Mother's Day: The Buddha's Three Mothers

Ashley Wells, Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly (AN 2.32)

Mother's Day in America in 12 comics from The New Yorker (newyorker.com)

 

The birth of Siddhartha with Mother Maya

The historical Buddha had three mothers in that final rebirth when he made an end of all suffering.

Most people will have heard of Siddhartha's second mother, his birth-mother, Maha Maya Devi ("Great Queen Maya"). She was a queen, the wife of his father a [rich Afghan Chieftain] King Suddhodana, whose riches derived from the Silk Road that brought wealth, merchants, and spiritual travelers to the faraway capital of Kapilavastu, the Buddha's hometown.

Birth mother: Queen Maha Maya Devi

Maya's beauty was like a "dream," and in fact the name maya derives from the Sanskrit and Pali word for "illusion" (taken in Mahayana-Hinduism as māyā, two religions that so influenced one another as to be the same thing with different deities, one buddhas the other avatars]. An illusion, of course, is fleeting. She passed away seven days after giving birth to Prince Siddhartha. There are reasons given for this -- the most spiritual being that she only took a human birth as a volunteer to give birth to him. We enter life knowing on some level those individuals who play the role of parents, partners, relatives, friends, and enemies. But that is a truth bigger than most can digest.

• 

  The Maya of Mesoamerica are related

  The words "Maya" -- the name of Native Americans from Mexico and Central America with that famous "calendar" -- and "Gautemala" in Mesoamerica derive from the name of the Buddha's mother and his surname Gautama and mala (garland). See Rick Fields' How the Swan Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America in which these and many more connections are drawn showing Buddhism's arrival in the Americas long before the Conquistadors and Catholicism.

Maya, Mariah (Mary), a queen in heaven

And she was reborn as a devaputra (born-among-devas) in Sakka King of the Devas' celestial realm, the World of the Thirty-Three in space. There her former son Siddhartha, after becoming the Buddha, thanked and repaid her for her help in this life by teaching her the liberating-Dharma. The other devas of that world also benefited, although Sakka their ruler was already a stream-enterer and therefore a devoted follower of the Buddha.

Our parents do so much for us that, according to the Buddha, the only way we can ever repay them is by teaching or leading them to the ennobling Dharma.

 

Repaying our Parents (sutra)

Wisdom Quarterly translation (AN 2.32)

Shravana Kumar carries his aged and poor blind parents on his shoulders (Ramayana) More

 

Come on, dad. You, too, mom. Get on up here!

"Truly I say, meditators, there are two people who are not easy to repay. Who? Mother and father. Even if one were to carry one's mother on one shoulder and one's father on the other for a century, and one were to look after them by anointing, massaging, bathing, and rubbing their limbs, even as they defecated and urinated where they sat [the shoulders], one would not by that pay or repay one's parents. Moreover, if one were to establish mother and father in absolute sovereignty over this great Earth, which abounds in the seven treasures, one would not by that pay or repay one's parents. Why is that? Mother and father do much for their children. They care for them, they nourish them, they introduce them to this world.

 

"But anyone who rouses one's unbelieving mother and father, settles and establishes them in conviction (saddhā); rouses one's unvirtuous mother and father, settles and establishes them in virtue (sīla); rouses one's stingy mother and father, settles and establishes them in generosity (danā); rouses one's foolish mother and father, settles and establishes them in wisdom (paññā): To this extent one pays and repays one's mother and father."

Ven. Thanissaro (Geoffrey DeGraff) summarizes: This sutra (AN 2.32) shows that the only way to repay parents is to strengthen them in four qualities: confidence (faith), virtue (morality), unselfishness (generosity), and wisdom (discernment). To do so, of course, we have to develop these qualities in ourselves, as well as learning how to tactfully employ them in being an example to our parents. As it happens, these four qualities are also those of a kalyana-mitta or "noble friend" (AN 8.54), which means that in repaying our parents in this way we become the sort of person who would be a noble friend to others as well.

The Other Mothers

Foster mother: Maha Pajapati Gotami

Many will also have heard of the Buddha's foster or stepmother related by blood, Queen Mahā Pajāpatī Gotami (Sanskrit Gautami). As Mother Number 3, she was Queen Maya's sister and co-wife. 

Both were married to King Suddhodana. She stepped forward to care for the newborn Siddhhartha to the detriment of her own son, Nanda, the Buddha's brother (they shared a father, their mothers were sisters, and she nursed and adopted him at age 7 days, which would seem to make her a little more than a stepmother or Nanda a half-brother; she also had a daughter, the Buddha's rarely mentioned half-sister, Sundari Nanda) -- She was the mother of Nanda, but it is said that she gave her own son to nurses and herself nursed the Buddha.

 

Not his mother: Princess Bimba (Yasodhara)

She is much more famous in this world than Maya because Pajapati (Sanskrit Prajapati) went on to become the first Buddhist nun. The Buddha's brother and sister also ordained and became enlightened.

This was in addition to Siddhartha's wife, Rahulamata ("Rahula's mother"), Princess Bimba Devi, much more popularly known as Yasodhara.

Rahula, Bimba, Siddhartha

What we are never told as we hear the story of the Buddha's life repeated is the fact that he did not "abandon" his family. Far from becoming a deadbeat father, having a good old time in the wilderness as an extreme ascetic, he saved his family: He came back enlightened and led his mother, father, wife, son, brother, sister, foster mother, cousins, and extended family members to liberation, to enlightenment and nirvana. He even remembered his birth mother and visited her where she was reborn. Such was the reverence of the Buddha for his parents, and many monastics followed suit. For example, there is the famous case of one of the Buddha's chief male disciples, Maha Moggallana, visiting his mother in hell to help her.

Of course, the Buddha's former wife, now the Buddhist nun and famous disputant Ven. Bhaddakaccānā, is not the Buddha's mother. How could she be the Buddha's mother? She was their son Ven. Rahula's mother.

First Mother

Questionable quote (Lotusing/flickr)

No, the Buddha's "first mother" is a stranger story of rebirth. In brief, it runs as follows. One day the Buddha was walking down a road with his monastic disciples when he passed an elderly couple. The man called out to him, "Son! Your mother and I have been missing you! It has been a long time since you visited us!"

The monastics thought this was very strange. Stranger still, the Buddha approached them and spoke to them in a very kindly way with gratitude. The monastics were confused, Why is the teacher letting these strangers talk to him this way and addressing him as "son"?

The Buddha later explained that for many (500) lives this couple had been his parents. Over and over, the karma of the three being such, they were born together. She raised him over and again. And here she was in that last life running into him apparently out of the blue but not really by accident. The nuns and monks may have been surprised to hear it but, in fact, the Buddha taught something far more surprising:

So long is this samsara -- this "continued wandering on" through births and deaths -- that it is difficult to ever meet anyone with whom one has not already shared all relationships. Look around; those people have already been one's mother, father... How much gratitude do we owe them? While this seems preposterous, it seems so only because we do not know how long an aeon (kalpa) is, how many there have been, or how many times we have already been reborn, how many existences we have already lived, how much we have already suffered. We have little to no idea. For if we knew, we would not be so eager to continue to cycle and revolve in ignorance again and again.
 

Kwan Yin as Mother Goddess (D)

In that final existence, the Bodhisattva (the Buddha-to-be) had taken rebirth in a special way to accomplish his goal of becoming a world-teacher Supremely Enlightened Teaching Buddha, and Maya had volunteered to serve the world-system in the capacity of giving birth to such a great being.

But here in the world, already existing, was the Bodhisattva's long time mother, his mother many times over, and now she had again found him. Our mothers, even when they do not give birth to us this time, are all around (fathers too). Our nurturers are here, and still they nurture us -- sometimes they attack us perhaps due to our lack of gratitude or their lack of understanding -- and stranger still we, too, are former mothers and fathers of others. Such is the incomprehensible working out of karma, an imponderable (acinteyya) thing.
 
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms -- and we mean ALL of them including you -- from Wisdom Quarterly.

Honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe (Kwan Yin)

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; photographer Luis Sinco, Marc Martin, Los Angeles Times (latimes.com), Dec. 12, 2013

NeoPagan and Wiccan women in front of flower-strewn Virgin Mary/Kwan Yin, Buddhist temple facing the ocean and Queen Mary, Long Beach, LA County, formerly a Catholic nunnery (Temple of the Goddess).

 

Juan Diego and the Virgin (SF)

In an annual ritual that draws thousands of people, Catholic faithful of Mexican and Central American descent swarmed La Placita ["the Little Plaza"] Church and nearby Olvera Street Plaza [Los Angeles' oldest market square] to celebrate Dia De La Virgen De Guadalupe ["Day of the Virgin who appeared to a man in Guadalupe, Mexico"].  

 

The crowded and colorful festivities are held in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe -- the universal symbol for Mexican Catholics -- who is said to have appeared in a vision before Mexican peasant Juan Diego about 500 years ago.

Buddhist "Virg Yin," Goddess of Compassion

La Placita celebrations included unbroken strings of worship services as well as offerings of flowers and votive candles that illuminated the darkness outside the church and kept the throngs of people coming throughout the long, chilly night.

According to popular Mexican lore, Juan Diego saw the Virgin Mary on Tepeyac Hill in what is now Mexico City, on Dec. 9, 1531. The Virgin is said to have told him to ask the bishop to build a church on the hill. More

Day of the Divine Shepherdess
Siemprefeliz.com (Los Angeles); Wisdom Quarterly (translation)

Shepherdess Mother Mary, Goddess of Compassion, Virgen de Guadalupe (siemprefeliz.com)

  
January 14th is the [Venezuelan] day of the Divina Pastora, the procession of the "Divine Shepherdess," the spiritual patron of Venezuela. The celebration is one of the largest in Latin America, together with the activities in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico.
 
It is a journey taken by more than 2,500,000 people performed in the church of Santa Rosa village, located between the Cathedral of Barquisimeto and Cabudare, a distance of about eight miles.
 

This route, with the virgin carried on the shoulders of her people, begins at noon and ends early in the evening about 367 kilometers from Caracas.
 
The pilgrimage is accompanied by songs, praise, and prayers from parishioners. Some walk barefoot, while others go down on hands and knees. 
 
A miraculous virgin

Mother Goddess (metafisicamiami.com)

The pastor of the church of Santa Rosa, Paul Fidel Gonzalez, said: "Devotion to the Divine Shepherdess is growing year after year." He added that this is evidenced by the increasing number of pilgrims who visit the town of Santa Rosa, the Shrine of the Virgin, an invocation of the Virgin Mary.
 
Veneration increases proportional to the size of the religious image with its hat, cane, and sheep around a throne and a child on her lap representing the infant Jesus (St. Issa). She fulfills promises of health, peace, love, prosperity, and more which many consider Miriam miracles. More

A Buddhist "Mary"?
Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Kwan Yin, Yungang Grottoes, China (G-W-H)

It may be said that the real "Mary" in Buddhism would be Maya Devi, the great queen, the Buddha's biological mother.
 
In an interesting pre-Christian source for Mary's "virginity" (pure, unmarried status), the Bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) looked down from the Tusita world and beheld a suitable woman who could give birth to him. She had refrained from sexual misconduct for seven generations back, so being "pure" in this sense. Abstaining from sexual misconduct is not the same as abstaining from sex. But that, too, entered the mythology by confusing Maya's dream of conception, seeing a pure white double tusk elephant entering her, with the future-Buddha's miraculous (but not technically immaculate) conception, attended by angels (devas).

• See Buddhist Birth Stories (Jataka Tales) and the Story of the Lineage by Rhys Davids (trans.)

Kwan Yin, the One Who Looks Down from Heaven

She gave birth as commemorated in Brahmanism like a Sal tree dryad. But she quickly went from being an earthly devi (queen) to a heavenly female devi ("shining one") in the Space World of the Thirty-Three (Tavatimsa). She passed away a week after giving birth. The Buddha was raised by her sister, also his father the king's wife, named Maha Pajapati. She went on to become the first Buddhist nun in history and so achieved a greater distinction than Maya by attaining enlightenment in this very life. 
 
However, Buddhists do not regard either sister as the "Goddess of Mercy and Compassion" who looks down from the heavens and hears the cries of the world. That distinction goes to the pre-Buddhist Avalokitatesvara (Sanskrit अवलोकितेश्वर), a deva (male) who metamorphosed into beloved Kwan Yin, the Chinese version of this ancient Indian deity. She is a manifestation of the divine feminine, a mother goddess, a source of comfort and inspiration to uncounted millions of Mahayana Buddhists, Hindus, and to a lesser extent Theravada Buddhists and Chinese atheists.

• VIDEO: Healing miracles at Lourdes Grotto and spring
• VIDEO: The wonders of Yungang Grottoes (Discover China)
• The Blue Beauty: Buddhist nun Uppalavanna as Lakshmi 

Archeology: New finds may push Buddha's birth

Subodh Varma (TNN, Nov. 26, 2013); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Mara Schaeffer, Wisdom Quarterly

Maya's auspicious dream: Queen Maya, the Buddha's mother, dreamed of conception.

Team of archeologists excavate at site of modern Maya Devi Temple, Nepal (Antiquity)

 

Salabhanjika (Hoysala sculpture, Belur)

NEW DELHI, India - Remains of a tree shrine found buried below the Maya Devi Temple in modern Lumbini, Nepal, may push back the date of the Buddha's birth to the sixth century BCE.

 

The temple is located on what traditionally was thought to be the birth place of the Buddha. His mother, Queen Maya, gave birth to Siddhartha while holding on to a tree branch. [This accords with the legendary Indian motif of a Sal tree dryad or salabhanjika.]

Excavations within the Maya Devi Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site, uncovered the remains of a previously unknown sixth century BCE timber structure under a series of brick temples.

 

Laid out on the same design as those above it, the timber structure contains an open space in the center that links to the story of the Buddha's birth.
 

Queen Maha Maya, Siddhartha's mother

This is the first archeological material linking the life of the Buddha -- and thus the first flowering of Buddhism -- to a specific century.

 

Until now, the earliest archeological evidence of Buddhist structures at Nepal's Lumbini dated no earlier than the third century BCE, the time of the patronage of the Indian Emperor Asoka, who promoted the spread of Buddhism west from present-day Afghanistan east to Bangladesh [likely the extent of India in his day, centuries after the life of the historical Buddha, the "Shakyan Sage" or Shakyamuni].

 

"Very little is known about the life of the Buddha, except through textual sources and oral tradition," said archaeologist Professor Robin Coningham of Durham University, UK, who co-led the investigation.

 

"Now, for the first time, we have an archaeological sequence at Lumbini that shows a building there as early as the sixth century BC."

The exact date of the Buddha's birth is yet to be established. In Nepal, the year 623 BCE is favored, while in other traditions more recent dates, around 400 BCE, are accepted.

The first clear date linking Lumbini with the Buddha is 249 BCE, when Emperor Ashoka installed a pillar marking it as a sacred place. Lost and overgrown in the jungles of lower Nepal [Terai] in the medieval period, ancient Lumbini was [allegedly] rediscovered in 1896 and identified as the birthplace of the Buddha on account of the presence of a third century BCE sandstone pillar.

• Dr. Pal: Nepal "discoveries" are archeological frauds
• China and Nepal develop the Buddha's "birthplace"
• The historical Buddha -- an earth moving discovery?

The pillar, which still stands, bears an inscription documenting a visit by Emperor Asoka to the site of the Buddha's birth as well as the site's name (as determined by Asoka's men), Lumbini.

The international team of archeologists, led by R.A.E. Coningham and Kosh Prasad Acharya of the Pashupati Area Development Trust in Nepal, say the discovery contributes to a greater understanding of the early development of Buddhism as well as the spiritual importance of Lumbini in Nepal [rather than its more likely location in the area of Seistan Baluchistan near modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

Their peer-reviewed findings are reported in the December 2013 issue of the international journal Antiquity. The research is partly supported by the National Geographic Society. More

The earliest Buddhist shrine: excavating the birthplace of the Buddha, Lumbini (Nepal)

Journal.Antiquity.ac.uk

Birth of Siddhartha, future Buddha

Key locations identified with the lives of important religious founders have often been extensively remodelled in later periods, entraining the destruction of many of the earlier remains. Recent UNESCO-sponsored work at the major Buddhist centre of Lumbini in Nepal has sought to overcome these limitations, providing direct archaeological evidence of the nature of an early Buddhist shrine and a secure chronology. The excavations revealed a sequence of early structures preceding the major rebuilding by Asoka during the third century BC. The sequence of durable brick architecture supplanting non-durable timber was foreseen by British prehistorian Stuart Piggott when he was stationed in India over 70 years ago. Lumbini provides a rare and valuable insight into the structure and character of the earliest Buddhist shrines.

 

AUTHORS: R.A.E. Coningham [1], K.P. Acharya [2], K.M. Strickland [3], C.E. Davis1, M.J. Manuel [1], I.A. Simpson [4], K. Gilliland [4], J. Tremblay [1], T.C. Kinnaird [5], and D.C.W. Sanderson [5].

1. Department of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK

2. Pashupati Area Development Trust, Kathmandu, Nepal

3. Orkney College, Univ. of the Highlands and Islands, E. Road, Kirkwall, Orkney KW15 1LX, UK

4. School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Univ. of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK

5. Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, East Kilbride G75 OQF, UKPRESS 

NOTE: This article is EMBARGOED until 17:00 GMT (12:00 EST) on Monday 25 November 2013. To participate in the National Geographic telephone press briefing at 15:00 GMT (10:00 EST) on 25 November, please contact Barbara Moffet at bmoffet@ngs.org