Mother’s chair

Object location: Living room

One morning at breakfast I suddenly felt, ‘I have got to go and see my mother. I can’t wait for two weeks. I’ve got to go and see her’… So I said to Paramartha, who was with me, ‘Let’s go and see my mother.’

So we went to the hospital, and saw the nurse, and she asked me who I was, and I said I wanted to see Mrs Wiltshire, and that I was her son. She said, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, she died at two o’clock in the morning.’ … After half an hour, we went to the Chapel of Rest. I just sat with my mother’s body for half an hour and we chanted the Vajrasattva mantra.

 From ‘Urgyen Sangharakshita in a “conversation” with Ratnachuda about Death and Grief’, 2011, unpublished.

One of the few items Sangharakshita kept from his mother’s estate was her chair. He would alternate between the two chairs he had in the living room but more often than not he would sit in his mother’s chair to listen to audio books. In his later years he had repeated dreams relating to both his mother and his father, photos of whom he asked to be hung either side of the White Tārā appliqué at the head of his bed.