Are You My . . .?

Not long ago I was talking with a Buddhist monk.

It’s not every day I talk to such people. The city where I live has only a small Buddhist community, and I’m not connected with it.

A couple weeks ago I was attending meetings for my professional organization–the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care/Association canadienne de soins spirituels (CASC/ACSS).

CASC/ACSS is a national multi-faith organization that trains and certifies Spiritual Care Practitioners (formerly Chaplains) who work in all kinds of organizations–hospitals, prisons, the military, and some corporate environments.

But this isn’t really what I want to talk about.

At the CASC/ACSS meetings, I met a colleague who is an ordained Buddhist monk.

Over lunch we were talking, and he told me about a Tibetan meditation where you bring to mind the faces of everyone in your life. As you do this, you feel your way into the reality that either in this life or a past life, either literally or figuratively, each of those people has been your mother.

What? How could any of these people have been my mother? I already have a mother, and none of these is she!

My Buddhist colleague was careful to say, you don’t have to believe what you’re doing for it to be effective.

All the people in my life do not have to be my mother literally. But what if I began to build my relationships with them as if they were my mother?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know many people have difficult relationships with their mothers.

But, we cannot ignore the fact that all our mothers gave us life. They brought us into the world. Ideally, all mothers nurture and care for their children.

Ideally, all children love and care for their mothers. This is one way we return the nurture and care our mothers gave us early in and throughout our lives.

Again, I know this kind of relationship is elusive for many.

But, if I internalize the awareness that anyone or anything could be my mother, how would that change my relationship with that person or thing?

Now, I’m not a Buddhist, even though that tradition has had a significant influence on my spirituality. So, when my colleague told me about this practice, it was completely new to me.

However, it helped me see that if I were to construct my relationship with everything else as if I depended on it for my very existence, then I would go through life very differently.

Here’s another way of looking at this:

I would not be alive were it not for my mother and father.

They would not be alive were it not for their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

All my ancestors were shaped by their natural and/or urban environments. All my ancestors were shaped by their social, political, and economic situations.

All human beings are shaped by weather patterns, by the changing of the seasons, by solar flares, by galactic and intergalactic patterns of gravitation–and this is regardless of whether these realities are easy to relate to or not.

So, if I internalize the reality that I am dependent on all these things, from my ancestors to my neighbours, from the conditions of the soil to the ever-changing patterns of weather, and so on, then all of a sudden I cannot survive if I don’t work in partnership with each of these.

In the western world, however, we’ve believed for too long that the natural world is there to be exploited.

But, if we take my Buddhist colleague’s practice seriously, then the western perspective invites us to exploit and take advantage of our very own mother!

In doing so we’ve made her impoverished and destitute while we continue to harvest her bounteous fecundity to be used for our own advantage.

I don’t know about you, but sitting with that reality makes me feel defiled and dirty.

But sitting with these feelings also invites me to consider what a different kind of relationship with all my mothers might look and feel like.

The reality is, relationships must always be negotiated. They must emerge and evolve according to the interpersonal dynamics between the different individuals involved.

So what if my life became more oriented toward drawing out the best and the beautiful in everyone and everything I encountered?

What if I could see how every aspect of my life depends on the health and wellbeing of every other person and thing on earth?

What if I could work to build my own sense of health and wellbeing so I could help support the health and wellbeing of others?

What if through my own work I could become like a loving parent to others, nurturing and facilitating their growth while nurturing and facilitating my own growth at the same time?

Despite what we’re often taught in the West, relationships are inevitable.

We can either embrace or reject that reality.

If we choose to embrace that reality, that’s great; if we choose to reject it, who knows what might happen (perhaps we’re already seeing the consequences of such a decision in our collective experience . . .)?

Regardless, I wonder what might happen if we learned to ask all reality a question that titles a book I’ve often read to my children:

“Are you my mother?

If we learn to perceive right, perhaps we might feel all reality whisper back:

“Yes!”

Disclaimer: The advice and suggestions offered on this site are not substitutes for consultation with qualified mental or spiritual health professionals. The perspectives offered here are those of the author, not of those professionals with whom readers might have relationships as clients or patients. In crisis situations, readers are encouraged to contact these professionals for appropriate support and treatment if needed.