I'm ambivalent about Mother's Day. I'll be spending some time with my adult children later today, which I enjoy. But my own mother is long gone, and I miss her.
It seems lately that half the people I know are losing their parents. Of course, this is part of the natural progression. There was a time that half the people I knew were finishing school and starting careers. Then half the people I knew were getting married. Then they were having babies. Then the babies were graduating. Now half the people I know are losing parents to old age, disease, and death.
Of course, it must be harder when a parent dies while one is still young. But you're never really prepared for it. When one's elderly parents are fading, the world seems upside down. You are walking a strange path without a map. And when they are gone, it feels like waking up in a foreign country. Everything may look the same, but it all seems alien.
Part of what happens is that the child-identity in you is lost. "Child" is the first identity we learn, and while we transform many times -- into students, spouses, workers, friends -- as long as one's parents are alive the child is alive too. But when the parents disappear, so does the child. And the whole world seems very odd. At least, that's how I experienced it.
Parents and children define each other; when a baby is born, a mother also is born. Dogen said,
"You should understand the meaning of giving birth to a child. At the moment of giving birth to a child, is the mother separate from the child? You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child. This is the actualization of giving birth in practice-realization. You should study and investigate this thoroughly." [Sansui Kyo, or Mountains and Waters Sutra]
We go through many transformations every day, manifesting this and that. The parent/child transformation is a biggie, though.
I found an especially lovely Mother's Day talk on the website of the Spokane Buddhist Temple, which I believe is Jodo Shinshu. It makes the point that the selfless love of parents and children is the bodhisattva ideal. I'm thinking also of the Metta Sutta, which says,
As a mother would risk her life
to protect her child, her only child,
even so should one cultivate a limitless heart
with regard to all beings.
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