When Siddhartha was tempted by Mara

The Buddha versus Mara: The Buddhist "Satan" and his three tempting daughters

You can have whatever you desire

(Buddha's Wisdom) April 26, 2025: 🔍 BUDDHISM'S "DEVIL" AND HIS THREE SEDUCTIVE DAUGHTERS. Did you know Buddhism has its own version of the Devil, a Satan figure?

TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 Buddhism's version of the Devil
• 02:01 Meet Mara, Buddhism's ultimate villain
• 06:44 The first daughter Tanhā (Craving)
• 11:08 The second daughter Arati (Boredom/Discontent)
• 15:30 The third daughter Rāga (Passion/Lust)
• 20:02 How the Buddha defeated Mara and his daughters
• 24:40 The daughters among us - modern applications

Mara, the Buddhist devil or chief demon, commands three daughters, who each specialize in a different type of temptation. Their tactics haven't changed in 2,600 years. They're still working on us today -- even through our smartphones.

Christian Sabrina Carpenter is sexy wholesome?

DISCOVER:

• The shocking parallels between Mara and Satan in religious mythology
• How the Buddha's legendary showdown with Mara's daughters reveals timeless psychological insights
• Why Mara's three daughters represent the most dangerous mind-traps humans fall into
• The surprising connection between ancient Buddhist warnings and modern digital addiction
• How the "I see you, Mara" technique can free us from these temptations today
• Ready to break free from the cycles keeping us stuck?

SOURCES:

• The Dhammapada, Sutta Nipata, Majjhima Nikaya, Anguttara Nikaya, Ādittapariyāya Sutta ("The Fire Sermon"), Satipatthana Sutta ("Discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness")

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#buddhism #mara #buddhistdevil #temptation #mindfulness #enlightenment #buddha #spiritualgrowth #mentalfreedom #craving #passion #boredom #buddhistmythology #ancientwisdom

• Matt, Buddha's Wisdom, April 26, 2025; Elizabeth Hurley, Brendan Frasier, remake of Bedazzled (2000); Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Forgiveness in Buddhism: Why should I?

But I can't forgive, Buddha, I just can't! Do you think I should pay Vishen $299 to be able to?

.

Did the Buddha teach forgiveness?

Anger seems good but feels terrible.

My Catholic mother once asked me, "Does Buddha recommended forgiveness the way Jesus Christ [Saint Issa] did?

I was stymied. I couldn't think of that as an emphasis or exact teaching, but I assured her the Dharma, as the Noble Eightfold Path, was suffused with such ideas.

I asked a monk, and he immediately said, "Yes." I said, "What do we call it, what's the word for it?"

Who's that under that tree?

"Khanti," he answered, "is the Pali word, long suffering patience and forbearance," pointing out that it is one of the Ten Perfections (pāramīs).

Those ten are what made the wandering ascetic Siddhartha the Buddha, the "Awakened One."

There's also a popular Buddhist saying in this regard:

"Forbearance is the highest virtue."

Ven. Khantipalo (Laurence Mills) had khanti

When I told my mom there was a specific teaching of forgiveness, she asked, "Oh, where do you suppose Buddha learned that?" implying that Buddhism borrowed the idea from Christianity (or Yazooism).

"Oh, I don't know, Mom, given that the Buddha was born and taught at least 500 years before God ever even thought of begetting Himself as Son." That shut that line of inquiry down. I followed up, "Mom, do you suppose God made the Buddha?"

Truth will out, like sun and moon.

"Well...."

"Didn't He make everything and everyone -- the Devil, evil, Mohammed, rebellious Jews, and atheists? And didn't you once say, 'God don't make no junk'?"

"That's just a saying to make kids feel better about themselves."

"Sure it is, Mom, sure it is."

It is the advice of three of India's Dharmic religions to be like the sandalwood tree, who when felled by the lumberjack's axe does what to that lumberjack and that axe? It sprinkles them with perfume.

I forgive you. - Me, too. - I feel much better.

Either way, the Buddha told us where he got his Teaching, his Dharma, this Doctrine-and-Discipline we follow in his footsteps, where he everything he taught from: He realized it as a natural law, a fixity, an impersonal orderliness of the universe he called karma-vipaka or "action and its results." (We always state "result" as plural because there's no action or deed that has only one result or fruit. The resultants are exponential:

It's mindboggling. Even one tiny good deed (free of greed, hatred/fear, delusion) redounds with many, many results. Sadly, the same can be said about tiny bad deeds (those motivated by greed, aversion, or delusion).

Abhidharma is Buddhist psychology (Zen).

While it sounds unfair, it is explained in the Abhidharma (the "Dharma in Ultimate Terms"). Each intentional action (karma) is preceded by an intention (cetana) that colors it, underlies it, motivates it, and gives us the ability to name it as "good" or "bad," "skillful" or "unskillful," "profitable" or "unprofitable."

One action, one deed, one karma, however small -- even just verbal or mental -- lays down a track in the mind. The tracks are called cittas, the "mind-moments," producing it, the impulsions or javanas, the cittas and cetasikas (or moments and mental concomitants).

Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? (Ajahn Brahm)
The sh* in our lives, should we complain or fertilize?

Judge not. Karma (our own deeds) will judge.

These each have the power to come to fruition when they find the opportunity (like seeds waiting to sprout and bear fruit), yielding welcome and unwelcome resultants.

This is why the Buddha over and over again made much of "karma," so much so that in his day he was never called a "Buddhist." He was called a Karmavadin, "a teacher of the efficacy of deeds."

What deeds did he commend, advise, and praise? Those actions free of traces of desire, aversion, and delusion (lobha, dosa, moha).

Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a
Brokenhearted World (by Pema Chödrön, as read by Claire Foy)

This is true even for bad people, who will enjoy good or mixed results when those deeds ripen. It is said that even success in crime is due to skillful karma of the past, not present unskillful karma like the crimes being committed. So even if one keeps doing bad, one is wise to do much good as well.

To forgive others is to be good to yourself.

Why? Imagine "bad" is like harsh salt in a container of fresh water. How will we ever get it all out? Even if most settles, there's still much in suspension. It will be hard to remove or swallow. BUT if we add more clean water, it will dilute that saltiness and make it bearable. Just so, a little bad and much good will be sufferable, bearable, maybe even not so unpleasant.

"To do all good (kusala),

to refrain from all bad (akusala),

this is the advice of all buddhas."

• Vishen, MindValley.com; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) collecting fake and real Buddha quotes, all of them good if not exact quotes

How to have The S-e-x Talk with your kids

TBS on YouTube (Seth MacFarlane's American Dad,), March 10, 2024; Seth Auberon, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY

Homer, rich Kurt wasn't Bean's worst parent.

Sex is too uncomfortable to talk about with my teenage son. Fortunately, some eighth graders in Beverly Hills got in trouble making porn and were unfairly made an example out of by being expelled from school, making this discussion a little easier.

Did world's worst mom kill Bean's dad?

Eighth grade is about 13, a year or two late for this pivotal, life-altering, father and son discussion. But the wife says I have to do it or he'll hear about it on the streets or worse, from his peers in school with their internet access, social media, iPhones, TikTok accounts, and sexting pics.

What if Patriarch Jesus got a tattoo? (Lev. 19:28)

Maybe we can just watch cartoons first and be surprised when American Dad breaks the ice by bringing up the subject first...before going too far and bringing up worse subjects in the world of today that I'll have to talk about with my daughter. No, that's her mom's job.

• VIDEO: A psychologist explains how to get out of a pattern of constant worry and rumination
• Courtney Love: Kurt Cobain's daughter's explosive never-before-seen deposition revealed; drugs, hoarding, dead pets (radaronline.com)

• 

  The prince was a better father.

  Wasn't Prince Siddhartha (who later became the Buddha) the worst father? - No, he was the best. - But he left. - Yes, but why did he leave? He did not leave, as many think, because he thought he would be a bad father and that he was doing his family a favor. He left to find what no one else could give them -- a solution to the problem of suffering (brought on by craving, karma, old age, and death).

• 

  Your father's back!! That's him! Go ask, Rahula.

  It strikes us all, and would have included all of Prince Siddhartha's his future subjects, his parents, his children (he may have had two boys), siblings (a half-brother and sister he grew up with), two or three moms (depending how one counts), many cousins (extended family of Scythians/Shakyians), and a longsuffering dad, who did as much as a father could do.
• At least that was true until the Buddha taught that there was one more thing. What more could a parent do for a child than King Suddhodana, the Buddha's father, did for Prince Siddhartha? A parent, beginning with the Buddha, could thereafter teach the child the Dharma, the Path to Freedom we now call Early Buddhism.
• Anyone for whom this is news must what the Buddha did seven years after his great awakening under the bodhi tree, his first turning of the wheel of the Dharma, and his establishing of a fourfold (composed of monks, nuns, and male and female disciples) assembly called the Sangha (spiritual community) to keep the Dharma in the world as long as possible, all of which had been his goal from past lives over four aeons up until his final rebirth.

The mom, Francine, on American Dad!

The Best of Stan Smith | American Dad | TBS

"My Purity Ball..." (American Dad! S12, E10)

(TBS) March 10, 2024: U.S. father Stan Smith (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) is an all-American CIA agent, husband, and dad. He can be pretty selfish, but when it comes down to it, all he wants is the best for his family: wife Francine, daughter Haley, son Steve, pet Klaus, and Roswell survivor Roger. Check out some of his best moments and comment. Watch American Dad on TBS. #AmericanDad #StanSmith #SethMacFarlane #TBS

Mother and daughter do unthinkable

They sell drugs for Big Pharma

Avoid Big Pharma's drugs

Mara, O, Mara (the defilements)

Eds., Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit of Mara (demon)

Mara's daughters Craving, Lust, Aversion

Etymology The word māra comes from the Sanskrit form of the root verb mṛ. Māra is a verbal noun from the causative root that means "causing death" or "killing" [4].

It is related to other words for "death" from the same root, such as Pali maraṇa and Sanskrit mṛtyu. [In English we have mort and mortuary, French le morte, Spanish Muerte.]

• Mara's daughter Arati, Arāti, Ārati, Ārāti (wisdomlib.org)

The latter is a name for Death personified and is sometimes identified as the kind judge Yama, the King of the Dead. The root mṛ is related to the Indo-European verbal root *mer, meaning "die, disappear" in the context of "death, murder, or destruction."

It is "very widespread" in Indo-European languages suggesting it to be of great antiquity, according to Mallory and Adams [5].

Four types of Māra

In traditional Buddhism, four or five metaphorical forms of Māra are given [6]:

• Kleśa-māra: Māra as the embodiment of all defilements (unskillful root intentions, underlying motives, pernicious emotions, kleshas, kilesas), such as greed, hate/fear, and delusion.
• Mṛtyu-māra: Māra as Death personified.
• Skandha-māra: Māra as metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence [explained in terms of the Five Aggregates clung to as self].
• Devaputra-māra: The deva (being of light, lit. "shining one") of the [top of the] Sensuous Sphere, who tried to prevent the Bodhisattva Siddhartha Gautama from from becoming a buddha by attaining liberation from the Cycle of Endless Rebirth (samsara) on the night of his great enlightenment.

Character

Early Buddhism acknowledged both a literal and psychological interpretation of "Mara" [7, 8].

• EDITOR'S NOTE: It is easy to believe nowadays that Mara is only a metaphor for the subtlety of the mental defilements. But this is contradicted by extensive texts describing his deeds. It would be very difficult to read the collection of Mara texts (Mara Samyutta in the fourth section of the SN, S.i.103 27) and come away thinking he is anything but real.
• Indeed, there are many maras, at least one in each world-system. The word may also refer to ogres (yakkhas), as Mara seems to be their chief, as on the night under the bodhi tree at the great awakening.
• In the Mara Sutra, Rādha asks the Buddha what is meant by "Māra.” Anything that perishes, answered the Buddha -- such as [the Five Aggregates clung to as self, namely] form (this body), feelings, perceptions, mental formation, and consciousness..." (S.iii.188.).
• FOR MUCH MORE ON THIS SUBJECT, SEE Māra

Mara is described both as an entity having an existence in the Sensuous Sphere (kāma-loka) [9] and coming down to interact with the Buddha and also as described in the description of Dependent Origination (pratītya-samutpāda) as, primarily, the guardian of passion and the catalyst for lust, hesitation, and fear that obstructs meditation among Buddhists.

The Denkōroku refers to him as the "One Who Delights in Destruction," which highlights his nature as a light being among the Parinirmitavaśavarti devas [10]. More

Who was the ascetic Siddhartha saw?

Geethanjali Kids (animation); Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

There have always been nomadic hermits (sramanas) apart from conceited brahmanas.

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Herman Hesse echoes the tale.

Any Westerner who learns about Buddhism usually learns it with the allegorical story of the Buddha's life, from Scythian prince to Awakene Oned. The location changed from Central Asia (Gandhara, Afghanistan, Shakya Land, called Kapilavastu).

When the prince, living a luxurious sheltered life with his white pony (Kanthaka), three seasonal capitals and palaces, his beautiful young bride (Bimba Devi or Yasodhara), excellent education, and many friends, relatives, and fellow Scythians the Sakas, saw the Four Signs, he knew it was time to leave on a spiritual quest for proto-India.

• ("India" was not a thing until Buddhist Emperor Ashoka united many smaller kingdoms and territories into one country, the Roseapple Land, Jambudvipa, or Bharat. Great Bharat or Mahabharat is said to have long existed, according to the Mahabharata, thousands of years earlier in and around the Indus Valley Civilization, Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and a civilization around Gandhara).

With each rebirth, many troubles follow.

The first three signs (aging, sickness, and death) shook him and made him lose interest in a life of distractions. If life was beset with such unsatisfactoriness, lack of fulfillment, and suffering, what was the point? What could he offer his people if he could not guide them to any escape from the inevitable?

But he saw a fourth sign (hermit, recluse, renunciate, wandering ascetic, monastic). The question arises, who in the heck was that guy? If the future Buddha, who would awaken seven years later and establish a monastic sangha or community of male and female wandering ascetics, had yet to create saffron robed monks, who was this person?

Scythian comb from Solokha, 4th century. Scythians were goldsmiths with numerous mines.

,

It's not a flaw in the story. It's an indication how far back the tradition of wandering asceticism or shramanas (shamans, who seek direct experience of the divine, knowledge and vision). Even in those times and in that place Brahmins (the high caste temple priests of the Vedic religion, Brahmanism, and later Hinduism) existed.

But here far in the northwest frontier of future-India, Brahmins were subordinated to nobles or warrior caste individuals like the Sakas, an exceedingly proud and haughty recently settled nomadic people from Sakastan in Scythia around modern Afghanistan (Bamiyan, Mes Aynak, and Kabul as likely the three seasonal capitals of what is collectively called Kapilavastu or Kapilavatthu, Kapil = Kabul. See ranajitpal.com).

So what was the ancient practice of spiritual nomads, the wandering ascetics that existed in the Scythia of the Sakas even before Prince Siddhartha (the future Buddha) was born?

Scythian religion

Who was this pre-Buddhism wandering ascetic (sramana) who inspired Siddhartha to seek the direct experience of Truth and set up an organization so that men and women could do the same and come to realization in this very life?

Scythian religion refers to the mythology, ritual practices, and beliefs of the Scythian cultures, a collection of closely related ancient Iranian (Aryan) peoples.

They inhabited Central Asia and the Pontic–Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe throughout Classical Antiquity, spoke the Scythian language (itself a member of the Eastern Iranian language family), and which included:

• the Alans,
• the Scythians proper,
• the Sarmatians,
• the Sindi,
• the Massagetae, and
• the SAKA (the Buddha's Sakas, Shakyas, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Sakas, speakers of Pali).

What little is known of the religion is drawn from the work of the 5th century Greek historian and ethnographer Herodotus. Scythian religion is assumed to have been related to the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, and to have influenced later Slavic, Hungarian, and Turkic mythologies, as well as some contemporary Eastern Iranian and Ossetian traditions. More

Mother's Day: The Buddha's Three Mothers

Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly (AN 2.32) UPDATED

Mother's Day in America in 12 comics from The New Yorker (newyorker.com)

 

The birth of Siddhartha with Mother Maya

The historical Buddha Prince Siddhartha Gautama had three mothers in his final rebirth when he made an end of all further rebirth and suffering.

Most people will have heard of Prince Siddhartha's second mother, his biological mother, Maha Maya Devi ("Great Queen Maya"). She was a queen among the Scythians/Shakyians, the first wife of his father [the rich Gandharan/Afghan chieftain] King Suddhodana, whose riches derived from the Silk Road Route through Kabul/Bamiyan that brought wealth, merchants, and spiritual travelers to the ancient faraway capital of Kapilavastu, the Buddha's hometown.

Birth mother: Queen Maha Maya Devi

Maya's beauty was like a "dream" or "magical illusion"; in fact, the name maya derives from the Sanskrit and Pali word for "illusion" (taken in Mahayana-Hinduism as māyā, two religions that so influenced one another as to be the same thing with different names for the same deities, one buddhas and the other avatars].

The Buddha goes up to Tavatimsa or the celestial World of the Thirty-Three to see his deceased mother, Maya, who descends with others from Tusita (the "Contented Heaven") to hear him teach.

.

We had a son! - Now the drama really begins.

Any illusion, of course, is fleeting. Queen Maya passed away seven days after giving birth to her only son Prince Siddhartha. It was no accident. There are reasons given for this in the back story -- the most spiritual being that she only volunteered for a human birth to give birth to him.

That motherly task done, Maya Devi returned to a more comfortable existence in the Tusita World. She benefitted greatly for this act (karma) in the World of the Thirty-Three, where the Buddha went to preach to her until she and the other beings present were awakened and freed from suffering. The Buddha was able to repay her for her generosity and help. As it turns out, we enter life knowing, on some deeper level, those individuals who play the role of parents, partners, relatives, friends, and enemies. But this is a truth bigger than most of us can easily digest or would be willing to accept. So the drama (lila) goes on.

• 

  Buddhism reached the Maya of Mesoamerica.

  The words "Maya" -- the Mexican Native Americans from Mesoamerica and Central America who crafted the Mayan Calendar -- and "Guatemala" both derive from the name of the Buddha's mother, whose surname is Gautama and mala (garland).
• Reference: American Rick Fields' How the Swan Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America where these and many more connections are drawn showing Buddhism's arrival in the Americas long before the Conquistadors, Catholicism, and European Christianity.

Maya, Mariah (Mary), a queen in heaven

Mother Maya was reborn as a devaputra ("deva-offspring" or "reborn among devas") back in the Tusita World. Her former son, Prince Siddhartha, who years later became the Buddha, thanked and repaid her for her help in this very life by teaching her the liberating-Dharma, in the legendary narrative account of how the Abhidharma ("Higher Teaching") came to be.

Other devas from Tusita and elsewhere who were present in Sakka's celestial realm in space also got to hear the teaching. King Sakka, a stream-enterer and therefore a devoted follower of the Buddha, was most happy to host, the legend goes.

Our parents do so much for us that, according to the Buddha, the only way we can ever repay them is by teaching or leading them to the ennobling Dharma.

The Other Mothers

Foster mother: Maha Pajapati Gotami

Many will also have heard of the Buddha's foster or stepmother related by blood, Queen Mahā Pajāpatī Gotami (Sanskrit Gautami). As Mother Number 3, she was Queen Maya's sister and co-wife. She is famous because she became the world's first Buddhist nun then an enlightened one.

Both sisters were married to King Suddhodana. Pajapati stepped forward to care for the newborn Siddhartha to the detriment of her own two children -- her son, Nanda, the Buddha's brother (who shared a father, with sister-mothers, who nursed and adopted Siddhartha at the age of 7 days, which would seem to make her a little more than a foster mother or Nanda and Sundari Nanda half-siblings) and daughter, the Buddha's rarely mentioned half-sister, Beautifuld (Sundari) Nanda.

Queen Pajapati was the mother of these two royals, but it is said she gave up primary care of her biological children to nurse, care for, and raise Prince Siddhartha (the future Buddha), the firstborn heir to the Scythian throne in Kapilavastu.

 

Mother of his child: Princess Bimba (Yasodhara)

She is much more famous in this world than Maya because Pajapati (Sanskrit Prajapati) went on to become the first Buddhist nun. The Buddha's brother and sister also ordained and became enlightened.

This was in addition to Siddhartha's wife, Rahulamata ("Rahula's mother"), Princess Bimba Devi, much more popularly known as Yasodhara.

Rahula, Bimba, and Siddhartha

What we are never told as we hear the story of the Buddha's life repeated is the fact that Prince Siddhartha did not "abandon" his family.

Far from becoming a deadbeat dad, taking up a good ol' time in the wilderness as an extreme ascetic, he actually saved his family the only way he could: He first had to go off in search of enlightenment then come back awakened with answers and a solution to the problem of suffering. Then he led and encouraged his

• biological mother (Maya),
• biological father (Suddhodana),
• cousin-wife (Princess Yasodhara/Bimba Devi),
• second-son (Rahula [Ananda being the first, as some Buddhist traditions record]),
• half-brother (Nanda),
• half-sister (Sundari Nanda),
• foster mother (Pajapati),
• cousins (Scythian relatives referred to as Shakyian princes),
• extended family members (other Scythians in the palace compound of King Suddhodana) to liberation (moksha), to enlightenment or full awakening, and nirvana (complete freedom).

He remembered his biological mother and visited her where she was reborn. Such was the reverence of the Buddha for his parents, and many monastics followed suit. For example, there is the famous case of one of the Buddha's chief male disciples, the Brahmin Maha Moggallana, visiting his mother in hell to help her. The other chief male disciple, the Brahmin Ven. Sariputta, also had a whale of a time convincing his unbelieving mother who placed no faith in the Buddha.

The Buddha's former wife became an enlightened Buddhist nun and famous disputant called by various names to disguise her greatness: Rahula-mata, Bhaddakaccānā, and so on. is not the Buddha's mother. How could she be the Buddha's mother? She was their son Ven. Rahula's mother.

The First Mother: Nakulamata

Questionable quote (Lotusing/Flickr)

The Buddha's "first mother," Nakulamata, is a strange story of rebirth. One day the Buddha was walking down a road with his monastic disciples when he passed an elderly couple. The man, Nakulapita, called out to him, "Son! Your mother and I have been missing you! It has been a long time since you visited us!"

Kwan Yin as Mother Goddess (D)

The monastics thought this was very strange. Stranger still, the Buddha approached them and spoke to them in a very kindly way like a son full of gratitude. The monastics were confused.

Why is the teacher letting these strangers talk to him this way, addressing him as "son"?

The Buddha later explained that for 500 (which actually just means "many") lives this couple had indeed been his parents. Over and over, the karma of the three being such, they were born together. This woman raised him over and again. And here she was in his last life running into him apparently by chance but not really. This meeting was no accident; it was brought about by the force of karma.

The nuns and monks may have been surprised to hear who this couple was but, in fact, the Buddha taught something far more mindboggling:

So long is this "continued wandering on" through births and deaths called samsara that it is difficult to ever meet anyone with whom one has not already shared all relationships.

• Nakulamata ("Nakula's mother") was the wife of Nakulapitā ("Nakula's father"), householders from Suṁsumāragiri in the Bhagga country. When the Buddha visited their village and stayed at Bhesakalāvana (the forest grove nearby), they went to see him. They immediately fell at his feet, calling him “son,” asking why he had been away so long. It is said that they had been the Bodhisatta’s parents for 500 (which is figurative for "many") rebirths and his close relatives for many more. The Buddha taught them, and they became stream enters (the first stage of enlightenment, sotāpannas). The Buddha visited their village once more when they were old. They entertained him, speaking of their devotion to one another in this life and asking for a teaching to keep them likewise together (in a loving relationship) in the afterlife (in future lives). The Buddha referred to this in the assembly of the Monastic Saṅgha, declaring them to be the foremost in intimate companionship among his disciples. AN.i.26, AN.ii.61… (G.P. Malalasekera rom Pali Proper Names, edited by Wisdom Quarterly).
• Wisdomlib.org definition: Nakulapita
• Happily ever after and even after that (dharmatown.org)

Goddess of Compassion Kwan Yin (pinterest.com)

Look around; all those people have already been one's mother, father, and so on... How much gratitude do we have for them? How much do we owe them?

While this seems preposterous, it seems so only because we do not fathom or comprehend how long an aeon (kalpa) is, how many there have been, or how many times we have already been reborn, how many existences we have already lived and are yet to live, and how much we have already suffered as we yearn for more and more rebirth.

We have no idea what has been. For if we knew, we would not be so eager to continue to cycle and revolve in ignorance again and again.

In that final existence, the Bodhisattva (or Buddha-to-be) had taken rebirth in a special way to accomplish his goal of becoming a world-teacher, a Supremely Enlightened Teaching Buddha, and Maya had volunteered to serve this world-system in the capacity of giving birth to such a great being.

Chinese Madonna and child (Macao)

But here in the world, already existing, was the Bodhisattva's long-time mother, his mother many times over, and now she had again found him. Our mothers, even when they do not give birth to us this time, are all around (fathers, too).

Our nurturers are here, and still they nurture us -- sometimes they attack us perhaps due to their lack of understanding or our lack of gratitude -- and stranger still we, too, are former mothers and fathers of countless others. Such is the incomprehensible working out of karma (deeds), an imponderable (acinteyya) thing.
 
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms -- and we mean ALL of them including YOU, you dummy, from from Wisdom Quarterly. (You, yes you, male and female readers. We have all been a mom countless times!)