We live in a post-religious society, where in general people have little or no interest in spiritual matters.  Most of our families, likewise, have few spiritual inclinations, at most going to church on Christmas or Easter.  So when we start to develop interests in spiritual matters, it naturally raises a few suspicions or concerns.  Doubly so if we show interest in something non-traditional, like Buddhism.  When our family members see us becoming very interested, then their radar goes up and their immediate assumption is we have joined a sect.  This dynamic in particular comes out from our parents (who naturally assume we have no idea what we are doing) and from our in-laws (who fear for their loved one that is now linked with us).  Once they start becoming concerned, there is really no limit to how far they are sometimes willing to go to create obstacles for us in our practice.  They may resort to all sorts of blackmail, ultimatums, threats, insults and general mayhem.  I personally have experienced all of the above.

So the question is how should we deal with this?  I suggest the following as a multi-layered approach (if the first one fails, try the second; if the second fails, try the third, etc.):

1. Appreciate how they are coming from a position of loving.  At the end of the day, their main concern is for our happiness.  They are not trying to create problems for us, they think they are protecting us.  When we assume they are being hostile and we respond defensively, then it feeds their narrative that we have been brainwashed, and then they redouble their determination to deter us from the wrong path we have taken.  If instead, we respond with understanding and appreciation for their concern, then we disarm the hostility and conflictual nature of the exchange and there is a chance we can have a healthy, rational discussion about the matter.
2. Show them you yourself have already had all of the doubts and questions they raise, and then even show you have gone farther.  Explain to them how you too were skeptical at first, and how you too had many doubts and questions.  Show them that you are going in with your eyes open with a healthy skepticism.  Talk about all of the questions you yourself have asked and explain to them the satisfactory answers you have received as to why this is the real deal and not some sect.  When they see that you have already taken their objections into account and come up with reasonable answers to them, then they know that you are not being blinded.  It is important to even go further than they did in your doubts and concerns that you have addressed.  Show them that you have done even more due diligence than even they call for.  When they know that you have checked things out, their concern will be less.
3. Completely and totally abandon trying to get them to appreciate Buddha’s teachings themselves.  Sometimes we fall into the mistake of thinking they need to appreciate the power of Buddha’s teachings for themselves, and then their resistance will go away.  But if we start to try to do that, they will feel us trying to ‘convert’ them and it will only feed their view that we have gone off the deep end.  Rather, you should take the approach of saying, “to each their own, you have your food, I have mine.”  You need to show total respect for their views, even if their views are completely hostile to you having your views (“it is your right to think like that”).  When you show respect for the diversity of beliefs people can adopt, and they show intolerance, then it becomes apparent to all who is being reasonable and who is not.
4. Figure out what they want from you, and show with your actions (not your words) how the more you practice Dharma, the more they get what  they want from you.  For example, imagine your mother-in-law is creating trouble for you.  Why?  Because she is concerned about her daughter.  What does she want from you?  She wants you to be a good husband, who treats her daugher with respect and makes her daughter happy.  So use your practice to become a better and more loving husband.  While it may take time, you will become a better husband, your spouse will become happier, and your mother-in-law will come to see that actually your practice has made you better for her daughter, not worse, so she will come to accept it and even appreciate it.  But you should never say what you are doing because that ruins the whole thing.  Just let your actions speak for themselves.
5. Patiently accept the obstacles that come your way.  Why are others creating obstacles to your practice?  Because you have created obstacles to others’ practice in the past and now it is coming back to haunt you.  You created the karma for this and you have not purified it, so now you must patiently accept it.  If you accept it as purification, then you will gradually purify this negative karma until eventually it exhausts itself.  If you start to retaliate and create obstacles for or fight with your family members, then the cycle starts all over again.  It may take years, even decades, even lifetimes before people come to accept, but if you sincerely accept the obstacles as purification, eventually the obstacles will pacify.  Two useful things you can do to help speed the process:  first, generate a specific bodhichitta motivation towards whoever is creating the biggest obstacles for you (I need to become a Buddha so I can help this person in the future).  If done sincerely in a qualified way free from any attachment, this will very quickly purify the negative karma you have with that person.  Second, make sincere requests to the Dharma Protector that he arrange whatever is best with respect to these obstacles – if they are harmful, may he pacify them; but if they are helpful, may he make them worse!  Then, whatever happens, accept that this is what has been emanated by the Dharma Protector as being what is best for your practice.
6. If all else fails, don’t give into the blackmail, but don’t rub their faces in it either.  If your family members blackmail you saying ‘if you don’t quit, then I will … (insert emotional penalty)’, and then you give into that blackmail and do what they say, then you will remain forever trapped in their manipulations, you will lose your practice, and you will allow them to create the karma of successfully creating obstacles to the spiritual practice of another person.  This will then be bad for them in the future when they experience similar obstructions.  Yes, we are supposed to cherish others and fulfill their wishes, except when their wishes are wrong.  Assuming you have done your due diligence and you are on a qualified spiritual path, then their wish for you to abandon it is wrong.  To indulge them in that wish does not help them, it does not help you, and it does not help all the countless beings who you would otherwise help if you were to become a Buddha.  So you need to let them throw whatever emotional penalties they want at you, but you still keep going – you never abandon your practice.  Eventually, they will realize that no matter what they do, you will not give in and they will give up trying.  But you should also avoid the extreme of rubbing their face in it – “ha, ha, I am going to practice and you can’t stop me, na ni na ni na ni”.  Dharma practice is, above all, an internal thing.  We don’t need ostentatious external displays of our spiritual-ness!  Be skilfull so that they are not forced to confront it, but just quietly do your thing.  There are no rules with this, just be skilfull.

Your turn:  Describe some obstacles you have had with those close to you and how have you overcome them?

If we make a mess, it is only normal that we assume responsibility for cleaning it up. When we try avoid cleaning up our own mess, we don’t actually avoid it, we are unpeaceful inside so do not enjoy our having avoided cleaning it up, we have violated our lojong commitments of not passing our burdens onto others, we strengthen our laziness, we generate resentment in others who then do wind up cleaning up our mess, we create a self-inflicted moral hazard encouraging our own reckless behavior because we know how to manipulate others into cleaing up our mess, we never learn our lesson because we think we ‘get away with’ having done wrong, we create a bad habit of most likely trying to do the same thing again in the future, we set a bad example for all those around us of somebody who does not assume responsibility for the consequences of their actions, and we assent to our aversion to the work of cleaning up the mess thus making is stronger and harder next time.

Everything I experience is the karmic result of me having done similarly to others in the past. I must assume responsibility for that and create new dynamics and patterns in my relationships. Everything deluded and negative that others do to me, I have done to others in the past, and now, through the force of my negative karma, others are compelled to themselves engage in negativity. So I have harmed them in the past and am harming them again since they are now compelled into negativity. Everything that happens in my samsara is ultimately my responsibility. I have created this huge mess, therefore, it is up to me to clean it up. I joyfully relate to the problem solving in my life as my opportunity to clean up the mess I have created.

Your turn:  What is a particular karmic mess you have created, and what are you going to do to clean it up?

I have a lot of karma with older, single women.  Many such women find their way to Dharma centers in search of answers and a framework for rebuilding new lives.  Many of these women grew up in an age when their job was to look after the men in their lives.  Their husbands grew rich, successful, they grew older and less appealing, and the marriage ended (usually with the husband going off with some younger woman).  Now they have few skills, very low employment prospects, no money, feel old and unattractive, face a society that is uninterested in them.  Their sense of worth and value before was grounded in how they look, but since that is now gone they lack in self-confidence.  They have given everything they had to raising their kids, but their kids are now largely on their own and don’t need them anymore and in fact want the mother out of their life.  WHen their kids are failures, they feel like it is a reflection on them and that they have failed as a mother.  Sometimes, they will interfere with the ability of their children from fully becoming adults on their own because they want to still feel useful and so they clean up all of the messes their adult children make, creating dependencies, irresponsibility in the kid, etc.  THey try be strong, but feel alone and with nothing meaningful to do. 

We once rented ‘It’s Complicated’ which is a movie about more or less this situation.  It touched on pretty much all of these themes.  The movie basically was the fulfillment of every such woman’s hopes and aspirations.  She was divorced for 10 years after her husband left her for a Barbie.  She had rebuilt her life, opened up a bakery business, her kids were now all off to college, her ex-husband is having a tough time with his new wife (former mistress), he comes wanting her back and falls back in love with her realizing that he was wrong and a jerk before.  He charms her, wants her, she tries to keep her distance but then gives it a go.  She feels new energy and vitality, her family becomes reconstituted just like old times, everyone is happy, some of his old bad habits resurface, she realizes that she has moved on and no longer needs him, she has outgrown him.  She then rejects him, but now they become good friends.  She then establishes something adult with a really nice guy.  She is also of course a really great cook, her children have all turned out great.  They wanted their parents to get back together again, she wanted to make them happy in this regard, but ultimately this wasn’t the right thing to do because she had moved on, and finally they understood.  In the meantime, she was finally having built the addition to her house that she has always wanted (her new kitchen and view of the sea from her bedroom).  She was of course a great cook, her children adored her, her ex-husband finally realized what a great mother she was, and she had spent a year in Paris in her 20s learning to cook really well.  She had a close circle of friends who she could confide in talk to.

Another recurring theme in so-called “chick flicks” these days is the woman is with some really nice, but ultimately incompetent guy.  She is bored with him, but he is a good guy.  She wants him to find his balls and his backbone, be able to take charge more so that she does not have to carry all of the load (which she is doing very well, because he has no idea how to do things and she doesn’t trust him to do things right).  Some crisis then happens, forcing her man to rise to the occasion, he discovers his strength, they are able to let go and have a good time, their relationship becomes revitalized.  And now she has a nice, strong and capable man who respects her and appreciates her. 

The other thing I have noticed recently is the life of older and retired people generally revolves around good food – buying it, preparing it and enjoying eating it.  This is true for my Dad and Helen (though they also have the toys my Dad plays with), Irv and Eva (though they also have their grandkids who they support outstandingly), and that movie A Year in Provence.

While I could make lots of Dharma commentary about all of the above, I think it is valuable in and of itself to better understand different groups of people, their stuggles and their aspirations.  On this basis, you can better help people.  Of course all of this is not meant as a gross generalization, rather just some recurring themes I have observed, etc.

One of the hardest things about being a parent of small children is sleepless nights.  This is actually an issue of spiritual concern. 

1. If we do not sleep properly then we will not be able to do our daily practice.  If we don’t do our daily practice, then everything will fall apart.
2. If you are exhausted, then during the day you will have less capacity to respond positively to the challenges that parenthood bring.  You will then get upset more often, spoil your relationship with your child, create all sorts of negative karma and generally be miserable day and night.  If you can get the sleeping down, you will be able to deal with anything.  If you can’t get proper sleep, you won’t be able to deal constructively with anything. 
3. Attachment to sleep is one of our biggest delusions, and this gives us a chance to work on overcoming it.
4. We will suffer from sleepless nights to the extent that we are thinking about ourselves.  This is an excellent opportunity to practice cherishing others
5. Learning the proper wisdom/compassion balance when it comes to teaching our children to sleep through the night helps us in many other areas of parenting.  Unfortunately, this is something we often mess up. 

The bottom line is this:  we are not helping our children by not helping them learn to fall alseep on their own and to sleep through the night.  But at the same time, we need to acknowledge their capacity and gradually work to expand it.  Our compassion without wisdom will not be able to tolerate our kids crying, and so we will rush in to console them.  But if we do so, we deprive them of the opportunity of learning how to calm themselves down and fall alseep on their own.  We can in fact create a dependency on us for them to fall alseep, which will make them less confident in themselves and also make them more tired because they too are not having very restful nights.  Eventually, every parent must let their child cry to fall asleep, the only question is how many sleepless nights will they inflict upon themselves and their children before they do so.  Therefore we should unapologetically adopt as a goal to teach our children how to sleep from the very beginning of their life.

How do we do this?

1. Rhythm is everything.  We should establish a night time sequence of events that we stick to every night that starts a couple of hours before they go to bed.  Then, when you start this sequence, the child already knows what comes next and where this particular sequence leads.  For example, our ritual for our older kids literally starts as soon as we get home.  We walk in the door, the first thing we do is take baths.  Then dinner, then a video/reading, then brush our teeth, then bed.  We do the same thing every day, the kids learn and know the rhythm, and it works.  For the little ones, we do bath, bottle, bed.   
2. We should put our children down to bed before they have fallen alseep.  We first make sure all of their needs are met (clean diaper, well fed, blankets in order, pacifier, right temperature, etc.), then we put them down into their bed while they are still awake (but calm). 
3. Once we put them down, there is no picking them back up unless things are really really extreme.  We can go back and give them their pacifier when they lose it, we can pat them lovingly, we can say things like ‘you can do it’, but we don’t pick them back up.  Then gradually, over time as their capacity increases, you go back less often, you stay less time, you start to not pat them but just console them with your words, etc.  Then, you start to not go back at all but just say something reassuring like ‘you can do it’ from a distance.
4. We need to learn to distinguish between fussing and really needing something.  Often what happens is the baby will be crying or wimpering or making frustrated sounds, but they are working through them.  If you let it ride, they then have various points where they calm down (sometimes just through having exhausted themselves with their cries).  They have a moment or two of calm, and then they start up again.  But they cycle back to calm again.  Gradually, the amount of time fussing decreases and the amount of time calm increases until eventually they are alseep.  When they are cycling in this way, you don’t need to go back to them – just let it ride.  But if they lose their pacifier or teddy bear, reach a point of total hysteria where they will not likely be able to calm themselves back down without some consolation, or they have pooped something awful and need to be changed, then you should go address that need and then leave them again.  You have to be prepared to do this for several nights, possibly even weeks, before they start to get the hang of it.  Don’t plan on doing anything else during this time because you will then just get frustrated with them.  Know that it may take several hours every night of dedicated work before they finally settle down.  Investing the time to teach them will save you countless hours in the future when you can just put your kid to bed, close the door and not have to go back until morning.  So while difficult, it is worth the effort.
5. Get them attached to a good teddy bear.  This can become their support and means of consolation.  We have found that those teddy bear security blankets are ideal.  They are both a teddy bear and a security blanket in one.  It should have things on it, like ears or tails or tags, that the kid can pull at.  One thing we also do is we have the mother sleep with it several nights so that she gets her smell all over it.  You can even consider putting it in the mother’s bra!  It may seem non-Dharma to encourage an attachment, we should not let the best (non-attachment to anything) be the enemy of the good (attachment for the teddy bear instead of the parent walking them around until they fall alseep!).  Eventually the child will outgrow their teddy bear, but if in the meantime they can use it to calm themselves down and enable both yourself and your child be properly rested, it is a small price to pay.  If it helps, mentally engage in the guru yoga of the teddy bear.  By nature, the teddy bear is the spiritual guide, but he is appearing in the aspect of a teddy bear.  So you are not cultivating an attachment in a samsaric object, you are teaching reliance upon the spiritual guide!!!
6. Resist the temptation to go ‘save’ them from their crying.  Once you make the decision you are going to let them cry and that you are not going back, then you have to stick with it all the way (barring, of course, something really extreme).  If you let them cry for 15 minutes and then crack and go get them, then you are not helping them.  The only thing you are doing is guarranteeing that tomorrow night they will cry for at least 15 minutes before they settle down because they will think crying for 15 minutes is how you get a parent to come.  They will then cry even more the next night.  But if instead you let them cry for as long as it takes, then the next night it will be less time crying, then less again the next night and so on until eventually they don’t cry at all.

When it comes to the child sleeping through the night, again, you need to work gradually.

1. Time everything so that you feed the kid a bottle when you, as parents, go to bed.  Typically, in the early days, the kid can go 2-3 hours between feedings.  So if you go to bed at 10:45, make sure you feed them a bottle at 7:45 so that they are sufficiently hungry at 10:45.  Likewise feed them at 4:45 and so forth going backwards in the day.
2. Try expand the time-scale between feedings during the night, not during the day.  During the day, you want to stuff them like a sausage.  But at night, you practice expanding the scope of time between feedings.  For example, if your child normally does 3 hours between feedings, then when they start to wake up after 3 hours, instead of feeding them give them their pacifier, console them, etc., but don’t feed them until 4 hours.  Then feed them a bigger than usual bottle (since they will be hungry).  Then do the same thing again, trying to stretch it out to 4 hours again.  If you can do this, you will get them down to one feeding a night.  You feed them before you go to bed, once in the middle of the night, and then once again when you wake up.  This is a major accomplishment.
3. Once you have done this, continue to stuff them full of lead during the day, especially just before they go to bed, and then try stretch it to 5 hours before you feed them in the middle of the night using the same tactics as above.  You can still feed them again when you wake up, even if it is less than 4 hours between feedings.  Once you have stabilized 5 hours, repeat the same process for 6 hours, then 7 hours until finally they can do 8 hours!  As a rule of thumb, a baby can do their weight in  pounds minus 2 hours.  So a 6 pound baby can stretch at most 4 hours before you really should feed them.  A 7 pound baby can stretch at most 5 hours, an 8 pound baby 6 hours and so forth.  But every baby is different, so really you need to figure this out according to your own kid’s capacity.  This has at least been our experience after 5 kids.

One final note on doing your daily practice during the training of your children.  Pre-children, our routine was say sleep 8 hours, then do our practice for 1 hour, for a total time period of 9 hours (this is an example, modify the number of hours accordingly to your individual circumstance).  So when you are training baby, when you get up to feed them the middle of the night bottle, instead of trying to go back to bed do your practice in the middle of the night, then go back to bed and wake up at the end of the same 9 hour period.  In this way, you will still get the same number of hours of sleep and the same number of hours doing your practice, but it will just be in a different order.  There are several advantages to doing this:

1. The hours you do sleep will be more effective.  The problem I have had is when I wake up to feed the bottle, I tend to become more awake.  It then takes me longer to fall alseep so these hours are wasted.  Then when I wake up to do my practice, I am too tired to do so, and my practice is of poor quality (or sometimes not at all if I am really tired).  If instead you do your practice, your mind becomes more subtle and collected so then when you do go back to bed you will fall right asleep.  The reason why we can’t sleep is our gross winds do not dissolve.  If you make your mind more subtle through your practice, they will dissolve more easily.
2. You willl have more virtuous dreams, leading up to sleep yoga.  Just as the last mind we have at the time of death determines the quality of our next rebirth, so too the quality of our mind we have as we fall alseep determines the quality of our dreams.  If we fall alseep with a virtuous mind, we are more likely to carry that virtue into our sleep and dreams.  Eventually, as our mindfulness improves, we will be able to carry it into our sleeping state and do lucid dreaming.  When we first start lucid dreaming we will want to fly around or do other such things, but eventually we can teach ourselves to meditate in our dreams.  Some of my most profound meditation experiences have come from doing this because at this point we are meditating with our subtle mind.  Think Shantideva!

I hope all of this proves useful to all those sleepless Kadampa parents out there!

You don’t need friends, you need to be a friend.  You don’t need people to love you, you need to love people.  You don’t need others to do things for you, you need to do things for others.  Other people don’t need to like you for you to feel fulfilled, you need to simply like others.  Don’t be upset when others don’t contact you, rather contact them.  Don’t wait for others to come to you, go to them.  Don’t let anything be an obstacle, make it an opportunity to grow.  Don’t want, instead give.  Don’t wait for things to satisfy you, rather bring satisfaction to them.  Don’t expect anything from others, rather be grateful for what you have.  Don’t judge people if they don’t live up to your expectations, rather strive to live up to your own expectations for yourself.  Don’t fish for compliments, rather give them unconditionally.  You don’t need to say anything, you need to listen.  You don’t need others to understand you, you need to understand others.  You don’t need anybody to do anything for you, you need to do things for others.  You don’t need to receive anything from others, you need to offer things to others.  Don’t blame others for your experience of life, take responsibility for it.  Don’t wish you were with somebody else, be delighted to be who you are with.  Don’t judge a situation in terms of what it can do for you, rather look at what you can do in  a situation.  Don’t create problems, resolve them.  Don’t judge, accept.  Don’t focus on what you are doing, focus on why you are doing it.  Don’t expect things to change quickly, just be happy to create causes which take you in the right direction.  Don’t keep going down roads you know lead nowhere, just decide to do the right thing.  Don’t base your sense of self-worth on what others think of you, rather base it on your potential to get better with effort.  Don’t try to change others, change yourself.  Don’t blame others for your problems, blame your delusions.  Don’t wish things were different, realize they are perfect just the way they are.  Don’t waste your time chasing rainbows, spend your times planting seeds.  Don’t get angry when confronted with the truth, realize it is your pathway to freedom.  Don’t waste the days you are given, make the most of them.  Don’t expect yourself to already be perfect, rather joyfully but patiently work on perfecting yourself.  Don’t lament that things are unfair, just treat others fairly.  You don’t need to be anywhere else, you need to be where you are.  You don’t need to be with anybody else, you need to love who you are with.  Don’t take half-measures, deal with things definitively.  Stop making excuses, know you can do it.  Don’t try go it alone, pray for the strength to change.