Still Thinking, December 1998

“Parenting as Practice”
By Jon Kabat-Zinn, from Wherever You Go There You Are

This was how I saw it: You could look at each baby as a little Buddha or Zen master, your own private mindfulness teacher, parachuted into your life, whose presence and actions were guaranteed to push every button and challenge every belief and limit you had, giving you continual opportunities to see where you were attached to something and to let go of it.    … The deep and constantly changing needs of children are all perfect opportunities for parents to be fully present rather than to operate in the automatic pilot mode, to relate consciously rather than mechanically, to sense the being in each child and let his or her vibrancy, vitality, and purity call forth our own.

The list of situations in which your equanimity and clarity will be sorely challenged and you will find yourself “losing it” is endless… These trials are not impediments to either parenting or mindfulness practice.  They are practice…

I meditate early in the morning because there is no other time when things are quiet in the house and nobody is demanding my attention…I find that practicing in the early morning sets the tone for the entire day.  It is both a reminder and an affirmation of what is important, and it sets the stage for mindfulness to spill out naturally into other aspects of the day. But when we had babies in the house, even the morning time was up for grabs.  You couldn’t be too attached to anything because everything you set about to do, even if you arranged it very carefully, was always getting interrupted or completely thwarted.

I felt strongly in those days, and still do, that an awareness of my body and my breath and of our close contact as I held them while we sat helped my babies to sense calmness and explore stillness and feelings of acceptance.  And their inner relaxation, which was much greater and purer than mine because their minds were not filled with adult thoughts and worries, helped me to be more calm and relaxed and present.  When they were toddlers, I would do yoga with them climbing up, riding on, or hanging from my body.

Each day is a new challenge.  Often it feels overwhelming, and sometimes quite lonely.  Parenting and family life can be a perfect field for mindfulness practice, but it’s not for the weak-hearted, the selfish or lazy, or the hopelessly romantic.  Parenting is a mirror that forces you to look at yourself.  If you can learn from what you observe, you just may have a chance to keep growing yourself.