Dear Thay, dear Sangha, my question is about my relationship with my daughter. She is fourteen years old and she has a big need for freedom and she is a bit rebel. Because of that, we can argue a lot and this can exhaust me very much.

Whenever I try to set some rules for cleaning or time to come back, or I show a consistent interest for her work at school, she feels I am unjust. She feels not understood, mistrusted, and first of all, under my control. Even if I try my best to involve her in the decision making, and I explain calmly my true reason for my point of view.

Most of the time, in order to let her do what I consider necessary, I end up shouting and blackmail her. Dear Thay, can you please tell me how can I practice my role as a mother and being able to guide her and at the same time to respect her? How can I protect myself to not feel exhausted by this challenge?

And how can I practice so that all her good qualities—she is intelligent, open, sensitive, caring towards her friends—may ripen and become true strength in her character?

We have to remember that our daughter is our continuation. And your daughter carries you into the future. And you would like to invest, you would like to transmit the best you have, the best your ancestors have to her. And parents always have that kind of desire, of willingness. There have been unskillfulnesses done in the past, and that have left a mark in both you and your daughter, and that has made things more difficult. So the practice is how to try to wipe away that kind of unskillfulness committed in the past from her part and from your part.

And we have to talk to each other, and the first thing we have to tell each other is that we have been, both of us, unskillful in the past. We have to recognize that. Both mother and daughter have been unskillful in the past and acknowledge that fact. And we promise each other that we will not repeat or continue that unskillfulness in the future. This is very important. It is a kind of peace treaty between the two.

If we continue to accumulate this kind of unskillfulness, there is no way out. So we have to decide together that, "I will try my best, and you try your best, my daughter, not to repeat that way of reacting, of punishing that we have done in the past."

And I don't think that one session is enough to do that. Maybe a few sessions of talking to each other lovingly and with a lot of goodwill. And if needed, there is a third person that can support both, sitting and aware, and become aware of the real situation. A third person may help, a friend of both, or a Sangha. The third person may be a Sangha.

The practice should be complete in the three dimensions: thinking, acting, and speaking. Right thinking. According to the teaching of the Buddha, right thinking in this circumstance is that mother and daughter are not really two persons. We continue each other. The daughter continues the mother in the direction of the future, and the mother continues the daughter in the direction of the past.

Thanks to the mother, the daughter can have access to ancestors. And we have to touch our roots. Tomorrow we will have the ceremony of touching our roots. This is a very important practice. We are not a separate entity. We are a stream. We belong to a stream of continuation.

So you have to recognize that you are the continuation of your ancestors, of your father and mother, who are the youngest ancestors. And to get angry at your father and mother is somehow to get angry at yourself. So that kind of thinking is right thinking. It is very important.

And the happiness of the mother has to do with the happiness of the daughter, and the happiness of the daughter has to do with the happiness of the mother. So happiness is not an individual matter. If the mother suffers deeply, there is no way that the daughter can be truly happy. And that kind of insight, that kind of thinking, is truly needed as a base for right action and right speech.

So there should be some collective thinking, some practice of looking deeply in order to see the real relationship between mother and daughter, father and son. When you plant a seed of corn in the ground, in the soil, you wait, and ten days later you may see a young plant of corn. And you don't see the grain of corn anymore. But the grain of corn is always there in the plant of corn.

If we look deeply, we can see the plant of corn is the continuation of the grain of corn. So if the daughter looks deeply, she will see that she is her mother. She is her mother. She cannot get her mother out of her. And the mother has to look like that also. You are in your daughter. You are not a separate entity. This is right view, the view of non-self, no self, the view of interbeing. This is very crucial.

And if you abide by that view, then everything you say will have no function to punish, to blame, to make suffer. And the same thing is true with your daughter. If she has that kind of view, right view, she will not react or act in such a way that will cause suffering to her and her mother. And action also.

We have to discuss about what is true freedom. Freedom in the context of the practice is freedom from anger, freedom from suffering, freedom from irritation, freedom from alienation. So that is the kind of freedom that both of us need, daughter and mother. And without that freedom, well, there is no real freedom that you can enjoy.

I think talking to your daughter and to arrive at a kind of agreement with your daughter is not like signing a peace treaty with another country, only the practice, but to change drastically the way of thinking. The way of thinking is the foundation of all actions and speeches.

And to have your daughter understand is the most fundamental thing, and not just to have her agree that she will do that, she will not do that. That is not deep enough. So don't try just to have her agree that what to do and what not to do, what to say and what not to say, but try to have her get a deeper understanding about relationship.

And you tell her your deepest desire, and you listen to her deepest desire. And you are there for her, you support her, and dialogue should go on permanently in order for that to be successful. It is a process of practice that needs a lot of mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

And you need a lot of patience. Patience is one of the six pāramitās. Patience will get you to the other shore, the shore of harmony, the shore of happiness.

[One sound of the bell.]