{"id":106239,"date":"2018-02-12T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=106239"},"modified":"2018-02-08T18:19:14","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T18:19:14","slug":"today-i-said-good-bye-to-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/02\/today-i-said-good-bye-to-mom\/","title":{"rendered":"Today I Said Good Bye to Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Through the transparent cover
\nWith her eyes closed, Mother looked at me
\nAs if she were saying
\n“Why are you mourning over this biomass in this air-conditioned coffin?
\nIt ain’t me here! Not any more, if ever there was I.”<\/p>\n

As a Buddhist child, &
\nthrough the incentivised practice of “breathing”
\nI was bribed into learning to dis-aggregate :who am “I”?<\/p>\n

“Here is a few coins, if you sit with me for several more times,” said my great-aunt who sat in the mosquito-net before going to bed.<\/p>\n

Alas, no $500 per hour meditation masters.
\nNo,Mindfulness isn’t about productivity or corporate managers.<\/p>\n

Dear sisters,
\nStop waling on my Messenger.
\nLet “Mom” go,
\non her last journey from home.<\/p>\n

I fought back my quiet tears
\nI breath as I greet my own grief.<\/p>\n

It’s time to “dis-aggregate” Mom.<\/p>\n

The hair, the skin, the cells, the fluid, the bones, which one are you, Mom?<\/p>\n

Where did you come from? Where are you heading?<\/p>\n

Are you going anywhere? Or did you come to us from somewhere, at all?<\/p>\n

Was it random? Was it Samsara? Or was it Creation?<\/p>\n

I keep asking.<\/p>\n

Then, when is my time to go? How will I go? Come, it will.
\nWe will all go.<\/p>\n

Nothing lasts. Everything passes.<\/p>\n

Still, this is the Day I cry.<\/p>\n

Goodbye, Mother.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Zarni, Kent, England<\/em><\/p>\n

08:00, 7 Feb 2018\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A Buddhist humanist from Burma, Maung Zarni is <\/em>a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, <\/em>former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center \u2013 Cambodia.\u00a0 His analyses have appeared in leading newspapers including the <\/em>New York Times, The Guardian and<\/em> the Times. Among his academic publications on Rohingya genocide are <\/em>The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar\u2019s Rohingyas (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal), <\/em>An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide, (Middle East Institute, American University), and <\/em>Myanmar\u2019s State-directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims (Brown World Affairs Journal, forthcoming). He holds a PhD (U Wisconsin at Madison) and a MA (U California), and has held various teaching, research and visiting fellowships at the universities in Asia, Europe and USA including Oxford, LSE, UCL Institute of Education) , National-Louis, Malaya, and Brunei. He is the recipient of the “Cultivation of Harmony” award from the Parliament of the World’s Religions (2015).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through the transparent cover
\nWith her eyes closed, Mother looked at me
\nAs if she were saying
\n“Why are you mourning over this biomass in this air-conditioned coffin?
\nIt ain’t me here! Not any more, if ever there was I.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":106240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}