Reflections & Memory
The Weight the Dharma Instrument Bore for My Mother: Those Extra Six Years Were Both Grace and Farewell
In 2019, my mother was diagnosed with stage IV lung adenocarcinoma. I brought a human bone dharma instrument given to me by my Tibetan Buddhist teacher to the hospital. The next day, the instrument shattered, and my mother's condition improved. Over the next six years, we were thrust into time that should not have existed—mother and son walked further down that narrow passage. In 2025, she still left us. This article is not about the supernatural, not about promoting any religion, but about recording what a son learned in the face of life and death: the power of love is finite, but precisely because it is finite, you must pour everything into it while you still have it.