Who Will Feed the Mice Ajahn Amaro

8/13/2019 Who Will Feed the Mice Ajahn Amaro

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Who Will Feed the

Mice?

Ajahn Amaro

Amaravati Publications


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Dedication

This small book islovingly dedicated

to the memory of


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my mother, PatHorner (1920-2003). May the

afterglow ofgoodness that sheleft in the world

continue to shinefor many

generations.


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Who Will Feed the

Mice?

"The early teachers" is a term for

mother and father. "The earlydeities" is a term for mother and

father. "Those worthy of worship" i

a term for mother and father. Andwhy? Parents are of great help totheir children, they bring them up,

feed them and show them the

world.Anguttara Nikaya 4.63

The following is based on a talk


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given on March 29, 2003, atAbhayagiri Monastery, Redwood

Valley, California.

his is probably the last Saturdaynight talk that I'll be giving for quite

a while. As the resident communitys aware, but visitors probably arenot, I received news from my sistern England that our mother is

extremely ill, and the signs are thatshe won't live for more than a fewmonths. So I plan to be flying to

England in a week.

he Buddha once said that if youwere to carry your parents around

with you for their whole livesyour


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father on one shoulder and yourmother on the othereven to thepoint where they are losing their

faculties and their excrement isrunning down your back, this wouldnot repay your debt of gratitude to

them. But you could repay the debtf your parents were not virtuousand you established them in virtue;f they weren't wise and you

established them in wisdom; if theywere stingy and you establishedthem in generosity; if they had no

faith in the spiritual path and youed them to it. (Anguttara Nikaya2.32)

One day many years ago, I spoke o


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this teaching very matter-of-factlywith my mother, assuming that shewould be as impressed as I was

with how highly the Buddha praisedthe role that parents play in one'sife. And, as she almost invariably

did anytime I tried to spout somespiritual statement, she responded,"What utter balls!" She was verygood at keeping me level, as I can

get somewhat airy-fairy at times.Her point, though, was that it isn't aone-way process. She said, "Why do

you talk about it in terms of beingn debt? What could be morewonderful and satisfying thanbringing children into the world and


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watching them grow? It isn't like aob that you need to be paid for." Iwas really impressed by that.

For obvious reasons, I've beenreflecting a lot recently on my

mother's influence on my life, andthe thought arose that, until I metthe Dhamma when I was twenty-one, she was the mainif not the

onlysource of my being able tosee that which was noble, worthy,and good in the world. I didn't grow

up in a religious householdEngland is a very nonreligiouscountrybut both my parents werevery good people, especially my

mother. She really embodies un-


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selfishness, kindness, andgenerosityand a tremendousharmlessness toward all living

beings; she is physically unable tohurt any creature. When I wonderwhere I got the inspiring influences

or the inclinations toward thatwhich is good and wholesome anduseful, I realize that they camealmost entirely from her.

After my mother's father died, shetold me that she'd received much o

her guidance and direction fromhim. She deeply respected hernheritance of his gentleness, self-effacement, and benevolence

toward all things, and she passed


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on those qualities. That was reallymy main spiritual influence before Iwent to Thailand: anything that

kept me operating somewhere inthe neighbourhood of balancedhuman behaviour was thanks to

her. So I've developed a greatfeeling of gladness and gratitudetoward her that I was fortunateenough to receive this.

Another realization that hasbecome clearer as I've been

meeting people and teaching overthe years is that those who've comefrom broken homes, or who havehad very unstable family situations,

assume that life is unsteady and


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unpredictable; they often have adeep sense of insecurity. Iremember being struck during my

first few years of meeting and livingwith such people, and there are agreat many in this world, that I

never would have conceived of theexperiences they'd had, let alonehad them myself. Even though myparents had plenty of faults and ou

ives were not easy, an astonishingstability and reliability had beenpresent, particularly on my mother'

part. (My father was often keptbusy, first with the farm and thentravelling with his work, andbesides, I think it was Robert Bly


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who defined the Industrial Agefather as "that which sits in theiving room and rustles the

newspaper.")

I've begun to reflect on the sense o

security that arises from thisntuition that life has a reliablebasis. In stable families, parentsmpart this. If one doesn't have it,

then one has to find it later on inother ways. For a child, the parentsare a kind of substitute for the

Dhamma, that basis upon whicheverything rests and around whicheverything revolves.

I didn't always get on with my


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parents. But they never argued infront of us and they were alwaysthere, establishing a continuity of

presence and support. And thinkingabout that, I've seen that theyreflected the qualities of Dhamma

that are so crucial:Dhammaniyamata the order-linesor regularity or patterned-ness ofthe Dhamma; and Dhammatthitata

the stability of the Dhamma.

In a way, that's the job or role that

parents have, the archetype theyembody: being stable, the rock thatthings rest uponand exhibitingthat quality of regularity,

orderliness, or predictability as the


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principle that can be relied on andthat we can be guided by.

Incidentally, I was the only son andthe youngest child, so I can alsosee the downside of having an

ever-present, totally loving mother:you might actually believe that youare the centre of the universe! Isuspect I can also attribute, can

also "blame," a certain amount ofmy narcissistic tendencies, an over-nflated view of myself, on my

always-caring mother.

My parents tried very hard to lookafter us, but we lived on a small

farm and had gone bankrupt when


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was about six. After we sold thefarm my father eked out a living asa small-time reporter for a dog

magazine, and even though mysisters and I were sent to privateschools, we were only able to

attend them thanks to scholarshipsand my mother's parents shellingout whatever fees had to be paid.

When I was about twelve, some ofmy mother's extraordinary qualitiesbecame apparent to me in a very

powerful way. I was a growing ladwho had a cooked breakfast everymorning before going off to schooland would come back in the late

afternoon and then eat cream


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doughnuts for tea and an hour laterscarf down huge amounts of food asupper. I was turning into a burly

youth. And every afternoon mymother waited in her car at the busstop at the end of the lane, a mile

away from our home. One day I gotoff the bus and she wasn't there. Ithought, "That's strange." And IwalkedI thought maybe she was

a bit lateand walked and walkedbut she didn't appear. I got all theway back to the house and she

wasn't there either. When mysisters returned from school, wefound out that our mother hadcollapsed and been hospitalized;


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she was found to be suffering frommalnutrition.

For months she'd been living onlyon tea and toast. None of us hadnoticedbecause we'd all been so

busy gobbling our mealsthat she'dbeen trying to make the food go abit further by not eating. She'dnever made a fuss, never said

anything. And the next we knewshe was in the hospital. It hit meike a ton of bricks that she would

actually starve herself while feedingall of us and not complain. Andwhen we went to visit her in thehospital she apologized as if she

were wasting our time! After all, we


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could have been doing ourhomework or out somewhereenjoying ourselves.

I think that was the first time Ibecame aware of the kind of

qualities she had and tried to bemore alert to the possibilities offollowing her extremely powerfuland noble example.

Just the other day I was remindedof another significant story abouther. One Christmas she had beengiven a beautiful new vacuumcleaner by one of my sisters. Shewas very proud of it, as she had no

had a new vacuum since her


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wedding in the early '50s.

By this time (in the '80s) the family

was not in such dire economicstraits, so my mother went onholiday in January, as she often did

because she liked to get a bit ofsunshine; she would become verydepressed in the damp, grey,endless English winters and would

go off on a cheap package tour andstay for a week on a Mediterraneansland. Soon after she came back

from this holiday she was doing abit of housekeepingthe place wasa little dusty and needed a goingoverso she wheeled out the

vacuum cleaner, picked up the


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hose, and a cascade of hazelnutscame pouring out. "What!?!" shethought. "Hazelnuts? Where on

earth did these come from?" Andthen she rememberedbecauseshe was a great provider for the

ocal faunathe large bird feeder inwhich she put nuts, grains, andseeds for the different birds andother creatures. She looked at the

feeder and saw that it was empty.he whole half-a-year's worth of

hazelnuts that she'd put in it was

completely gone. But there theywere all over her living room floor.Furthermore, a neat little hole hadbeen chewed in the hose of her


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brand new vacuum cleaner. Sherealized that the mice had foundthe bird feeder, removed the nuts

from it, and transported them intothe apparent safety of the long dartunnel of the hose, filling the entire

ength of it. And now her newvacuum cleaner wouldn't workproperly because of the hole in itstube.

I arrived for a visit just after thistrauma had occurred and was given

two jobs, one of which wasrepairing the hose; the other wasevicting the mice. My mother hadhad just a bit too much. "I've got so

few nice things," she said, "and now


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my beautiful new vacuum cleaner isruined. Those mice have got to go!

As my mother's eyes are not verygood, I began hunting the mice.She figured they had to be in the

aundry room, where she kept a pileof old clothes and blankets andtowels and such, because, alongwith looking after animals, she also

had a garden that she was veryfond of and, whenever a frost wasdue, she would go out in the

evenings to cover all the busheswith blankets and towelsandoccasionally with expensive dressesthat my sister had bought her in

London (and which my sister, to he


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great chagrin, sometimes spotteddraped over the azaleas). Mymother was pretty sure the mice

were nesting under this stack ofcloth.

As it happened she was quite rightand, about 16 layers down, I indeedfound a little cluster of blinking andstartled field mice. We scooped

them up and she said, "Take themout to the garden shed." There shehad made a nice little rodent bed

naturally she couldn't bear just todump them on the concrete. Sonow she was feeling relieved andher spleen was fully vented.


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hat night, however, she couldn'tsleep because of thinking aboutthose poor little mice who were

now so cold out in the shed. Shehad a very restless night and, earlythe next day, she began taking food

out to them. My mother then wouldset out small dishes of hazelnutsand oatmeal every day so that theittle creatures would make it

through till early spring, when theycould gather food for themselves.She has a very compassionate

nature, even if she occasionallygoes a bit overboard.

he one creature that my mother

doesn't like very much is the cat


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argely because of how cats huntand kill birds and other smallcreatures. The way cats tease their

prey really breaks her heart. On oneoccasion, however, when all uschildren had grown up and gone

away, and my father was travelinga lot and she was by herself, a veryragged tomcat came around andstarted following her. It looked so

forlorn, so messed up, that shestarted feeding it. And the newsspread pretty fast: "There's a soft

touch down at Farthing GreenFarm." Within eighteen months shehad twenty-three cats. Some werevisitors. But once this tom got a bit


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them in a bag and takes them tothe pond and drowns them. Therewas absolutely no way my mother

could do that.

So having a vast compassionate

nature is a very beautiful thing, butt can cause a certain amount ofdistress, as most of us haveexperienced ourselves.

***

And now my mother is 82 years old

and her body seems to be reachingts limit. How does one hold that?How does one use the practice to

relate to the situationto bring


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balance to the heart and to be ofbenefit to her and to others?

he wonderful Thai forest masterLuang Por Duhn teaches us that thecitta, the heart, is the Buddha.

"Don't look for the Buddhaanywhere else," he says, "theaware quality of the heart is theBuddha." This is an extraordinarily

forthright, clear, completelynondualistic teaching.

he problem that arises when weove or hate someone is that theres a polarity, a duality, that theheart easily can be drawn into:

there's me here and there's the


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other out there. And the morentense the emotion, the greaterthe feeling of duality.

Although we can be very focused ongenerating loving-kindness toward

another being, there's always thematter of also sustaining theiberating insight that recognizesselflessness, anatta, that sees that

all dhammas are not-self and thatthe impression of a self-existent,separate entity is merely an

mpression based upon ignoranceand the activity of the senses. Thisconundrum can be a focus ofpractice.


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In this light it's interesting to reflecton the great masters and therelationships between their spiritua

practices and their families. AjahnChah was recognized as a highlyaccomplished being, and one of his

first disciples when he started atWat Pah Pong was his mother. Shemoved out of her village, wasordained as a nun, and went to live

n the forest with him and hiscluster of monks. When she died,Ajahn Chah made a great ceremony

of her funeralit was a huge affairand he ordained eighty or ninetypeople during the event to makemerit for her. Moreover, the main


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temple, the ordination hall, at WatPah Pong was built on the exactspot where his mother was

cremated.

Sri Ramana Maharshi was also said

to be a supremely detached being;he was famed for being soequanimous that rats sometimesnibbled on his legs when he sat in

samadhi and he allowed doctors totreat him because it made themfeel better. Similarly to the life of

Ajahn Chah, his mother became hisdisciple and went to live at thebottom of Arunachala Mountainwhile he was in a cave at the top.

After she died, he too built his


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ashram on the place where she wascremated.

So here are these two highlyaccomplished, extraordinarilydetached beings who both built

their temples on their mothers'ashes. Of course this may have nosignificance whatsoever, but to met indicates that they're not saying

that "All sankharas arempermanent, my mother is just aformation in nature like any other,

and it's no big deal." There's amysterious twining here of both therealization of ultimate truth and therecognition of the unique quality of

that personal connection on the


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material plane. It's almost as if themother is the primordial symbol ofthe source of reality, as she is the

source of life on the physical plane.After all, in the West we freely usethe term "Mother Nature," and

"nature" is another word for"Dhamma." So perhaps it is naturaland perfectly appropriate to accordthis being with whom we have a

unique relationship a uniqueposition among all the dimen-sionsof life that we experience.

At this time, I have found myselfpracticing, first of all, to establish inthe mind as clear an insight of the

nondual as possibleor you might


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here needs, however, to be abalancing within that, because assoon as those intentions or qualitie

are aroused, one can slip back intothe idea of me over here sending itto you over there, which is a

dualism. But there's a way thatDhamma practice can guide ustoward both seeing things ascompletely empty (the ultimate

truth of things) and respecting theconvention that there's a being herand a being there (the relative trut

of things). On one level thatconvention pertains. But it's only apartial truth, a half-truth, and itexists within the context of


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Dhamma.

One of the ways that the Buddha

spoke about stream entrytherreversible breakthrough torealization of the Dhammawas as

a "change of lineage." The phraserelates to the idea that "I am apersonality; this is me, this is mine,this is what I am." This belief is

called sakkayaditthi, or "personalityview." And as long as "I am thebody," then of course Pat Horner

and Tom Horner are my parents.But if the body is not-self, andperceptions are not-self, feelingsare not-self, the personality is not-

self, what does that say about Mr.


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and Mrs. Horner? What does thatmean? If this body is not-self, thenthe lineage of the body can't be the

whole story.

his is a subtle point of Dhamma

and it's easy to grasp it in thewrong way, as I most painfully didwhen I was a young novice inhailand. I can't believe I really did

this, but I recall that, in a letter Isent to my mother from Thailand in78, I actually wrote, "You know, in

truth, you're not really my mother."Something in me doesn't want toremember having done that, but Ihave a sinking feeling that I did.


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Anyway, we exchanged a number orather tense letters in those days,when I was "full of the light" in

hailand, but this one certainlyrepresented the nadir. In retrospectt was pretty awful and very

embarrassing. When my motherreceived this particular inspireddeclaration, she pointed out thatshe definitely was my mother since

certainly nobody else was. Shewrote, "I care about you becauseyou are my son, not because you

are a Buddhist monkcompris?"

Even at that time I realized thatthis was a totally appropriate

response from her. I wasn't taking


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hold of the principle correctly.However, when that insight ispresent and we don't pick it up

wrongly, we can genuinely see thischange of lineage, without gettingthe relative and the ultimate planes

confused.

here is that relationship with ourparents in this flow of karmic

formations, but the lineage of ourtrue reality is seen to befundamentally rooted in the

Dhamma. That's the source, theorigin, the basis. Rather thanthinking of one's physical parents athe origin, we can have the clear

realization that that's just part of


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the situation. It's the Uncreated,the Unformed, the Unborn, theUnconditioned that's the genuine

source, the genuine origin, thebasis, the ground of reality.

We can fully respect the conventionand we can base our practice onthe insight that all sankharas ariseand cease, that all dhammas are

not-self. There's nothing to getheated about, nothing to getcarried away by; it's just life doing

ts dance. The heart can remainserene, stable, clear, and bright.Which, of course, is what makes itpossible for us to be of benefit to

others, whether they be our


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parents, our children, our teachers,our students, . . . or the mice.


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Pat Horner passed away peacefullyon July 16, 2003. She hadpancreatic cancer but was largely

able to remain active andndependent until she died. Duringher last swim at her local pool, at

the end of June, she was chagrinedthat she could manage only twentyengths in half an hour (rather thanher usual twenty-four), and ten

days before the end she was out inher underwear and a raincoat atmidnight, rescuing a favourite plant

from a snail attack brought on by asudden rain shower. She was alsostill solving tricky crossword cluesup to the time that she slipped into


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unconsciousness, three days beforeshe died.

She passed away at home in herown bed, with myself and her twodaughters, Kate and Jane, as well

as her son-in-law, Tony, whom sheoved as a second son, at her side.

She is buried close to a favourite

ancient copper beech in Sherborne,Dorset, with a small but brightflower garden on her grave.

if there are any heavens, mymother

will (all by herself) have

one. It will not be a pansy heaven


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nor afragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley

but

t will be a heaven of blackred rose-e. e. cummings


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About the Author

Ajahn Amaro was born J. C. J.Horner in Tenterden, Kent, Englandn 1956, the youngest of three

children. At the time, his parentsowned a small farm with severalhorses and dogs, growing applesand a few crops, and raising pigsand chickens. He began hismonastic training in the forestmonasteries of northeast Thailand

with Ajahn Chah in 1978. Hecontinued his training under AjahnSumedho, first at ChithurstMonastery in West Sussex, England


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and later at Amaravati BuddhistCentre outside London. In June1996, Ajahn Amaro moved to

California to establish AbhayagiriBuddhist Monastery, where heserved as co-abbot for fourteen

years. He returned to Amaravati in2010 to take up the abbotshipthere.


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Acknowledgements

Edited by Joseph Curran

ape transcription by Joyce Radelet

Front cover: Figurine sculpted byPat Horner in 1939, when she wasn her late teens; photo by Ajahn

Amaro.

Inside front cover: Pat Horner withStardust, 1966; photographerunknown.

Inside back cover: Pat Horner with

Ajahn Amaro in the garden of her


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cottage in Kent, mid-1990's; theshed to which the mice werebanished is in the far right-hand

corner; photo by Jane Hill.

Back cover: Pat Horner with Ajahn

Amaro at Ocean Beach, SanFrancisco, March 1998; photo byony Hill.


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Further resources

his book and many others fromVenerable Ajahn Chah, AjahnSumedho, and their disciples are

freely offered and available invarious electronic formats as wellas in print. You can find them viaour monasteries and through thewebsites listed below, along withother resources such as audio talksmeditation instruction and retreats.

Everything is free of charge, andeveryone is welcome.

For books and audio:


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www.forestsanghapublications.orgwww.amaravati.org

For a list of Ajahn Chah communitymonasteries worldwide:www.forestsangha.org

For further Theravada Buddhistiterature including Englishtranslations of much of the Pali

Canon:www.accesstoinsight.org
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/http://www.forestsangha.org/http://www.amaravati.org/http://forestsanghapublications.org/


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Copyright

Who Will Feed the Mice?

Amaravati Publications

Amaravati Buddhist MonasteryGreat Gaddesden, Hertfordshire,

HP1 3BZUnited Kingdom,

www.amaravati.org

Amaravati Publications is a part ofThe English Sangha Trust Ltd, UKregistered charity no. 231310

First published by Abhayagiri
http://www.amaravati.org/


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Buddhist Monastery 2004

This electronic edition published

2013

Digital Edition 1.0

ePub ISBN 978-1-870205-77-1

Copyright Amaravati Publication

2103

his book is offered as a gift ofDhamma. It has been made

available through the faith, effortand generosity of people who wishto share the understanding itcontains with whomever is


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nterested. This act of freelyoffering is itself part of what makesthis a Dhamma publication, a book

based on spiritual values. Please donot sell this book in any form, norotherwise use it for commercial

purposes.

If you wish to help publications sucas this one continue to be made

available, you can make acontribution, however small orarge, by either contacting one of

our monasteries (for a listing seewww.forestsangha.org) or byvisiting www.amaravati.orgorwww.forestsanghapublications.org
http://forestsanghapublications.org/http://www.amaravati.org/http://www.forestsangha.org/


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clear to others the licenceterms of this work.

he English Sangha Trust Ltdoperating as Amaravati Publicationsasserts its moral right to be

dentified as the author of thisbook.

he English Sangha Trust Ltd

requests that you attributeownership of the work to AmaravatPublications on copying,distribution, display or performanceof the work.

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Who Will Feed the Mice Ajahn Amaro

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