Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 99-minute session, Venerable Thubten Dondrub guides participants through the first three causes of bodhicitta using the classical method of the fourth-century Buddhist master Asaṇga. He begins by establishing the foundation: recognizing that all sentient beings, without exception, have been our mother across countless lifetimes. Rather than presenting this as metaphor, Dondrub develops the Buddhist reasoning that mind is beginningless and formless, therefore cannot be produced by the physical brain alone—leading to the logical conclusion that consciousness continuum must have inhabited countless bodies throughout infinite previous lives. He then turns to remembering the kindness of the mother, offering concrete examples: the sacrifices mothers make (giving their own portion of food, enduring physical suffering, sleepless nights), teaching us basic skills and how to navigate the world, and protecting us when we were completely helpless. He emphasizes how to work with the difficult case of those with troubled maternal relationships, suggesting one focus on the simple fact of being given life and body, or use another nurturing figure as the reference point. Finally, he explores the third cause: the natural wish to repay kindness once we recognize how much we depend on it. Throughout, he intersperses teaching with illustrations—a nun’s conversation with Lama Zopa Rinpoche about a million dollars being insufficient repayment, the image of a deformed child after Hiroshima, murderers in prison whose mothers still comb their hair with love. Pitched at serious practitioners new to this particular meditation practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2014 04 15 DB Bodhicitta Week 3 15042014.mp3
UUID: cdb2b3db-ea32-45e8-b369-f2db6b5365e3
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Bodhicitta (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-04-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 99.4 minutes
Words: ~7,347
Everyone. You can hear? Welcome everyone to our third class about how to generate, bodhicitta. To make this time as worthwhile as possible for ourselves and others then it is really important from our side that we try to listen with the best motivation we can so that the teachings can have the greatest impact on our mind now and in the future. As Śāntideva says in the Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life that all the Buddhas have checked for eons and they can’t find a better motivation than bodhicitta.
There is nothing better than that thought wishing to realize one’s full potential, to become an omniscient being who has perfect compassion and loving kindness and skillful means that enable them to be of perfect benefit to all sentient beings. And why we wish to achieve that state is through recognizing more and more our interdependence with all sentient beings, how they have been immensely kind to us, life after life, and how all these beings are suffering in cyclic existence. And most of them, most of the time are suffering without any understanding of why they’re suffering, without any real protection that can help them to reduce their suffering, make sense of it, modify it, transform it or eliminate it. So the more we think along these lines we can generate this thought based on having refuge in the triple gem and therefore developing some understanding that we ourselves have Buddha nature, we have this potential to achieve enlightenment within us all the time, then we can arouse this amazing thought that no matter what I must use this in all future lives to achieve enlightenment so that I can perfectly repay the kindness of all my other sentient beings.
So as we say the prayer, which is I think page eleven in the student material if you want to join in, To make the prayer as meaningful as possible we think of the Buddha in front of us as the very embodiment of all perfect qualities, the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge and at the same time, we try and think of all these kind beings surrounding us. So especially those that we’re most connected to in this life. So our mother on our left, father on our right, family, friends, and helpers behind us, enemies in front. And then if we can, open our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for for all other beings of cyclic existence. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly.
By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So we can imagine the Buddha very pleased with our motivation and showing this by now approaching, coming towards us. And when directly above the crown of our head, we imagine that the Buddha then dissolves into blissful golden light. And then that light pours down into us through the crown of our head, blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings on bodhicitta, blessing our mind to be able to put them into practice, blessing our mind so that at some point, we will be able to gain a complete realization of bodhicitta within our mind. So then we can enhance that positive state of mind by just very briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise.
And as we do it, can make it more powerful by imagining that with each in breath in the cycle, we imagine breathing in blissful white light from the Buddhas. This brings great calmness and clarity and concentration and stillness in the mind. And then with each out breath in the cycle we imagine breathing out all our present disturbing states of mind, all causes of that, our our delusions, all the negative imprints, all causes of suffering and and so on, all limitations in the form of black smoke. Okay, thank you. So tonight’s topic is going into the first part of the great bodhisattva Asaṇga’s method of generating bodhicitta.
So Asaṇga lived in the a long time ago. My Buddhist history is a disaster. Lived, Asaṇga lived, I think it was about the fourth century AD, something like that. Anyway, there’s a wonderful story about Asaṇga but I don’t think I’ll tell it because I don’t think there’s time. But yes we’ll leave that if there’s time I’ll go into it.
So his method of generating bodhicitta is called the six causes and one effect technique of generating bodhicitta because you have the six causes and the one effect is generating the thought I must achieve enlightenment. I will achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. So you’ve got the outlines already I gave you. So the six causes of bodhicitta according to Asaṇga’s method are firstly recognizing that all sentient beings without exception have been one’s mother. The second cause is to remember the kindness of the mother.
Taking the example of one’s own mother and then realizing just as one’s own mother has been very kind because all sentient beings have been one’s mother, all sentient beings have been immensely kind to me. That leads to the third cause which is generating the wish to repay that kindness And that leads to the next two causes which is generating great love and great compassion. Wanting sentient beings to have perfect happiness and its causes, wanting them to be totally free of all suffering and all its causes. This leads to the next and last of the six causes of generating bodhicitta which is called, the Tibetan term is lhaktsam which is translated as the great wish or the supreme wish. His Holiness the Dalai Lama calls it the sense of universal responsibility which is the thought that I alone will free all sentient beings from suffering and I alone will lead them to peerless everlasting happiness.
And that leads to generating the thought the only way I can do that folks is to become a Buddha. So we’re going to talk about the first three causes tonight. Sorry? Wanting to repay the kindness. It’s all set out in your your your I gave you a two page outline.
It is all there also but anyway But before that, there’s just one small thing I wanted to say as an introduction. I left out my introduction. Some years ago, probably quite a few years ago, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, one of his many wonderful teachings said something which I just thought was just amazingly wonderful and profound but extremely simple. He said one day in a teaching that a Buddhist practitioner, a Dharma practitioner is not trying to achieve happiness in this life. And by that Rinpoche meant ordinary happiness.
A Buddhist practitioner is not practicing the Dharma, not practicing the Buddhist teachings in order to become happy. What a real Dharma student is trying to do is to have a meaningful life. That really knocked me out when I heard that. I hadn’t quite realized that even though I had been a Buddhist for about twenty years by then or maybe even more. We’re not trying to be happy, we’re trying to have a meaningful life because actually that’s much better.
Because when you have a meaningful life, the mind is satisfied and then everything goes well. And what gives one’s life the greatest meaning is bodhicitta. There is nothing more meaningful than to dedicate oneself to freeing all sentient beings from suffering and dedicating oneself to helping every sentient being to achieve peerless, everlasting happiness, which is another term for enlightenment. Alright? bodhicitta is, if we want to be happy, the best way to be happy is practice bodhicitta.
If we want others to be happy, the best way is to practice bodhicitta. And in order to generate bodhicitta, firstly we have to train our mind to renounce our attachment, our obsession with the things of this life. Because while our mind is obsessed with the things of this life, we just follow our self-cherishing thought in its grossest form, get caught up in the eight worldly concerns, get caught up in following attachment, aversion, fears and worries, pride and jealousy and all that rubbish. Right? And the things of this life anyway can’t bring happiness even if we were to get them all.
So firstly we have to work on that. Then the next big challenge is to renounce cyclic existence altogether to realize that remaining in cyclic existence means that one is going to experience suffering over and over again sooner or later. Obvious suffering, subtle suffering, subtle suffering, a very subtle suffering and it just goes on and on endlessly. And while oneself is suffering, one can’t benefit others and in fact is often acting as a condition for to bring suffering to others. So then having renounced cyclic existence we’re in a position to begin to really generate bodhicitta.
And as I tried to explain last week we then have to be able to really develop equanimity. We have to because while we continuously distinguish people as friend, enemy and stranger, we will never be able to really awaken completely our potential for love, compassion and so on. Because why we label people and grasp at it so strongly as friend, enemy and stranger. It means we put all our good energy into friends, ignore the vast majority of sentient beings and have negative thoughts to some people. So we will never open our hearts that way fully.
So we need to develop equanimity. So once we’ve got that then we are really in a position to be able to generate bodhicitta. And so Asaṇga’s method of generating bodhicitta the first cause is actually extremely difficult to generate. As whole as the Dalai Lama says, it is one of the most difficult realizations to gain. But it’s also one of the most unique and wonderful teachings in the Mahāyāna tradition.
It puts great emphasis in this point that quite literally all sentient beings have been our mother. This is not just like a cute phrase, but it’s actually meant to be taken as quite literally true that every sentient being has been our mother. So how can we get our mind around this point to try and see that? While I think of it, need to make this point that the first cause of generating bodhicitta according to Asaṇga’s method is not just simply understanding or believing or knowing that every sentient being has been one’s mother. But on the basis of that, then what we need to do is train the mind that when when we think of other sentient beings, when we look at them, when we speak to them, when we interact with any other sentient being, rather than seeing that sentient being as human or nonhuman friend, enemy, or stranger, we think that this is my mother.
So how do we do that? So the basis of it is of course developing some understanding and faith in rebirth that actually to go into these details would take a long time but I just have to do this very quickly. Is that so firstly one thing to try and understand or at least think about now or think about for the rest of this life is that unlike what most people think or probably most people don’t even really think about it they just kind of accept this is that somehow when we are born we are born with a mind. Just our mind starts when we are born. Yeah?
Somehow. And it’s a product of the brain or something like that. If this is true, it may be true, then all the Buddha’s teachings are wrong and the Buddha’s just nonsense and there’s no point getting enlightened because enlightenment doesn’t exist. But one of the fundamental teachings or insights of the Buddha that and therefore something that the Buddha emphasized in his teachings and all the teachings are related to is that every effect that happens, everything that exists has a cause and the nature of the effect depends on the nature of the cause. So physical matter cannot create the mind.
The brain cannot create the mind. Our parents have created our body. There’s no dispute about that. But our parents did not create our mind. Physical matter, our parents’ physical matter, the brain that developed within us is something physical.
It cannot create mind because mind is not physical. It has none of the characteristics of physical matter. Mind is that which is clear, it is formless and it knows. Body doesn’t know anything. It has no ability to know anything.
Physical matter doesn’t know stuff. It doesn’t experience anything. It doesn’t feel anything. The body feels things now only because it’s connected to consciousness but you take the consciousness away, e. G.
You take a dead body, a dead body doesn’t feel anything. One second after a body is alive, it’s dead. So you could say it’s exactly the same, virtually the same. But while it’s technically alive, it can feel. The moment there is the absence of consciousness, the body doesn’t feel a single thing because it can’t.
It’s the consciousness that knows and feels and experiences. So physical matter that can’t and never will know, feel, experience which is something solid and has dimensions and limitations and is impermanent and breaks apart cannot create something which is without form, shape, without color, indestructible and has the nature of knowing, feeling and experiencing. This is the Buddhist view. So and the only thing that can create mind is something that has the same characteristics as mind. And the only thing that has the same characteristics as mind is guess what?
Mind. And someone else’s mind can’t create our mind because you can’t break a bit of the mind off to make start a new one. Even though some I’m sorry. I always make this pathetic always make the same pathetic jokes. Maybe our mother said soon after we were born that she lost her mind when she gave birth to us.
That’s only figurative. She didn’t lose part of her mind and it went into us. That’s just not possible because the mind isn’t physical. Like space, you can’t chop space up. You can’t break a bit of space off and put it over there.
So the only thing that can create mind is our mind. Why does our mind exist today? Is because it the continuum of yesterday’s mind. Yesterday’s mind produced today’s mind. Sorry.
Yes. That’s right. Yesterday’s mind produced today’s mind. Last week’s mind produced this week’s mind. Last year’s mind created this year’s mind.
This life’s mind was created by the mind of the previous life. Because before we came out of the womb, we were in the womb. And in the womb there was consciousness. And one moment before our consciousness was in the fetus in the womb, the mind was existing. It wasn’t created at that time, it was existing before, a moment before.
And where was that moment of consciousness? Just well, yeah, roughly speaking in the previous life. In another body, in a previous life. Going back and back and back without any beginning. The mind never started.
It is quite literally beginningless. Nothing else, no one else caused it, it’s just this beginningless continuum of consciousness. So even if beginninglessness is difficult to wrap the mind around, one can try and think about how what causes mind is mind. And so what caused this life’s mind is last life’s mind in the same continuum, not someone else’s mind in a previous life, but our own mind, previous continuum in a previous life. And in previous life, our mind just like now was in a body.
And this body that we have was created by the mother of this life. And in immediate previous life, we had a body. Our mind was in a body. You know? Reincarnation.
It was in the flesh. Carne. Reincarnate. Yeah? It was in the in the flesh.
It was in a lump of stuff which we call a body. And that body was produced by a mother. So we’ve had at least one other mother apart from the one of this life. But actually before that life, the mind was in another body and that body was produced by a mother. So we’ve actually got two other mothers apart from the mother of this life.
And before that, it was in another body and before that the mind, the continuum of the mind was in another body produced by another mother going back and back and back and back into beginningless time. So we’ve had not billions, not trillions, but trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and billions and gillions and zillions of previous bodies, previous mothers. That is all sentient beings have been our mother at least once. How about that? But the book actually says that every sentient being has not only been our mother one time but many times.
The mother of this life has been our mother many times. So our mother of this life has been our human mother many times. When we were born as an animal, our mother of this life was our mother animal. Yeah, animal mother. God, mother animal.
Animal mother. Like, yeah, cockroach mum, cow mom, dog mom. When we were born a dog, the mother of this life was a dog and was our mother. It was a cockroach mother, snake mother, shark mother, horse mother, mouse mother, rat mother, cat mother. Oh, yeah.
And every and every sentient being the same. Every sentient being has been our mother many times. human mother, animal mother, preta mother, desire realm god mother. Not in the hells. You don’t have a mom in the hells.
This is what follows from understanding the Buddha’s view of what mind is. That is this beginningless continuum. And of course, also the thing to try to consider is firstly to try and understand that, that if mind exists, it goes back beginninglessly. It hasn’t been created by anything physical. It hasn’t been created by something else, some other mind.
It can’t be. But that mind has always been in bodies. So we’ve always had different mothers, billions of mothers. So everyone in this room has quite literally been your mother. A few times.
What happens when we’re in the state? Where is the mind? Well, is a state of mind. The Bardo state is a state of mind. We don’t have a mother in the Bardo state.
Like I said, don’t have a mother in the hell realms. You don’t have a mother in the other. There is, you know, those people who know there are the desire realm gods, the realms of the desire gods. So there are six types of desire realm gods. After all these years I still don’t know but I think it’s only in the first, second or third of those where one has parents.
The others you are spontaneously born there and also in the form and formless realms you are spontaneously born there. You don’t have parents and ordinary bodies. But otherwise the mind has a body and that’s produced by mother. And who are these mothers? All sentient beings.
And the point is that, or a point to also think about to sort of strengthen that is that I I was this is not such a nice thing to put. I don’t know how to put it nicely or properly, but well, for example, my mother died now more than twenty years ago, but in my mind, she’s she’s my mother. It’s not like I say I didn’t have a mother. My mother isn’t alive now, but I I have a mother. There’s this being who who was my mother, so she never stops being that.
Right? That being has has been my mother, so no matter how many years she is dead, she doesn’t stop being my mother. So some of our mothers have been only dead a short time, some have been have passed away a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred, four hundred, a million, a billion years ago. But can you say there’s a point where that you say, oh, that person was never my mother? You can’t.
So the difference between the mother of this life and all the other mothers is just simply time. Otherwise, there’s no difference in reality. So that’s the first point to try and think about is that every sentient being has been our mother. Of course, it also follows that every sentient being has been our father and every sentient being has been our brother because this time, because saṃsāra is beginningless. It’s been going on without beginning, so that’s a long time.
So there has been time for every sentient being to have been our mother, every sentient there’s been time for every sentient being to be our father, to be our have to have been our brother, our sister, our best friend, our doctor, our nurse, our teacher. There’s been time for every sentient being to have sacrificed their life for us, to have saved our life, to have done every possible good thing to help us. So that’s what we’re encouraged to think about when we think of, look at, speak to any sentient being that this person has been my mother, you know, has been immensely kind to me. This person has been my mother. And so and this leads to the second cause.
Okay. Any questions? Comments? Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Where was our mind before bodies existed? Well, they have always existed.
Yeah but the Buddhist view there’s more than just this planet. There’s many human planets or realms and other realms to get born in. The view of the evolution on this planet this doesn’t really contradict with the Buddhist view because as the apes and the different kinds interbred and there was what Neanderthals and Homo erectus and Homo sapiens and I don’t know what and these and that and then you have human beings. So as people, well as these beings, these sentient beings became more involved then due to the karma different consciousnesses would be born in those beings and eventually when human beings evolved and sentient beings with good karma will be reborn as human beings. You don’t have to say good karma.
There’s no bad bodhicitta. No. Not bodhicitta. Some good karma created some good actions. Definitely.
Yes. Definitely to have a good rebirth like we have and to meet the teachings and so on, that depends on lots of good karma, sure. Actually in the teachings it says even just to hear the word bodhicitta you have to have an enormous amount of merit. Because as I often have said so many times already here, you know, the vast majority of human beings on this planet will never hear the word Buddha or bodhicitta. Let alone know what they mean.
They will never even hear the words in their entire life. So to hear the word Buddha or bodhicitta and then on top of that to even actually know, have some idea what that means is incredible. Incredible merit. And then to learn about how to actually generate bodhicitta you have to have lots and lots of merit. Yes, yes.
But obviously, the mind as well can go into an evolution where we all same beings that we are going to have bodhicitta and we are going to Well technically the mind itself doesn’t evolve because from a Buddhist point of view the mind is perfect. Even in the mind of a cockroach the mind itself is absolutely perfect and pure and complete. But that perfect mind is obscured. So what looks like an evolution is actually just getting rid of all of those hindrances, obscurations so that that perfect mind can manifest. Good.
The physical body is something that can perhaps evolve and get better but the mind itself can’t get better. What we’re doing is just getting rid of the garbage obscuring this perfect mind. Okay? Because the Buddha was also, the historical Buddha was also at one point an ordinary suffering limited miserable sentient being. Yes.
But there are still ordinary miserable suffering sentient beings. Rapidly moving along. Oh yes, okay so the second cause of generating bodhicitta is remembering the kindness of the mother. So the question arises since if one can understand and accept the logic that everyone has been our mother, everyone’s been our father, brother, sister, best friend, incredibly kind to us, etc, etc, then why focus on focusing on the kindness of the mother, that every sentient being has been the mother? And the reason for this is that in general, this is only in general because unfortunately it’s not always the case, but in general mothers give unconditional love to their child.
Unfortunately, it is the case that not all mothers are kind to their children and maybe some of you here have had that experience where your mother hasn’t been very kind and loving and so on. So that becomes a little difficult in this case. But in that case, you can take someone who has been very kind to you in your life such maybe your father or a brother or a sister or even anyone who has really helped you in this life and taken care of you and then you can use that person as an example. Think, actually just like this person really nurtured me and protected me and cared for me, every sentient being has done that life after life. But Lama Zopa Rinpoche makes the point that for those people who who have had a difficult relationship with their mother, One thing to focus on as an act of kindness of this mother is firstly that she did keep us in her womb.
This is the first kindness of all mothers is that she kept us in her womb and gave birth to us. And because she did that, which she didn’t have to do, especially these days, I mean in the past it was very difficult for women physically and socially to have abortions etc. Women have always done this no matter what. Or some women. But now it’s very easy.
But our mother didn’t. She kept us. So that’s incredibly kind because by simply having this human body, we have a precious human rebirth and we’ve met the Dharma, have maybe some faith in it, the chance to practice it. So that opens up the whole possibility of freedom from suffering and making our life incredibly meaningful for ourselves and others. So that’s all to the fact that we have this body which comes from the kindness of our mother.
So that’s one thing to think of. Another area is to try and reflect that and not deny that maybe one’s Mother didn’t care for one and didn’t do various things. But one thing to consider is that our mothers are just ordinary sentient beings. They are suffering, deluded and although it’s often said that mothering comes naturally, in some ways this is not necessarily true, that no person just knows how to be a perfect mother. I don’t think any mother knows how to be a perfect mother.
They just try. You just have to do stuff as it goes along. So some mothers, because of their upbringing, their own mental problems, their own limitations, they can only take care a little bit. Whereas other people can do it a lot. Maybe one’s mother who one felt didn’t care for one cared as much as she could.
Also another way to look at things which is again not to deny that things happened or didn’t things that should have happened didn’t happen is that sometimes apart from people not being able to express their love and concern because of all sorts of limitations within themselves. Some things they do that parents do which we interpret in a negative way is actually their expression of their love and concern. It may not be what we want and it may not even be beneficial for us, but it’s what that person thinks is right. They did it because they thought this is what will benefit my child. It was their expression of concern and love.
We may not have felt it that way because it’s not what we wanted or it may not have been beneficial for us, but we should consider maybe our mother thought it was. She really thought it was. Anyway, that is a huge complicated area but some things to think about. This applies not just to mothers but fathers and brothers. We have all these things where we expect things from people and don’t get it and while we’re expecting one thing we may get another thing but we don’t see that as kindness because it’s not what we’re expecting or what we’re wanting or whatever.
So we don’t see all these things. Also especially as a child we don’t understand. I know when I was a child it never occurred to me that my mother and father didn’t know how to perfectly take care of me. I just assumed they knew everything about how to take care of me and would totally dedicate one hundred percent of their time to taking care of me. I never had any thought, especially when I was very young, of how much time and energy was required looking after me.
I just I just took it for granted. But it’s, you know, it’s a huge amount of work taking care of a kid. That’s why I became a monk. Yeah. Huge amounts of energy and and yeah.
But but but and yeah. Some easy for some people but very difficult for others because of all sorts of things. Finances, emotional reasons, all sorts of reasons. But mom tries, she tries. Anyway, so what we should think about, so if we’ve had a reasonably okay relationship with our mom, we should try think about all the ways our mother has been kind to us, from the time we were very small up to now.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche points out there are four general areas you can think about of how the mother of this life has been kind and the first one is that simply she gave us our body. And then the second one is that she took care of us when we were helpless. human babies are probably the most helpless kind of baby sentient beings of all. We’re really pathetic. We’re really hopeless.
Know, baby animals are up and walking and stuff after a few minutes. We’ve you know, takes us a year to do it. Totally hopeless. You know, if we’re not looked after twenty four hours a day practically, we’re doomed. And our mother did that and always listening, you know.
Fifty kids can be screaming but a mother can recognize her child calling out, completely attuned to those things. So our mother, when we were really helpless, took care of us in so many ways. So it’s really important to try. Even if we can’t actually remember those things we can logically understand all the different things that our mother did to protect us as a tiny child. And even when we weren’t a tiny child, our mother tried to protect us from all the harms in the world.
First, it was mainly just physical things when we were very, very small and helpless. Then when we get a little bit older, our mom tries to protect us from other people and all the stuff that goes on. So one should think about those things, of how how that happened. Then in addition to actually protecting us in every way and taking care of us, feeding us and clothing us and washing us and washing our clothes, You think of all the clothes your mother washed for you, all the the meals your mother cooked for you. Yeah.
All the time she wiped our snot and wiped our bum and all that stuff happily, fairly happily. She did it anyway. And then there’s how she calls it what leading us in the way of the world. She taught our mother taught us how to get on in life starting from just the most basic things of teaching us how to speak. The reason we can speak is because our mother spent hours saying words to us.
You know, our dad did too, maybe brothers and sisters, but our mom did that. And she taught us how to walk. And then she taught us how to wash ourselves and how to eat and how to put out our clothes. Yeah? The most basic things that are necessary to get on in life.
You know, how to, you know, keep clean so we don’t stink, so people will talk to us, and, you know, right? And and then she tells us how to be polite, say thank you, you know, please. I I didn’t I didn’t hear please. Our mother teaches us all those things. Makes us do our homework, tries to make us a nice person so that we will get on in the world, make friends, get an education, don’t take drugs, comb your hair, dress nicely.
We may not want to dress the way our mother dresses us but she wants us to look nice so we will be happy. Mum has a conception of what will make us happy. It’s her concept. She can’t get out of that conception because that’s her thing. Know, that’s the mould she’s been born in just like we are in one.
You know? So she wants us to do this and do that and behave like this and wear this and have nice friends and a nice job and all of these things because she wants us to be happy and get on and succeed. So she does all these things for us or tries to. She interferes with life perhaps, trying to make us hoping us to be happy. Yeah.
And then the other thing, the fourth thing is to consider is that in doing all of these things from carrying us in her womb, giving birth to us, taking care of us when we’re helpless, taking care of us when we’re a little child, as a teenager, as a young adult, even when we’re fully grown, when things go wrong, we run to mom. I’ve heard mum say the only time my son, oh, it’s my son calling, something must be wrong. Girlfriends just left him or something like that. Mom always responds as best she can. So in doing all of these things, our mom suffered in various ways physically, mentally, financially, emotionally, incredible worries and fears.
We didn’t want her to worry or fear that you can’t stop moms worrying about things. But, you know, a lot of suffering for us. So it’s really important to really meditate on remembering these things, all these little small details I often when I get onto this topic. Like I mentioned, just one little thing I often remember my family we didn’t have much money at all and just occasionally my mother would buy some steak. I can’t remember, not very often each year and it was only a small amount and she always had the smallest bit and every single time she would always cut a bit.
My mother was quite a chubby lady, she definitely liked to eat but every time she would cut off from her smallest bit and give some to me. Always, every time because I was the baby of the family. Big baby. Yeah. So that’s what moms do.
You know? It’s it’s just little thing that you may not notice as a kid. You don’t sort of you just take these things for granted. But there’s so many things our mom does like that sacrificing things. Yeah.
So many. Many things we we will never know that our mother may be sacrificed or suffered for us, But she did it without any thought. Just did it. Just what you do. So it’s really good to try and think of all these things and realize how kind our mother is and how much we depend on her, have depended on her.
Yeah. So the and and the point of that is to then realize that actually every sentient being has been equally kind, equally kind. And even the mother of this life who maybe in this life wasn’t kind, maybe was even very unkind, in previous lives she was a perfect mother to us. Because you can look, you know, when you go around the streets and things, you can see moms with kids, little babies or little kids, and you can see these really beautiful things that happen between moms and kids or dads and kids too. And you can think that that happened, you know, I experienced that from other people.
I don’t remember it but happened to me as well. In fact, that person in a previous life did the same thing to me. But the the the bad mother of this life was a wonderful mother to me in previous lives for sure. So every sentient being has been this incredibly wonderful mother. There’s a fantastic picture, very famous picture that’s in at least I saw it in the National Geographic of Japanese mother holding her baby who was born after the Hiroshima bomb.
This baby is completely deformed and is holding her in this this big tub of water. And, you know, the look on the mother of of just just this incredible love that her child is like the most beautiful being in the entire world. That’s how our mom see us. As I often mention, also I just say the same thing, sorry. A friend of mine, a monk, he used to visit prisoners in the in the for the mentally insane, you know, and oh, no.
That that was one place he visited. Anyway, he said he once went to this place where all these, you know, these these mass murderers and everything, all these huge muscle bound guys with, you know, huge tats, and they’re all murderers and criminally insane and everything like that. Then their mothers would be there sort of combing their hair and telling them to look nice and stuff because their mom loved them. That was just their boy. No matter what they were like, that was their son, their child.
They just see this. They love them. That’s what moms do generally. They love us. So every sentient being has loved us and taken care of us just like the mother of this life.
Suddenly, know, dads are very nice too. They do all sorts of kind things. So every sentient being has been our father, also our brother, our sister. Sentient beings have done everything for us. We just couldn’t survive without them.
I have got to finish this bit. The third cause Every sentient being has been one’s mother. Mothers are incredibly kind, therefore all sentient beings have been incredibly kind to me. So the more we reflect on that, this leads to the third cause which is the more we recognize how much kindness we have received, not just in this life but in all our past lives, and how much we depend on that kindness, we thrive on it, we need it for our survival but we thrive on it, we flourish in receiving this kindness, then the more we see that, then the third cause arises which is wanting to repay that kindness. Because this is something that naturally if someone is kind to us, if we recognize that someone is doing something helpful, kind, thoughtful towards us, if we’re not totally caught up in self-cherishing, we will want to repay that kindness.
There’s a sense of wanting to return to be nice to that person to some way. If someone smiles at us, we tend to want to smile back. Right? So the more we think of and recognize and realize how much sentient beings have been kind, thought wanting to repay that kindness will arise. At this point, yeah, that’s the third cause really of just really allowing that thought to arise by allowing oneself to see how much one depends on the kindness of others, especially the kindness of a mother.
And this is just a little story I’ve already told a few times here, but a friend of mine who is a nun, an American nun, She was telling me the story about how she first she did a Kopan course, a month long course at Kopan monastery which is Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s monastery in Nepal in Kathmandu. And She had a private meeting interview with Lama Zopa Rinpoche and she had one particular question she wanted to ask Rinpoche because she said she had always, well for a long time she had thought, she had a very good relationship with her family and she always used to think about if she won a million dollars what she could buy her family members to repay their kindness, to show her well she didn’t use that expression but to show her love and appreciation for her family. So when Rinpoche was talking about bodhicitta and blah blah blah in the course and everything as Rinpoche normally does. So she went to see Lama Zopa and asked him, What should I do to repay the kindness of my family? To her surprise Rinpoche immediately closed his eyes which he tends to do and seemed to be meditating.
So that was interesting but it went on and on and on and it looked like Rinpoche had started to fall asleep or something. So this friend of mine started sort of thinking about what would she do if she had a million dollars, what would she buy to help her family. And in the middle of this reverie, all of a sudden, Lama Zopa Rinpoche opened his eyes, leaned towards her and said, But a million dollars wouldn’t repay their kindness, would it? So what would repay the kindness? This is the thing to think about.
The third cause is generating that wish to repay that kindness and also thinking, How can I repay the kindness of not just the mother of this life but all mother sentient beings? So even if this doesn’t generate bodhicitta, because there are other causes that we have to go, but just doing those things will make one a kinder person, a more appreciative person, hopefully, or it should if we reflect. These thoughts are meant to be reflected on over and over again until the realization comes. And even when the realization comes, one needs to think about these things again because if we don’t feed that realization, we can lose it. Some people think you only have to hear these teachings once and Oh, I’ve got that, I understood that.
Or you and then you meditate on it once and that’s enough. But it’s you know to get through our self-cherishing which comes back again and again we have to think about these things over and over again and and really, yeah, let them move us, move our hearts so they really strike a very very deep chord within us. Okay. Thank you very much. Tea break.
Suppose after the tea break go directly to your group. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars go straight to your discussion group.