I feel that using the mother as a model in meditation fascinating because one
can
Personalize their own experience by visualizing his/her own mother and in
effect,
associate inner emotion & raw compassion for the one who created and
protected them.
I also thought that the realization of immense inapplicable rebirths, that
everyone has
been everyone’s mother in a sense, is a powerful tool towards introducing
compassion for
all beings. Just understanding the respectful nature of this compassion in
general is a
basic fundamental towards what the second Dally Lama, Gendun Gyatso calls
‘giving
and taking’.
It (‘giving and taking’) has many phases, and taking responsibility, and
feeling empathy, towards all things is essential throughout. First one pictures
his/her own
mother personalized in his/her own frame of reference and associates the
compassion of
his/her mother towards other people close, like friends, family and pets by
‘giving and
taking’. The second level of this concentration of the mind is feeling
compassion for
his/her enemy and even strangers he or she has never ever met. The next stage
of
this meditation is of course having compassion for all beings through
compassion for the
sake of helping other people to fulfill enlightenment.
I should mention that anyone who wishes to practice the meditation of ‘giving
and taking’ must have the self control and discipline attained by more basic
meditations,
for example \'mindfulness of breath\'. With out such discipline, his/her mind
may easily be
swayed by any various stimulation that ‘giving and taking’ may evoke.
I thought it was interesting the book said that realizing the love of my
Mother is indirectly responsible for who I am today, and here I sit writing and
studying
the holy practice of Dharma. And here I am appreciating my good fortune. And of
course
stay away from the negative and strive towards the positive for all, eliminate
the harmful
and to produce and encourage happiness towards all.
I also want to add some positive criticism towards the excerpt ‘How to Meditate
upon the Ultimate Bodhi-Mind’, on page 163 of ‘Entering the Stream’. The idea,
often
thought of as ‘I’, or the ego centered towards the self, is only a mental
imputation. I think
it is important to remain humble and courteous, even other religions express
respect
and honor for one’s own mother.
All in all, I feel that I am fortunate to read and study this book, or at least
parts of
it, on my own if giving the chance, and try to maybe see if anyone else would
be
interested in learning more about Buddhism