When you reflect on the kindness of your present-life parents, think of all other sentient beings who had also been your parents in past lives and had been kind in the same way. You are not stuck on your relationship with the parents of this life, but you are generalising it. You use your parents in this life as an example. You can look around nature and see how parents take care of their young.

When you look around and see people taking care of their young, always relate it and think, “They’ve taken care of me in that way too, when I was born as an animal, when I was born as a human being, they have always shown me kindness, protecting me, showing me how to do things, teaching me what I needed to learn in order to have a good life.” When we reflect on this deeply and really feel ourselves to be the recipient of all of the kindness, a feeling of wanting to repay the kindness comes without effort. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When we really feel like “Wow, I have received so much,” then it does not take much to say, “I want to give back, I want to show love, affection and gratitude for all those beings who showed that to me.”

When applying it towards everybody, of course, it is easier to think that your friends and the people you like have been your parents, but then to think that the spiders, the gas station attendant, and all these different beings born in different realms have been our parents is a little more of a stretch.

It is important to remember that this goes towards all sentient beings, not just towards the parents of this life. Because if we keep it just towards the parents of this life, it can sometimes devolve into attachment and clinging, rather than the kind of love and gratitude that we really want to create in a Dharma sense. It is very important to remember that it goes towards everybody.

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