The Schwarzenegger Factor

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

In the flower-power days of the sixties, love was the in-word and hugging became an obsession: we wrapped our arms around everyone, even those of the same sex as ourselves, and everything - trees, rocks, whatever. Our interpretation of the meaning of "love" was unrestricted sex, and freedom for people, especially children, to do whatever they wanted as long as it made them happy.

But soon we realised that some people were pains in the neck, our children became hyperactive demons, and friends, even partners, became hated enemies. The love, love, love credo required serious revision and was replaced by the central tenet of new-age philosophy, "love yourself," poorly justified by the assertion that you cannot love others if you do not love yourself. In effect, our self-cherishing became our worst enemy, driving friends further away as self-indulgence reached the extremes of arrogance, miserliness, and intolerance.

Buddhism takes us back to the sixties. Love, love, love is a valid philosophy based upon one essential reason: every living being is worthwhile loving because each one has been our mother countless times in past lives. I am not talking about free sex and doing whatever we want, the love that Buddha spoke about is the warm, joyful feeling in our heart when we think of, or see, our mother, especially when she is happy. Now, I know that some of you hate your mothers, but bear with me, okay? Every living being has also been our father, our husband, our wife, and so on countless times, but the special relationship with our mother is that she gave us her body and her love when we were helpless babies. Wishing for our happiness, she taught us how to talk, to walk, to enjoy our senses. Our laughter was the only reward she wanted for her self-sacrifice. It is not her fault that she made mistakes later on; she, like ourselves, also suffers from the sickness of ignorance and self-cherishing.

If, for her kindness in this life, our mother is worthy of such heart-warming love, how much more should we love her when we know that she has been our mother countless times in past lives? Equally, our partner, our children, strangers in the street, and even the pains in our neck and the cockroaches in our kitchen, have all been our mother countless times in past lives. When we deeply understand this reality, every living being we meet becomes an object of heart-warming love, and a source of great happiness for ourselves. Doing the slightest favour for anyone becomes the joyful experience of giving a small treat to one's mother multiplied a billion times over. Don't worry, you do not have to hug trees, they are not sentient, they were not our mothers when we were baby tulips - we have never been tulips. Protect trees, yes, because they are the homes and the food of so many of our real past mothers.

But our mothers are not always happy. There is so much suffering of sickness, old age, and death; there is so much loneliness, mental confusion, and unhappiness. Those whose karma has taken them to animal, hungry ghost, and hell rebirths are suffering things that we, temporarily born as humans, cannot even imagine. So, whose responsibility is it to help them? If our mother of this life is trapped in a burning house, do we ask somebody else to rescue her? Just as it is our natural responsibility to brave the flames and lead our mother to safety, it is our natural responsibility to rescue every living being from suffering. This is the Schwarzenegger factor.

Hollywood has run out of plots where the hero rescues the lady in distress, or the Marshall saves the township. Nowadays, heroes and heroines rescue the entire world from the baddies, braving flames, explosions, and evil of more and more fantastic varieties. Where does their altruism come from? People have been conditioned by Hollywood into believing that naturally-good guys always turn up at the right time. How else could Ronald Reagan have been elected president? And what a farce that turned out to be, not to mention the present pathetic saga of personality politics happening in Florida.

The only cause that can give us the courage and the determination to take personal responsibility to rescue all living beings from suffering, the Schwarzenegger factor, is universal compassion born from heart-warming love for all beings, having recognised their vast kindness towards us in past lives as our mothers.

As the sufferings of our mothers are self-induced through selfishness, anger, and attachment, the only means by which our heroes can rescue them is by overcoming the flames of their own anger, the explosions of their own attachment, and the evil of their own self-cherishing. Then they will be perfectly qualified guides to show their mothers the way to safety. Such heroes are called Bodhisattvas, who think nothing of giving their own lives for the sake of others.

So, hero, next time you feel disgust at your cockroaches, think again.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.