I am going to write about how on Mother’s day many people find it in their hearts to show appreciation for their kind mothers and how today can be a launching point for our spiritual practice.
Our mothers, who have sacrificed so much not just in the process of pregnancy and delivery, which was difficult enough, but also in the early years of our life when we were unable to care for ourselves and even until this day when we are adults.
True, some of us may have “complex” relationships with our mothers but this complexity does not change the kindness of our mothers nor should it change the special connection we have with one of the key people who brought us into the world and cared for us dearly.
This affection love that we are capable of generating for our kind mothers should then be extended to all living beings. Let us imagine this thought experiment to help us with this objective. If we were to become separated from our mothers and many years later were to become reunited with her we would be very happy. We would want to re form the special bond that had existed before and honor that special relationship. We’ve seen this theme played out in many a Lifetime movie.
Now where the intuitive leap happens is when we think to ourselves, well I cannot find a beginning of my mental continuum, (and I don’t mean what people tell you was the beginning of your mental continuum, I mean a true discovery for ourselves, more on this in future entries) therefore I must have had countless previous lives in which I was born into this world again and again. In these countless previous lives I had countless previous mothers. Where are all these mothers now? They are all around us in disguise as the countless living beings we see everywhere.
Buddha taught that we may regard living beings as friends, enemies or strangers but this is a mistaken view. If we were to adopt the opposing viewpoint that all these beings were our mothers in a previous life we would find ourselves in a position to generate kind thoughts towards all these living beings. There would be no strangers or enemies, only our kind mothers.
It’s typical of many people to show kindness to those who outwardly show us affection, cruelness to those who outwardly give us harm and neutral thoughts or no thought towards those who do not interfere in our day to day existence. But if we were to examine our relationships, first with strangers and then with our enemies we will find that we can generate warm wishes towards them based on our understanding that at one point in the past they were our mothers. At some point in the past these people who now may be strangers or enemies have shown us great kindness.
Although we may think of some people as difficult and or strange we must remember that their mothers looked upon them as precious and beautiful. This is the key to understanding how strangers and enemies can easily be transformed into worthy objects of our affectionate wishing love.
Jim Morrison once sang, “People are strange when you’re a stranger”. Well the opposite can hold true as well. People can be truly wonderful when you acknowledge their special capacity for kindness as your own mother and that they are the object of a mother’s love. This is the way to keep in your heart the wish that all living beings may find true happiness.
So, Happy Mother’s Day to everyone!