Question: I want to know why bad things happen to good people.  My mom is one of the most amazing and kind people that I have ever known.  She has been kind and compassionate to many people over the course of my lifetime that I have witnessed.  I want to know why she hasn't had a more pleasant life? 

Response: I am so sorry to hear about your mother's difficult life. Our current lives are the result of our past karmas. When good people suffer, they are undergoing the retribution for past misdeeds. By not complaining and trying to help others, your mother is repaying her past debts and planting the seeds for a better future lifetime. And it is possible that she has already begun to improve her life through her kindness to others. As difficult as her life has been, it might have "supposed" to have been even worse.  So her compassion to so many people may have already helped her. We just don't know.

I watched my mother suffer from loneliness in the last few years of her life and do understand your pain for your mother. One day, about a year after my mother had died, something shifted and the daughter in me realized what the nun in me had been saying for many years. All beings in samsara suffer, each in their own way. When there is life, there is suffering.

But the suffering can end. And through our devotion to our parents and our dedication to our practice, we can help ease that suffering. This is the very motivation that enables us to keep going when continuing becomes so difficult.