The Buddhists think that, because we’ve all had infinite previous lives, we’ve all been each other’s relatives. Therefore all of you, in the Buddhist view, in some previous life … have been my mother — for which I do apologize for the trouble I caused you.

This quip reflects a standard Tibetan Buddhist teaching used in compassion training: because beings have wandered through beginningless rebirth, every sentient being has, at some point, been one’s mother (or close kin). Robert Thurman—an American scholar and popularizer of Tibetan Buddhism—often introduces this idea in public lectures to translate a technical doctrine (rebirth and interdependence) into an immediately graspable ethical implication: treat others with familial care. The apologetic punchline is characteristic of Thurman’s lecture style, using humor and self-deprecation to make a potentially unfamiliar metaphysical claim feel human and disarming for Western audiences.

Thurman is playfully summarizing a standard Mahāyāna Buddhist contemplation: given beginningless rebirth, every sentient being has, at some point, been one’s mother (or close kin). The point is not genealogical literalism so much as an ethical reorientation—training the mind to replace indifference with gratitude and compassion toward all beings. His humorous “apology” punctures solemnity and makes the doctrine emotionally accessible, while also implying karmic responsibility: if others have cared for us in countless lives, we owe them care in return. The joke thus serves a serious aim—expanding the circle of moral concern beyond family, tribe, or species.