Times of crisis 41 – acts of remembrance

One time my mother came to stay with me at Amaravati monastery in England. I had returned home from abroad because she was going blind and needed more support from me and my brother. It was early summer and the bluebells were out in the woods opposite the main gate. I took her over one afternoon in a wheelchair and left her to enjoy the scene with the little sight she had left. She remembers it as a precious day, and as her last memory of seeing bluebells. One of the monks at Amaravati called her the other day. She urged him to go to that piece of forest and enjoy the bluebells in her place as an act of remembrance. She asked him to pick one of the bluebells and put it on the monastery shrine as an act of veneration. She could practice sympathetic joy (muditā) for him as he did so, she said. 

In doing so she enjoyed those bluebells again with a heart as pure as snow and renewed her hope in this time of crisis.







​I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk