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“Tibetan Buddhists say that we have all been one another’s mother in a previous lifetime.  Imagining every being as your mother, practice offering love equally to all whom you encounter, including strangers, creatures, and even those who have hurt you.  This practice isn’t always easy for some of us Westerners, who may have conflicted relationships with our mothers.  But I can imagine a being who has given me and others life, protection, nourishment, and kindness.  When I’ve giving care to a dying person, I try both to give and receive kindness as if I were the dying one’s mother and to see the dying one as my mother, saying silently to myself, “Now it is time for me to repay the great kindness of all motherly beings.”

~~ Roshi Joan Halifax, Being With Dying

Can you image going to war if your “enemy” had the face of your mother?

Can you imagine what would have happened on the night that Zimmerman and Martin came face to face if they saw each other’s mothers in one another rather than “the other”?

What if we thought about feeding our mothers when we were going to the store?  Would we buy genetically modified food?  Would we by toxins?

Could we be mindful enough to think about using our signal or not texting in the car if we thought that it might harm our mother?

I love how Roshi frames her work with the dying here.  I’ve often thought that I have no need for my own children when there are so many people in the world that need someone to love them, teach them, spend time listening to them. . .

I don’t think there has been a day that has gone by in three years, since I started my present job (not working with dying people) where I have thought to myself… if one of my parents needed to be in an institution, would I be okay with them here?  Would I want staff or their psychologist to treat them this way. . .

I truly think that if we thought about those we serve as just that… people who we are honored to serve.. maybe not a mother but a father, a loved one, a child, a beloved auntie. . .  that isn’t to say that we don’t have problems in our families.  But can we see the person before us through the lens of them being an honored person?

As a therapist, the next time you have someone walk in your office who has a diagnosis of “addiction” or of “borderline personality”… can you see them as a baby buddha?

Can you see the crying child at the store as someone’s beloved?

I really honor this practice and can think of all the people I meet daily… in real life or in my mind with whom I do not treat with the reverence of a mother or a beloved and this reminds me of all the people in my life who have been teachers, mentors, great beings whom I have loved dearly… and whom have loved me when I was far from acting as if I were someone’s beloved.

Yet, would I not want to be seen from the heart, in this light?

I think in order to be seen, we have to open our own hearts and see the world this way… when we do, maybe, just maybe the whole world we see how interconnected and fragile the bonds between us are.

Today is my own mother’s birthday and I write this post with the greatest love and respect to the woman who has most shown me to love others no matter what…. to give and to honor others.

I love you mom and honor every cell, every gesture, and every moment that is ours in our mother-daughter bond.

I bow to you, a buddha being….

Jennifer

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