A Morning with DL and SG

Tibetan Buddhists believe, I think, that we sentient beings have reincarnated so many times over the countless centuries of our existence, that almost anyone and everyone you run across was your mother in a previous life.  It is the odd foundation for the practice of lovingkindness--a sincere and heartfelt loving disposition toward all sentient beings.  Not as romantic as the numerous stories and screenplays tracing lovers encountering one another in a series of lifetimes.  But a mother's love is often more passionate and more enduring than any romantic love.  It seems to overcome almost any hardship, to forgive so many mistakes and to persist, whether the child bothers to attend to it daily by remaining close by or simply carries it in one's heart as a little-recognized foundation of one's sense of self-worth.

Expressions like "he had a face only a mother could love" try to put a comical veneer on this kind of love, but only a few are able to truly cultivate such an all-accepting, all-encompassing love for all the sentient beings they encounter, from the smallest insect biting their skin, to the smelliest animal at the zoo, to the meanest of humans on this earth.  But that is what the Buddha calls upon all people to do.  to offer lovingkindness to all, no matter what they may do, or might have done to you, for they may once have been your mother in a previous existence.  That may or may not be a fact, but it is a way of helping us understand the kind of face we must strive to put on for the world if we wish to achieve enlightenment--in other words, all the dislikes, the wrong actions taken toward other people and sentient beings, get in the way.  We carry them around with us, and they cloud our attempts at insight into the nature of existence.  The Buddha said "only good acts bring wisdom."

Sounds pretty tough to me as I meditate this rainy morning.  The thoughts that arise include what to do with those not-so-loving-kind-benevolent feelings that I direct at  my own self.  Self-criticism for my mistakes, my meanness, carelessness in relating to the others (and the universe) around me; all these seemed to be the only thoughts arising.  Plenty of that to go around, though, so I think I'll try to let it all go and gaze out this window at this fine grey, rainy morning.

P.S.  DL and SG?  The Dalai Lama and Siddhartha Gautama (aka Buddha, The Enlightened One)