🔹Ven Pomnyun’s Dharma Q&A

2021. 7. 11

🔹Question: Thank you so much for taking my question.In listening to past Dharma talks, I heard Sunim describe or talk about developing empathy for those who have created suffering in our lives as a way of overcoming attachment to the past and suffering in the present. Part of what I'm working through is particularly horrific kind of abusemthat I grew up with at the hands of my father. And I don't see how I could ever develop empathy for a person who did to a child, to me, the things that my father did.And I'm wondering if there's another path forward.Thank you so much.

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🔹Ven Pomnyun’s Dharma Q&A

Selection from Casual Conversation with Ven. Pomnyun Sunim (July 11, 2021)

🔹Question: My father has been violent to me physically and verbally. He hit me and my mom. He always told me you should play a role of a boy. I couldn’t have built basic trust to people and life seems very absurd and unjust. I was diagnosed as depression 15 years ago and another mental disease 2 years ago. He sometimes wrote letters saying that he’s very sorry it’s all for your sake and his childhood was not easy. But he repeated the same verbal and physical abuse afterwards. So I found all of his words untrustworthy and hypocritical. I just stopped talking to him years ago and ran away to a faraway country but still suffering. I tried to be grateful to him but it seems so hypocritical as well, so I stopped praying. I don’t want to get married nor have children because I think my spouse and children would suffer as well. I don’t know what to do.

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🔹Ven Pomnyun’s Dharma Q&A

2024. 11. 3.

🔹Question: Questioner)Hello, Sunim. Nice to see you again. Can you hear me, everyone? Yes? OK, good. I drew a map here. My dad lives here, and my sister lived over here. This is north. My dad wants me to move there to this house. He sat me down when I was over at his place last weekend. But I don't want to move there. I'll just admit that. It would really disrupt what's happening in my life right now. The thing is that he helped my sister with this house, and as my dad is getting older, he wants to make sure everyone is taken care of before he dies. He helped my sister build this house. It was his land. He built a shop which was a wood shop. He likes to do wood carpentry as a hobby, make things out of wood, and I guess he's doing it even less nowadays. And he also designed it so that somebody could move in, put a kitchen and a shower in. And he was definitely thinking that somebody was me. I never tried to argue with him about it. I just sat down and listened, and he said, "Please think about it seriously." And he rammed me. As much as it would be good to save money on rent, I really appreciate where I live now. And I need to have this conversation with him somehow. So far, I've let it be one way. Thank you.

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