Happy Mother's Day

[Luna Arjuna]

Photo : Philipp Borges,Vicentina, Perù, Enduring Spirit

"The relationship between mother and child is the foremost analogy used in developing compassion. According to the medieval Indian and Tibetan traditions, the traditional way of cultivating relative bodhicitta is to choose your mother as the first example of someone you feel soft toward.

Traditionally, you feel warm and kindly toward your mother. In modern society, there might be a problem with that. However, you could go back to the medieval idea of the mother principle. You could appreciate her way of sacrificing her own comfort for you. You could remember how she used to wake up in the middle of the night if you cried, how she used to feed you and change your diapers, and all the rest of it.

The starting point is realizing that others could actually be more important than ourselves. Other people might provide us with constant problems, but we could still be kind to them. According to the logic of relative bodhicitta, we should feel that we are less important and others are more important—any others are more important! Doing so, we begin to feel as though a tremendous burden has been taken off our shoulders. Finally, we realize that there is room to give love and affection elsewhere, to more than just this thing called "me." "I am this, I am that, I am hungry, I am tired, I am blah-blah- blah." We could consider others."

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness