Of all our relationships there is none which has more depth nor more intimacy than that which we had with our mothers. For nine sweet months, hidden beneath our mothers’ hearts, we grew in wondrous complexity. Bones and sinews appeared and took shape into that most rare of forms, the human. "As above, so below," the electrical life that was to become our minds sparkled into being like little stars. Our hearts began to beat together into a synchronized rhythm with that of our mothers. And miracle of miracles!: Our mothers fed and nourished us with their life’s blood from their own beating hearts. If we yearn for Nirvana it is perhaps because we had but a brief taste of it in those holy and secret chambers within the temples of our mothers’ bodies.
And then we were born...
Cast out into the world, we struggled for the warmth we once knew. Our senses assaulted by light and sound. Our lungs screamed with shock as we experienced the first of those many separations that will fill our lives. No longer would we receive our breath from our mothers through that sacred lifeline, that living tie that binds -- for the umbilicus has been cut by the cold steel of a doctor’s knife. Millions of years of evolution, having hardwired our brains, has prepared us for this decisive moment. Spontaneously our eyes struggle to search out for a pattern of a smiling, caring face -- that first face we all had need to look for -- our mothers’ face. Our mouths begin to pulsate to receive the nourishing milk whose origin too is from that heart which now beats apart from us. In time that pulsation will become but a faded memory in the act of a gentle kiss that we place on our mothers’ brow, a recollection from a time now forgotten.
This is our first sorrow, our first separation. The first of many that will end only with that last sorrow when we are placed into the dark womb of the earth. But it is also the first joy. Birth is the sign and celebration of life as we enter into that vast fellowship of humanity which searches for a greater and fuller life. A life that unites all things, all beings, together, into a deeper unity of which that between a mother and her child is but a token. It is with and through our mothers that we first experience that wondrous Dharma teaching of our true interbeing. We were two, yet we were also one in the interchange of our lives. Total dependency. Total outpouring. Total emptying of self into self. Sunyata! And if we were lucky our mothers’ love guided us, taught us, as we learned to give of ourselves to our family, our friends, our spouses, our children, and to all, within that great web of interconnectedness which myth has called the Net of Indra, the Circle of Life, the Ocean of All Being, wherein each depends on each, outpours to each, empties into each, and receives from each, the gifts that come from that first gift of life.
A few weeks ago we celebrated within the happiness of Hanamatsuri, that beautiful festival of flowers, the birth of our Lord Buddha. The stories of Buddha’s birth have grown over the centuries and yet there is a touch of sadness in them. As our flowers wilt and fade so too did Gautama Siddhartha’s mother. Our Lord Buddha knew his mother but for those first nine brief months and then she was no more. As he grew into childhood and adulthood how he must have longed for her, missed her, mourned for her. And mourned for himself. There is a beautiful spiritual from the African-American tradition:
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
A long ways from home, a long long ways from home....
Oh hear me I feel like a motherless child, Ooo
A long long ways from home.
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost gone,
Way up in that heavenly land,
True believer.
A long ways from home.
How extraordinary! Such pain. Such loss. Such longing. We yearn deeply for that "heavenly land," that pure land; to be a "True Believer," a person of True Entrusting, True Shinjin. Yet no land can be pure unless the love of our Beloved Parent is there. All humanity is united by that first love, that truest love, expressed through our mothers’ love. A love, often lost, often forgotten, but planted deep within the beating of our own hearts. A love that will never end even when hearts beat no more. For such a love has within it the very Life, the very Light, that fills the Cosmos throughout the Ten Quarters and will continue to pour forth though stars end and galaxies fade. Even if countless universes spring into being and after countless eons disappear, this Life, this Light, will remain.
Young Siddhartha grieved in his own way. And that may be why his father tried to assuage his son with a life of distraction and ease, to take his son’s mind from a grief that he too bore. And perhaps, as children are wont to do, Siddhartha may well have blamed himself for his mother’s loss. "Were I not born would she not still be...." Little knowing that deep in every mother’s heart is a love so great that it would give itself to the very end for her child that it might live, even if it were without her.
And so Siddhartha grew. In time questions began to direct his heart and mind. For he was not alone in his pain. The great sorrows he saw without, matched the sorrows so carefully hid within. And in time he found love in a woman, and he wed, and soon he begot a child. And surely a great fear must have arose within him. Will the good wife that he loves also die in childbirth? Will he become to his child what his father had become to him? A fetter that will keep him from probing the mysteries of life that troubled him? And when that day of birth came he saw his son resting tenderly in the arms of his mother, both alive together in the interconnectedness of their being. Quietly he retreated from them. Quietly he left the palace. Quietly he began the search for life’s deepest meanings. Not just for himself, but for his son, and for us all -- we, the sons and daughters of our mothers.
And in the fullness of time he found the answers. The mysteries of life’s sorrows fell before him, and the light of Dharma dawned in his eyes. He awoke, into a new birth, into the light. No longer would he be called Siddhartha. A new name for a new life: Buddha, Awake, Alive! Enlightenment! Enlivenment! Birthed anew in human form. And when that spirit of darkness and death arose before him to challenge this light Buddha merely touched the earth as a witness to what he found. And Mara fled. For what is the earth but the mother of us all? Mother Earth! Mother Nature! All that gives birth, all that gives life, gives testimony to the Dharma. Death and darkness is defied by that Might which is Motherhood.
For fifty years Buddha preached and ministered, and he did not forget the needs of mothers. He taught Kisa Gotami that she was not alone in her grief when she lost her child. Mahapajapati, his beloved aunt, who raised him when he lost his mother, he made into the first nun. His male monks complained bitterly, prophesying that this would bring the end of Buddhism, and yet he welcomed womenfolk into the life of the Dharma. For is it not fitting that they who can give life should receive that true life that is Dharma? And so he went and lived the ways of compassion. And in so living he so taught.
And then a terrible day came when there was a mother that was in great need. Queen Vaidehi, the wife of King Bimbisara, friend of the Buddha, had been thrust into prison by her son. Ajatasatru had rose up against his father to seize the throne and now he plotted his father’s death. Vaidehi sought to intervene and save her husband, and her false son turned against her. Alone in prison she sent word to the Buddha, to the Tatagatha. He, who in going to Suchness yet comes to us, came to her. Before the Awakened One she unburdened herself. Weary of this world, she longs for a land of true peace that knows no sorrow. "Oh Buddha, is there such a place?" And the Buddha reveals to her carefully the mystery of that Light and Life which is the Dharmakaya, the Dharma Body, the Buddha Nature, brought now to focus through the story of that Buddha of Life and Light, Amida Buddha. Gently he reveals the Other Power which empowers all. And in so revealing he plants in her a new hope. He presents diverse ways of reaching this Pure Land, intense meditations and practices. And for those of lesser grades and abilities he presented easier steps, and then easier steps. Till finally he reveals the simplest of ways, the easiest of ways, that even the worst of worst could do. That by simply calling upon the name of Light and Life given in Amida Buddha, one could find relief and release. How Vaidehi rejoiced at this loving gift of the Worthy One. For in that final step a way was shown that would redeem even her erstwhile son. And in time that son, unworththy of such a mother, ridden with darkest guilt for his evil deeds, called upon the aid of the Buddha and found his way.
And from those teachings that eased a mother’s tears was launched that easy way for us all. Great sages: Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Donran, Doshaku, Zendo, Genshin, and Honen would uplift that teaching in their own ways. Until finally a simple man, a man who was opened towards women, a monk who married and knew the joys and pains of family, would take that teaching and make it clearer for one and all. Many are the writings of Shinran Shonin. Yet I think that it is in his beautiful hymns in his Jodo Wasan that he rises to such glorious heights:
Ko no haha o omou ga gotoku nite,
Shujo Butsu o okusure ba,
Genzen torai too kara zu,
Nyorai o haiken utagawa zu.
If, as the child thinks of his mother,
The beings think of the Buddha,
They will doubtlessly see the Tathagata
In the present life or in the near future.
"If the child thinks of his mother..." How wondrous! In the West there is a saying that one must become as a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven. But Shinran sharpens it further within his own native language. For his meaning is not just of being a child, but of being an infant. For infants, having not developed the discriminating mind, the mind of duality, are single-mindedly focused on one thing and one thing alone: their mothers. We too are also called to be single-mindedly focused on Amida Buddha, focused on Light and Life, grasping Light and Life -- as infants grasp their mothers, never letting go. And when strength fails us -- for our grasping, being but yet a power of our self, is not strength enough -- we are still clutched to our mother’s hearts by their loving hands. And Amida’s hands will never let us fall, and will never let us down.
But yet even after Shinran’s guidance it is still the way of the world to take being single-minded with being simple-minded. And the Myokonen confound the world for this error. For in their beguiling simplicity is a profundity that would make any mother proud. For all the learned talk and debate on the meaning of Shinjin, of True Entrusting, to take what comes of Other Power and to make it into a self-power of the mind, an honest one wrote:
"What is shinjin
I don't know.
Oyasama does everything;
Oyasama does everything."
What a blessed word is Oyasama! Saving Parent! Beloved Parent! The Myokonen have seen what at heart Amida is, our Oyasama, our Loving Parent. Our mothers have done everything for us. Amida has done everything for us. What more is there for us to do? To say "Oyasama" is to say it all. To say "Mother" is to say it all. If there is any Shinjin in us it is in that heart-felt saying of "Oyasama." In turning to our Oyasama we have learned the lessons our mothers would have us learn. If your mother is here today, hold her to your heart with that holy word "Oya." If your mother is not, whether you are estranged, separated by distance, or by death, hold her still in your heart. For her heart and yours will always beat as one, and in that unity of hearts is the peace of that Pure Land, our true Mother Land.
Namu Oyasama!
Namu Amidabu!
Notes:
The Title "Oyez! Oyasama!!" is a juxtaposition of an old English word and a Japanese word. "Oyez", often pronounced as "Oyey", means "Hear Ye!" The sense then being "Listen! It’s our Parent!"
The translation from Shinran’s Jodo Wasan, no. 115 appears at: http://www.gatenby.id.au/notes/jw115.htm. This site: "Notes on the Nembutsu" provides beautiful meditations on each of Shinran’s hymns with depth and clarity.
The poem "What is Shinjin..." appears in "Anjin, Zuiken’s Sayings" by Zuiken Inagaki. Zuiken, a scholar, writes in the spirit of the Myokonen.
For insights into the impact of Buddha’s mother on his life I highly recommend "The Feeling Buddha" by David Brazier.