Saint

• Buddhist saints are often described as maternally compassionate, with the endless patience of a mother who feeds, cleans and cares for children around the clock.
• However, as a scholar of gender and family in Buddhism, I have noticed shifting views about how spirituality and motherhood can be combined.

Repaying a mother’s debt

• Buddhists are exhorted to be grateful for the sacrifices parents make to bring them into the world and raise them.
• Buddhists might show reverence for mothers or motherlike figures in their lives by preparing a meal or offering a gift.
• If someone’s mother is no longer alive, however, there are still many ways to direct loving kindness toward her.

The Buddha’s gift

• Children can prevent a mother who landed in hell from staying there long by doing good deeds and transferring good karma to her.
• Even a mother who was reborn in a heavenly realm can be sustained there by her children’s gifts of good karma.
• According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha’s mother, Maya, was lucky in that she had good karma and became a goddess after death.

Focus vs. family

• Sex in particular has cascading effects that make study and meditation difficult: children, family time and work to support them.
• The Buddha’s eightfold path requires focus – and focus is a precious commodity, as every parent knows.
• After achieving enlightenment, he returned to his hometown – and ascended to heaven – to teach members of his family what he had learned.

Meditative mothering

• Caring for children, for example, can be a form of meditation, requiring an observant but nonjudgmental focus akin to practicing mindfulness.
• Mothers and other people who provide child care can experience seeing things as they really are, without attachment and grasping.
• After all, Buddhists believe that the historical Buddha had many past lives and was not celibate in all of them.