Read aloud in the New Book Network Podcast.
Weingast’s title is “Vaddha’s Mother ~ A Mother’s Mother”
Norman
204. “May you not have, Vaḍḍha, craving for the world at any time. Child, do not share in pain again and again.
205. “The sages dwell happily indeed, Vaḍḍha, free from lust, with doubts cut off, become cool, having attained self-taming, being without āsavas.
206. “Vaḍḍha, devote yourself to the way practised by those seers for the attainment of insight, for the putting of an end to pain.”
207. “Confident indeed you speak this matter to me, mother. Now indeed, I think, craving is not found in you, mother.”
208. “Whatever constituent elements, Vaḍḍha, are low, high, or middle, no craving, even minute, even of minute size, for them is found in me.”
209. “All my āsavas have been annihilated as I meditate, vigilant. I have obtained the three knowledges. I have done the Buddha’s teaching.
210. “Truly my mother, because she was sympathetic, applied an excellent goad to me, namely verses connected with the highest goal.
211“I heard her utterance, my mother’s instruction, and I reached a state of religious excitement in the doctrine, for the attainment of rest-from-exertion.
212. “Being resolute for exertion, not relaxing day or night, urged on by my mother, I attained supreme peace.”
Weingast
My mother put on robes when I was just a child.
Can you imagine?
I was angry that she had shaved her head
and made herself so ugly.
Years later, she came back.
She was still wearing robes.
Her head was still shaved.
But somehow I no longer found her ugly.
She called me to her and said,
Just remember, my daughter.
There is only the Path.
Then she left again.
From that day on,
I could feel the Path growing inside me—
sometimes kicking and punching,
sometimes quietly napping,
sometimes gently humming to itself.
When I felt like I was going to explode,
my mother was there.
It’s coming, she said.
Just relax.
Let go.
Say it however you want.
You carry the Path.
The Path carries you.
In the end—
when it’s your time—
the final push
will come
from a strength
you never imagined
you had.