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All Beings Have Been Parents

• Our mother and child relationship with sentient beings is very ancient.
• This is not fiction. This is how things have been.
• We may not see this relationship. But it is there.
• Recognize mother as mother.
• Each time we take rebirth, we need a mother.
• We are a wandering mindstream. Birth and death does not mark the boundary of our existence. We have been born and died countless times. The continuity of our mind is beginningless. We wander from womb to womb. This is how we have come to be associated with our present mother.
• Before this mother, we had another mother. She too was kind.
• We have countless mothers. “We would run out of earth trying to count our mothers with balls of clay the size of juniper berries.”
• Our present life’s parents have been parents countless times.
• Due to change of life, we don’t recognize this. We will remember this when our gross obscurations have been removed. Otherwise we cannot even remember our childhood or our stay in this present mother’s womb.
• Look at every being with the same, effortless, warm recognition. Look again. They have indeed been mothers.
• We think of all sentient beings as our parents. This helps us generate love and compassion to all. The foundation for love and compassion is to think that all beings have been our parents.
• Meditate on sentient beings as mother – three times during day, three times during night.
• Think about sentient beings in all realms. They are not strangers. Every being is closely connected with us.
• You have been told this sentient being is your mother.
• This is how all the buddhas of the past practiced.
• “All sentient beings” refers to Impartiality.