This website is the home of The Four Noble Truths on the web.
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.