The Mother's unique opportunity

By Paul Hourihan   (Edited by Anna Hourihan from lecture transcripts)

May is a fitting month to honor our mothers since it is associated with Buddha, the epitome of compassion, service, and selflessness, and therefore a Mother figure to humanity.

Buddha lived for others and reached perfection by losing himself in the service and love of humanity. The Mother also lives for others and gains the priceless treasure of sacrifice of self through her motherhood.

We are grateful for what she does in society but the essence of the matter is the gain that comes to her—spiritual gain, that is—if she brings the children up in the right spirit and takes advantage of the rare opportunity shown her.

It is true that few women grasp the opportunity, just as few of us grasp the many other opportunities for spiritual development that are constantly being offered to us.

The Mother: Tool of Nature or Vehicle of Spirit?
The mother brings life into the world, rears it, protects it—and this life is a soul that is being reared, a soul that has come for the purpose of divine knowledge. She is the indispensable handmaiden of the Lord in this delicate process in which she nurtures the life to reach the age of reason so it can fend for itself. This pivotal theme in the whole creation is dependent on the mother not only being a body enabling the birth to take place, but the rearing of the child, educating it, giving it health and so forth—a vital and tremendous role and sacred function in its ultimate implications.

Her problem, however, is great—attachment, possessiveness, forgetting her opportunities in the pressure of duties! In this forgetting of her spiritual role, Nature in the form of natural impulses, cravings, demands, etc., takes over and blinds her still more to the rare situation she is in. But at the same time we must remember that it is her very power of sympathy that lies behind her major flaw, which is her attachment.

So the mother is the most paradoxical of all figures. She has the most sacred function in life—she is praised for her love and selflessness and in our imaginations she becomes almost a religious figure, but on closer analysis we find she deserves more of our pity and prayers than anyone else because hers is the most difficult task of all.

Only the illumined soul knows that all work is being done for the Lord. The mother doesn’t know this, except at times in an instinctive way. Even so, without that deliberate awareness of the Divine, to which all of us aspire (either consciously or not), she does a great amount of good anyway. What is missing in her role is her awareness that she is serving the Lord and that the work is for the Lord only. That is hard for all of us to realize no matter how vital our work may be in other terms. Unfortunately, that is where the trouble starts, even with the mother. Unless we remember the Lord we are in trouble right away; there’s no escaping from that necessity of remembering and realizing that our life should be lived for the Lord or Supreme Spirit.

In Vedanta there is the Upanishadic vision of the all-present, all-pervading Oneness in life. When we actually feel this Divine presence stirring in us, then it is easier to sense the Divine in those with whom we are related: mother-child, lovers. At those times we should take advantage of this mood of awe that seizes us, and cultivate a sense of the Divine in the relationship.

This mood usually comes as an unsought grace. The problem is to find a way to prolong the experience of that grace and the feeling of awe. Regrettably, we typically cannot do this and we lose the precious mood, with its precious insights. We have to find a way to prevent the loss and maintain the state of insight, of presence. Through meditation and spiritual disciplines we can do this. Most mothers do not do this because most do not know about it. As a result they lose the valuable moments once the special early years are past.

With this knowledge, let the mother raise the children for her soul's sake. Let her see her tasks as divinely ordained. Let her accept the mandate given her as not a duty so much as an opportunity to learn from this priceless experience, unrivaled in human affairs, so that one day she may love all other children too, in the same way, and attain the state of Universal Motherhood, Divine Motherhood and through Mother Love gain Divine Love.

See also MOTHERHOOD, THE MOST DRAMATIC SCHOOL
                Words of Wisdom: Buddha, and Miscellaneous.

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MOTHERHOOD, THE MOST DRAMATIC SCHOOL

by Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan

Despite the radical changes in our society in the past forty years, the mother is still the center of the family and the central figure of society because on her depends the new generation, their character, their education. If she doesn’t bring up the children well, where are they going to turn?

The character of the mother is essential, more essential than anything for the advancement of society. So all societies have been careful in the past—although not so careful in the present—to make sure that the character of the mother is preserved. It is for their protection. So we see that there are ominous changes underway.

Among worldly people, the mother is the most ideal person in society: More than anyone else, she is more selfless and gives us an example of how we should act toward others. We all know mothers like that—the selfless, caring nurturer. This is the continuing ideal of the mother.

The mother is typically not a spiritual aspirant. How, then, is she ever going to come into the spiritual life? How are any of us going to reduce sufficiently the mountain of egoism that we know dominates the world? How are we going to have a manageable burden—not the overwhelming burden that is in society as a whole—to get into spiritual life? Motherhood is one way—the most vital way, whereby the soul must sacrifice itself to other people.

The mother gets a taste of her real self in the course of this coercion and she likes it. It is coming through because of the acts of unselfishness. Serving others she feels deep peace within, but she can’t sustain this because she doesn’t know the cause of it, she is not aware of it enough. Nevertheless, to the degree that she is a good mother it keeps coming back and gradually it dawns on her what is going on.

In fact, motherhood gives the woman a chance to absorb spiritual principles in the most dramatic school of all—the family: the close and intimate interaction with other lives. Remember in her, as in all of us, the soul is the reality. For the soul, this is the chief purpose of motherhood—the opportunity to grow spiritually. That is why she has become a mother—not primarily to serve Nature, or to serve society, which is an incidental role. The chief role is for her soul’s growth and if in bearing children this helps society and Nature, it doesn’t exclude that possibility.

Raising and teaching children—even one child—is a miracle. It is a wonder how one child can be raised—every day different in relating to him or her, and attempting to learn priceless things from the experience. It is true that few mothers see their roles in that light—of education. As a result, few learn what is to be learned in that unique area of karmic growth.

The opportunity as a mother coerces the woman day by day to acts of tenderness. There are times when she feels egoism and other things like that; she’s not always in the mood for tenderness, sympathy, compassion and love. But to the degree she feels egoism to that degree she cannot succeed in motherhood. She has to overcome the ego to succeed as a mother. Typically, she is not saintly. She has to be motivated as much as possible to generate these ideas out of the deep, dark well of her past. Of course, she complains a lot, as she should from a creaturely standpoint, but the more she complains, the more she will feel there is no solution. She has to surrender to this. There is no other way. It is forced on her. She doesn’t always like it, but she has to do it to become a true mother.

We see that this means she will make a commitment to the spiritual path while a mother. She may not do it consciously, in an enlightened way, but still as it were, in a dream-like state she is pulled into the spiritual consciousness. By the very nature of her duties, she is compelled to identify with her spiritual self or self-transcending tendencies, or to fail.

With this unique opportunity to grow spiritually, let the mother raise the children for her soul’s sake—for the sake of the Divine. Let her see her tasks as divinely ordained. Let her accept the mandate given her not as a duty so much as an opportunity—an opportunity unrivaled in human affairs.

See also:  THE MOTHER'S UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

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