Chapter 47: A Mother’s Love
Graduation Day, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, 2017.
In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho tell us “the fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”
In the Buddhist philosophy, this quote might be slightly altered to remind us that “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” In Buddhism: An Introduction, Joan Oliver reminds us that the Buddha said “I teach one thing and one thing only. There is suffering and an end to suffering. We are not prisoners of our dissatisfaction, our disappointments, our desires, our loses, our obsession with self.”
The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. Our dreams may look different today than they looked when we were children, or even than they looked last year, but they are worth pursuing nonetheless.
The Alchemist is a wonderful book. I encourage you to read it if you have not. It reminds us of one of life’s greatest secrets; sometimes, we dream to find something that we later realize was with us all along. Every second of the search, however, is a second worth enjoying. I wonder if it is in these moments - the moments we are trying to find or gain something that we think we lack - that we are actually learning something, living something.
Perhaps, in these uneventful moments, we are experiencing the ultimate beauty of our lives.
On this Sunday morning, I wake up uneventfully. I can move my legs, my arms. I can walk, speak, think, listen, and learn. This is a beautiful morning.
This beautiful morning also happens to be the start of Mother’s Day.
The Dalai Lama has spoken and written many times on the profound uniqueness of a mother’s love, how he feels that a mother’s love is the ultimate symbol of love and compassion because it is all-encompassing, unbiased, and altruistic.
In 2011, His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave a talk at the University of Minnesota on Mother’s Day. He started this talk by acknowledging the immense importance a mother has on all of our lives, his included. “First we learn from mother. We all come from our mother. We all have the same sort of experience. That's very important.”
A mother endures pain knowingly and willingly all for the benefit of her child. I am not a mother, yet the Buddhist faith encourages us to try and love all beings in the same way that a mother loves her child, selflessly, altruistically, and filled with unending compassion.
We will all face moments of pain, fear of loss, fear of suffering, but the heart does not have to suffer when it learns to love with the unconditional love of a mother.
Today, we are reminded of the absolute, unrestricted love a mother gives us. To my mother, I love you and I thank you. To all of the mothers, new mothers, expectant mothers, hopeful mothers, dog mothers, and spiritual mothers, today we celebrate you. Today, we remember that the beauty of all of our eventful and uneventful moments was a gift given to us by you.
Fondly,
Courtney
© CB2020