Mother Should Know: Mother's Day (video)

SNL; Beatles; Falsettos; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Sheldon S., Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha's mother at conception: Queen Maya dreams of a white double-tusker elephant.

Not everyone loves his or her mother. According to Falsettos, everyone hates his parents. They do; just ask God. He hates his parents, too, according to lyricists Wm. Finn and James Lapine.

And speaking of parental lyrics, does it get any better than the Beatles' Your Mother Should Know"?

Maya gives birth to Siddhartha

Was Prince Siddhartha Gautama (Siddhattha Gotama) lucky or unlucky? He lost his mother, Queen Maya, a week after he was born.

Unlucky (though there's a back story of how she had volunteered to be reborn to give birth to him as a human and, mission accomplished, was simply eager to return to the Tusita celestial world).

The prince was such a precocious child.

Lucky (because her sister, Queen Pajapati Gotami, was the king's co-wife, and she was happy to take over raising the prince).

He got doubly loved, and in return, after he became the "Enlightened One," he traveled to Tusita, a distant world in space or close by but at a dimensional shift, to teach his biological mother the Dharma in the "World of the Thirty-Three" (Tavatimsa).

It's not easy being a parent. - No, king, it's not.

As for the woman who raised him, his aunt and adoptive foster mother, she became the world's first Buddhist nun, along with the Buddha's former wife Princess Yasodhara (aka Bimba Devi), son (Rahula), cousins, and many Scythian/Shakyian warriors (noble caste kshatriya) from the northwestern frontier of future-India, in Central Asia.

Love them, don't kill them. Help them, don't harm them. Be happy so they'
can be happy for you even if they're not. That karma is on them.

I had a very auspicious dream. I'm pregnant.

Moreover, the Buddha taught the significance of parents, teaching that the right view of things is that our karma (actions of thought, speech, and body) yield results.

And toward whom we direct these actions has a lot to do with the results.

What an auspicious sign, Queen.

Directing them towards fully enlightened people produces the strongest results, towards our parents the second strongest, and towards partially enlightened people the third.

This can be verified by looking at the results of the five heinous deeds; what's done towards our parents, good or ill, produces a stronger result than even what is done towards stream enterers and non-returners.

The sal tree devi Queen Maya (Asian Museum)

Therefore, parents are a great field of merit for the world, or demerit. They have done so much for us, as we will one day do (and many previous days have done) for our children. Maybe only then will we realize what a burn it is not to be acknowledged or thanked just a little.

If only someone would storyboard his life.

Sure we screwed up, sure our parents screwed up, all parents do. Just ask God, who seems to have screwed up a lot him or herself. It happens. C'mon. That doesn't negate all the good done for us when we were not even conscious of it being done, as when we were growing up, toddling, learning, growing.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!