

she often did, because she liked to get a bitof sunshine; she would become very de-pressed in the damp, gray, endless Englishwinters and would go off on a cheap pack-


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age tour and stay for a week on a Mediter-ranean island. Soon after she came back from this holiday she was doing a bit of housekeepingthe place was a little dusty and needed a going overso she wheeledout the vacuum cleaner, picked up the

hose, and a cascade of hazelnuts camepouring out. What!?! she thought. Ha-zelnuts? Where on earth did these comefrom? And then she rememberedbe-cause she was a great provider for the lo-cal faunathe large bird feeder in whichshe put nuts, grains, and seeds for the dif-ferent birds and other creatures. Shelooked at the feeder and saw that it was

empty. The whole half-a-years worth of hazelnuts that shed put in it was com-pletely gone. But there they were all overher living room floor. Furthermore, a neat


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little hole had been chewed in the hose of her brand new vacuum cleaner. She real-ized that the mice had found the birdfeeder, removed the nuts from it, andtransported them into the apparent safety of the long dark tunnel of the hose, filling

the entire length of it. And now her new vacuum cleaner wouldnt work properly because of the hole in its tube.

I arrived for a visit just after thistrauma had occurred and was given two jobs, one of which was repairing the hose;the other was evicting the mice. My mother had had just a bit too much. Ivegot so few nice things, she said, and now

my beautiful new vacuum cleaner is ru-ined. Those mice have got to go!

As my mothers eyes are not very good,I began hunting the mice. She figured they


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had to be in the laundry room, where shekept a pile of old clothes and blankets andtowels and such, because, along with look-ing after animals, she also had a gardenthat she was very fond of and, whenever afrost was due, she would go out in the eve-

nings to cover all the bushes with blanketsand towelsand occasionally with expen-sive dresses that my sister had bought herin London (and which my sister, to hergreat chagrin, sometimes spotted drapedover the azaleas). My mother was pretty sure the mice were nesting under this stack of cloth.

As it happened she was quite right

and, about 16 layers down, I indeed founda little cluster of blinking and startledfield mice. We scooped them up and shesaid, Take them out to the garden shed.


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There she had made a nice little rodentbednaturally she couldnt bear just todump them on the concrete. So now shewas feeling relieved and her spleen wasfully vented.

That night, however, she couldnt sleep

because of thinking about those poor littlemice who were now so cold out in the shed.She had a very restless night and, early thenext day, she began taking food out tothem. My mother then would set out smalldishes of hazelnuts and oatmeal every day so that the little creatures would make itthrough till early spring, when they couldgather food for themselves. She has a very

compassionate nature, even if she occa-sionally goes a bit overboard.

The one creature that my motherdoesnt like very much is the catlargely


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because of how cats hunt and kill birds andother small creatures. The way cats teasetheir prey really breaks her heart. On oneoccasion, however, when all us childrenhad grown up and gone away, and my fa-ther was traveling a lot and she was by her-

self, a very ragged tomcat came aroundand started following her. It looked so for-lorn, so messed up, that she started feed-ing it. And the news spread pretty fast:Theres a soft touch down at FarthingGreen Farm. Within eighteen months shehad twenty-three cats. Some were visitors.But once this tom got a bit of bulk back on and was in full breeding form, he pro-

duced offspring with any of the female catsthat came around. So here was this bigtommy mother named him FatherFlynn, although Im not quite sure where


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the name came fromand his partnersand a vast array of offspring.

Finally my mother realized she had todo something or the cats would go on re-producing ad infinitum. So she gatheredthem all up and took them to the animal

refuge, where she knew they would befound good homes. On a farm if a cat haskittens, the farmer usually just puts themin a bag and takes them to the pond anddrowns them. There was absolutely no way my mother could do that.

So having a vast compassionate natureis a very beautiful thing, but it can cause acertain amount of distress, as most of us

have experienced ourselves.


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And now my mother is 82 years old andher body seems to be reaching its

limit. How does one hold that? How doesone use the practice to relate to the situa-tionto bring balance to the heart and tobe of benefit to her and to others?

The wonderful Thai forest masterLuang Por Duhn teaches us that the citta,the heart, is the Buddha. Dont look forthe Buddha anywhere else, he says, theaware quality of the heart is the Buddha.This is an extraordinarily forthright, clear,completely nondualistic teaching.

The problem that arises when we loveor hate someone is that there is a polarity,

a duality, that the heart easily can be drawninto: theres me here and theres the otherout there. And the more intense the emo-tion, the greater the feeling of duality.


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Although we can be very focused ongenerating loving-kindness toward an-other being, theres always the matter of also sustaining the liberating insight thatrecognizes selflessness, anatta, that seesthat all dhammas are not-self and that

the impression of a self-existent, separateentity is merely an impression basedupon ignorance and the activity of thesenses. This conundrum can be a focusof practice.

In this light its interesting to reflecton the great masters and the relationshipsbetween their spiritual practices and theirfamilies. Ajahn Chah was recognized as a

highly accomplished being, and one of hisfirst disciples when he started at Wat PahPong was his mother. She moved out of her village, was ordained as a nun, and


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went to live in the forest with him and hiscluster of monks. When she died, AjahnChah made a great ceremony of her fu-neralit was a huge affairand he or-dained eighty or ninety people during theevent to make merit for her. Moreover, the

main temple, the ordination hall, at WatPah Pong was built on the exact spot wherehis mother was cremated.

Sri Ramana Maharshi was also said tobe a supremely detached being; he wasfamed for being so equanimous that ratssometimes nibbled on his legs when he satin samadhi and he allowed doctors to treathim because it made them feel better. Simi-

larly to the life of Ajahn Chah, his motherbecame his disciple and went to live at thebottom of Arunachala Mountain while hewas in a cave at the top. After she died, he


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too built his ashram on the place whereshe was cremated.

So here are these two highly accom-plished, extraordinarily detached beingswho both built their temples on theirmothers ashes. Of course this may have

no significance whatsoever, but to me itindicates that theyre not saying that Allsankharas are impermanent, my motheris just a formation in nature like any other,and its no big deal. Theres a mysterioustwining here of both the realization of ul-timate truth and the recognition of theunique quality of that personal connec-tion on the material plane. Its almost as if

the mother is the primordial symbol of thesource of reality, as she is the source of lifeon the physical plane. After all, in the Westwe freely use the term Mother Nature,


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and nature is another word forDhamma. So perhaps it is natural andperfectly appropriate to accord this beingwith whom we have a unique relationshipa unique position among all the dimen-sions of life that we experience.

At this time, I have found myself prac-ticing, first of all, to establish in the mindas clear an insight of the nondual as pos-sibleor you might say to establish theheart in pure knowingand then Ivebeen bringing up a phrase or question, aninvestigational statement, such as, Whereis my mother? or What is my mother?The purpose of this process is to let go of

any habitual identification, to break downthat notion of myself here and the otherover there, and to open the heart to thepresent moment.


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Then, within that basic space of aware-ness, I consciously bring forth the inten-tions and emotions of metta, karuna, mu-dita, and upekkha loving-kindness, com-passion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

There needs, however, to be a balanc-

ing within that, because as soon as thoseintentions or qualities are aroused, one canslip back into the idea of me over heresending it to you over there, which is adualism. But theres a way that Dhammapractice can guide us toward both seeingthings as completely empty (the ultimatetruth of things) and respecting the con-vention that theres a being here and a be-

ing there (the relative truth of things). Onone level that convention pertains. But itsonly a partial truth, a half-truth, and itexists within the context of Dhamma.


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One of the ways that the Buddha spokeabout stream entrythe irreversiblebreakthrough to realization of theDhammawas as a change of lineage.The phrase relates to the idea that I am apersonality; this is me, this is mine, this is

what I am. This belief is calledsakkayaditthi, or personality view. And aslong as I am the body, then of course PatHorner and Tom Horner are my parents.But if the body is not-self, and perceptionsare not-self, feelings are not-self, the per-sonality is not-self, what does that say about Mr. and Mrs. Horner? What doesthat mean? If this body is not-self, then the

lineage of the body cant be the whole story.This is a subtle point of Dhamma and

its easy to grasp it in the wrong way, as Imost painfully did when I was a young


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novice in Thailand. I cant believe I really did this, but I recall that, in a letter I sentto my mother from Thailand in 78, I ac-tually wrote, You know, in truth, yourenot really my mother. Something in medoesnt want to remember having done

that, but I have a sinking feeling that I did.Anyway, we exchanged a number of

rather tense letters in those days, when Iwas full of the light in Thailand, but thisone certainly represented the nadir. In ret-rospect it was pretty awful and very em-barrassing. When my mother received thisparticular inspired declaration, shepointed out that she definitely was my

mother since certainly nobody else was.She wrote, I care about you because youare my son, not because you are a Bud-dhist monk compris?


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Even at that time I realized that thiswas a totally appropriate response fromher. I wasnt taking hold of the principlecorrectly. However, when that insight ispresent and we dont pick it up wrongly,we can genuinely see this change of lin-

eage, without getting the relative and theultimate planes confused.

There is that relationship with ourparents in this flow of karmic formations,but the lineage of our true reality is seento be fundamentally rooted in theDhamma. Thats the source, the origin, thebasis. Rather than thinking of ones physi-cal parents as the origin, we can have the

clear realization that thats just part of thesituation. Its the Uncreated, the Un-formed, the Unborn, the Unconditioned


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thats the genuine source, the genuine ori-gin, the basis, the ground of reality.

We can fully respect the conventionand we can base our practice on the in-sight that all sankharas arise and cease, thatall dhammas are not-self. Theres nothing

to get heated about, nothing to get carriedaway by; its just life doing its dance. Theheart can remain serene, stable, clear, andbright. Which, of course, is what makes itpossible for us to be of benefit to others,whether they be our parents, our children,our teachers, our students, . . . or the mice.


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P at Horner passed away peacefully on

July 16, 2003. She had pancreatic can-cer but was largely able to remain active and independent until she died. During her last swim at her local pool, at the end of June,she was chagrined that she could manage

only twenty lengths in half an hour (rather than her usual twenty-four), and ten days before the end she was out in her underwear and a raincoat at midnight, rescuing a favourite plant from a snail attack brought on by a sudden rain shower. She was also still solving tricky crossword clues up to the time that she slipped into unconsciousness,three days before she died.

She passed away at home in her own bed, with myself and her two daughters, Kate and Jane, as well as her son-in-law, Tony,whom she loved as a second son, at her side.


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She is buried close to a favorite ancient cop- per beech in Sherborne, Dorset, with a small but bright flower garden on her grave.

if there are any heavens, my mother

will (all by herself) haveone. It will not be a pansy heaven nor afragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley butit will be a heaven of blackred roses

e. e. cummings


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About the Author

Ajahn Amaro was born J. C. J. Horner in Tenterden, Kent, England, in 1956, the youngest of three children. At the time his parents owned a small farm with several

horses and dogs, growing apples and a few crops, and raising pigs and chickens. He be-gan his monastic training in the forest mon-asteries of northeast Thailand with Ajahn Chah in 1978. He continued his training under Ajahn Sumedho, first at Chithurst Monastery in West Sussex, England, and later at Amaravati Buddhist Centre outside of London, where he lived for ten years. In June

of 1996, Ajahn Amaro moved to California to establish Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery,where he currently serves as co-abbot.


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A reflection on a mothers love and inspiration.

who_will_feed_the_mice_-_ajahn_amaro.pdf

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