After the completion of our level 6 class, we were asked by the masters to write about a deep thought and I didn’t know what to write about or where to start.
Since my mother is one of the most important people in my life, I decided to use her as my starting point. I think my mother is one of the best mothers any child can ever ask for. She is one of the most caring people in the world and helps others before she helps herself, especially her children, she is also a great cook so what more can I ask for as a daughter?
I was first introduced to UHBEA meditation in 2006 in Boston, MA, at that time my mother’s health was in pretty bad condition—she has diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, heart problems, and her arthritis in both of her knees are so bad, they have no cartilage left in them so the bones rub on each other when she bend her knees. One of the main reasons she went to the meditation center was for her knee pain. She has tried so many remedies and medicines but had no luck until someone had introduced her to the Boston center. After several treatments, she started to feel the decrease of pain level in her knees. When the following class for level 1 and 2 sign up came out, she signed up my whole family. My mother made me take off a week of work to attend a class I was not even sure of what it really was, but I did it because she told me to. She wanted me to go because at that time my diabetes was so uncontrolled, I had lost complete vision in my right eye due to a retinal detachment and she heard that this type of meditation provides a possible opportunity to get my vision back.
For the first three years of meditation, I only looked at it as a way of helping sick patients and I went to the meditation center only because my mother asked me to. Honestly, I was a very lazy student, and sometimes I would even make excuses for myself not to go.
Since I love to eat, I decided to choose it as another starting point. I am not really a big fan of eating vegetarian dishes but every time we had to go on a vegetarian diet in preparation of a meditation class, I actually look forward to savoring the most delicious vegetarian dishes at the Seattle Center. I did not know why they taste so good but they are definitely different from the ones served at the restaurants.From the moment I arrived at the airport, I was being greeted and driven to the meditation center. Once I arrived there, I was fed with such nourishment and driven to the hotel to rest. During the three days of class, there was never a time that I would feel hungry. I believe that if anyone was ever hungry during those days, it was his or her own fault for not eating. Not only the food was prepared for us but also it was served to us. I tried to wash my own bowl in the kitchen one day and someone confiscated the bowl from me not allowing me to clean my own bowl!
After all these years of eating my mother’s nurturing food, I finally realized why it tasted so good after having been at the Seattle Center twice….it finally hit me that the food at the Seattle Center and my mother’s food had a common ingredient, it was love and care that was put into it while preparing it. I’ve always thought that my mother’s food had tasted much better than most restaurants.
Every time I look at the UHBE logo, I see the heart in the middle. Now it started to make sense why two cooks with the same amount of experience can prepare the same exact dish with the same exact recipe using the same exact ingredients but one dish will taste better than the other…the difference is the amount of heart put into making the dish is different. Now I understand why the person with the less beautiful voice can sing better than the one with the more beautiful voice…. It’s because the one with the less beautiful voice uses his or her heart more.I never realize how strong the power of the heart was until now. Everything seems to come out more beautiful when it is done with the heart.
If my mother did not use her heart to push me to the meditation class and drag me to the center, I probably wouldn’t be meditating and thinking the way I do today. It has totally changed my lifestyle and life. I used to get frustrated when my mother pushes me to go to the meditation center, but today, I am actually the one who asks my mother to go to the meditation center. Without the big hearts of our masters Thay Thuan and Co Hai, today there would not be over 50 UHBEA meditation centers across the world.
Cam phung Luong
Houston Center
October 2012