5.5 mins read.
I saw this video yesterday and, along with 60 million other people, clicked “Like”. Because I really like it and was still thinking of that baby’s face today.
Why does that baby love his mom so much? Is it because he realizes how incredibly kind she has been to him already, and how she intends to carry on protecting and loving him with every fiber of her being, even when she feels grumpy? What’s not to love?
There is a meditation in Buddhism called “remembering the kindness of mothers” where we itemize in detail all the kindness our mother has shown us from the moment we were conceived. The reason we do this is to love her, like this baby loves his mom.
The reason we need to “remember” is because we have generally forgotten and, due to our 3 poisons of attachment, aversion, and ignorance, can all too easily focus on her shortcomings instead. This contemplation redresses that balance. You can find it laid out in detail in Joyful Path of Good Fortune and How to Transform Your Life (available here for free.)
This baby recently had a long stay in his mother’s womb – he was an “uninvited guest”, causing her to swell up like a whale; but she not only let him stay but protected him carefully, “more carefully than she would guard a most precious jewel.” In every situation she thought of his safety. “She consulted doctors, exercised, and ate special foods”, avoided lots of things she really liked such as alcohol and going out late, and nurtured him day and night for 9 months.
You can see why he might appreciate her.
Giving birth to him was no doubt very painful, as it always is; but my guess is she still adored him the moment she clapped eyes on him. He was like a useless blob (still is), unable to do anything for himself except mess his diapers and scream; but she doesn’t care, she still looks after him without expecting anything in return. Even when she is exhausted and bored and has her own problems, she no doubt always shows him “a loving expression and calls him sweet names.”
No wonder he loves her.
And this will continue. Every day of his early childhood she will rescue him from disasters “and consider things from the point of view of his own safety and well-being”. She will stop him sticking fingers in light sockets or running in front of buses – she will have to keep an eye on him day and night even though it means she can do none of the things she used to take for granted, such as leaving the house to do stuff whenever she felt like it. She will make sure he stays warm and cozy, even if she is cold. She will shop and cook for him, endlessly, even when she is tired and hungry herself. She will be very concerned for his health – she would rather be sick herself than see him sick. As Geshe Kelsang points out:
Our mother naturally behaves toward us like someone who has gained the realization of exchanging self with others, cherishing us even more than she cherishes herself.
Yeah, what’s not to love?!
As he grows older, she will teach him all the essential life skills, “how to eat, drink, speak, sit and walk.” She will send him “to school and encourage him to do good things in life.” Any knowledge and skills he acquires will “mainly be a result of her kindness.” Even when he becomes a moody teenager and finds her totally uncool, she will still try and give him space and whatever else he needs. Even when he leaves home and never looks back, except when he needs $100 or his laundry done, she will let him go but never lose the love. He will always be in her thoughts, and “in the back of her mind” there will always be some worry about him. For as long as she draws breath, she will never cease to care for him. “She may be old and weak and scarcely able to stand on her feet, and yet she never forgets her children.”
Seriously, no wonder he is looking at her like that.
As we would be looking at our own mother if we remembered even a fraction of what she has done for us.
By meditating in this way, recalling the kindness of our mother in great detail, we will come to cherish her very dearly.
Since it is impossible to find a beginning to our mental continuum, it follows that we have taken countless rebirths in the past; and if we have had countless rebirths, we must have had countless mothers. Where are all these mothers now?
Good question, where does everybody get to from life to life?
They are all the living beings alive today.
Imagine having that affectionate regard for everyone all the time? This would be a very different world. It would be a world full of love, gratitude, and appreciation wherever we turn. It would be a very happy world.
And if you are thinking, “Well, even if I believed that everyone was my mom in the past, they aren’t my mom any more!”, you can think about your present mom and ask yourself: “If she were to die today, would she cease to be my mother?”
Once our mother, always our mother. If this baby one day looks at photos of his mother taken a couple of years earlier — before he was even conceived — he will still think, “Ah, there’s my mommy before she had me.”
We always have a choice how to view people. We can continue to see them through the lens of selfish desire, aversion, and/or ignorance, and continue to be miserable as a result. Or we can decide to stop being taken in by superficial and ever-changing mistaken appearances, learning to look deeper and therefore kinder.
As Geshe Kelsang says:
Because of changing our rebirth, we do not recognize our former mothers, relatives and friends, and now because of this we see the majority of living beings as strangers and many even as our enemies. This mistaken appearance and conception is ignorance. Strangers and enemies are just creations of this ignorance. In truth, there are no living beings who are strangers or our mothers because they are all our mothers, relatives or close friends.
There is nothing fixed about our world. Ignoring or adopting this view is our choice to make. I think it depends what kind of world we want to live in.
Over to you. Your comments are much appreciated below 😊
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4 Comments
I can see the benefit of seeing everyone in this way. On a practical level, i guess everyone has been my father too? And brother, sister, and so on? If i was married (i’m not), my wife would have been my mother, and in a sense still would be? Once my mother, always my mother? I know these are pretty simple questions that you will have addressed many years ago, but i’m just a beginner. TIA! 🙂
Yes, we have had every conceivable relationship with everyone else! We can focus on the ones where the love and compassion shone through, when we were relatively non-deluded with respect to each other; and that will lead to more of the same.
Geshe La’s description of the kindness of our mothers is life changing. It genuinely transformed my relationship with my own mother. Too often in society we focus on all the things people don’t do for us, instead of focusing on what they have done. Thank you for pulling together all the important aspects of his teaching and that video … ♥️
That’s beautiful. We often have deep and “complicated” relationships with our mothers due to lots and lots of shared karma; and if we can get these relationships right, we stand a good chance of getting our other relationships right too. What we choose to focus on is the whole art of training the mind, I think.