Is it bad kamma if I don’t answer calls from my parents? I mostly answer calls from them if I can. But recently I want to take a break and live in seclusion. Talking to my parents everyday just strengthens attachment for me and for them and it makes me dependent on them. They still treat me like a child. If our attachment remains strong, it will be harder to go forth in the future.
It would be best to make a schedule with them on when to call them.
I used to call my parents one time per month (because I had to walk 2 miles to make a phone call).
Even with internet, we kept that tradition until COVID lockdowns. I increased it to 1 time per week. Even after COVID, I call them one time per week, usually their Sunday nights and my Monday mornings. We usually talk for 1 hour.
I suggest you request to call them twice per week. They are paying your bills. Give them the time within reason. Try to read the Nonviolent Communication book by Rosenberg and see if you can negotiate in that way.
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That’s excellent advice given above, Bhante. Thank you. 
I am having a read through the book now that you recommended, and I am about halfway done. It’s a very good system that he describes. The first chapter begins thusly:
“What I want in my life is compassion,
a flow between myself and others based
on a mutual giving from the heart.”
—Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D."Believing that it is our nature to enjoy giving and receiving
in a compassionate manner, I have been preoccupied most of
my life with two questions: What happens to disconnect us from
our compassionate nature, leading us to behave violently and
exploitatively? And conversely, what allows some people to stay
connected to their compassionate nature under even the most
trying circumstances?My preoccupation with these questions began in childhood,
around the summer of 1943, when our family moved to Detroit,
Michigan. The second week after we arrived, a race war erupted
over an incident at a public park. More than forty people were
killed in the next few days. Our neighborhood was situated in the
center of the violence, and we spent three days locked in the house.
When the race riot ended and school began, I discovered that
a name could be as dangerous as any skin color. When the teacher
called my name during attendance, two boys glared at me and
hissed, “Are you a kike?” I had never heard the word before and
didn’t know some people used it in a derogatory way to refer to
Jews. After school, the same two boys were waiting for me: they
threw me to the ground and kicked and beat me.Since that summer in 1943, I have been examining the two questions I mentioned. What empowers us, for example, to stay connected to our compassionate nature even under the worst circumstances? I am thinking of people like Etty Hillesum, who
remained compassionate even while subjected to the grotesque
conditions of a German concentration camp. As she wrote in her
journal at the time,I am not easily frightened. Not because I am brave
but because I know that I am dealing with human
beings, and that I must try as hard as I can to
understand everything that anyone ever does. And
that was the real import of this morning: not that a
disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that
I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and
would have liked to ask, ‘Did you have a very unhappy
childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?’ Yes, he
looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should
have liked to start treating him there and then, for I
know that pitiful young men like that are dangerous as
soon as they are let loose on mankind.—Etty Hillesum in Etty: A Diary 1941–1943"
—Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg
It’s available in PDF format for free here:
Thanks for that, Bhante.
R
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If you have ever done Goenka, you will see see Goenka keywords mixed at particular places that apply like “sensations”.
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I haven’t done alot of Goenka—mostly Mahasi.
R