SMPP_MATRU-DEVO-BHAVA_Folk_MVT_140517
Category: Glories of a mother
Summary:
1. Everyone have different mothers but we have our universal mother, Srimati Radharani. A common phrase spread about mothers is _Matru Devo Bhava_. This phrase comes in the _Chandogya Upanishad_ which means mother is _“as good as God”_.
2. What makes a mother as good as God? We can’t call everyone as good as God. There are reasons to call a mother _“as good as God”_ are as follows:
a. The first quality gives birth to us.
b. The scriptures say a mother is rare and valuable.
c. She is a teacher or guide.
d. She loves and cares for us.
e. She sustains life by feeding us milk.
f. She forgives.
g. She sacrifices.
3. Anything to do with a source, there is a divine respect for that. Similarly, we have for our mothers. She carries us for 9 months and then gives birth to us.
4. Mother is extremely rare and valuable because once we lose her, we can’t get her back. The scriptures say mother, mother land (also a source), mother Ganga, the father and Lord Vishnu are the 5 rare gifts one can get in life. This was spoken by Lord Rama Himself to Bharatha.
5. There is nothing more nourishing than a mother’s care for us to grow in our lives. Hence, she is referred to as _Matru Devo Bhava_. She is our first teacher and the first thing we learn from her is that who is our father and whomever she shows as a father, we immediately accept.
6. Another quality is that she forgives, the scriptures also say that she is an embodiment of forgiveness. In the life of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also we see that His mother forgives Him for taking _sannyas_. So these are qualities that a mother has and the scriptures glorify and celebrate the position of a mother.
7. The scriptures also mention 7 types of mothers: birth giving mother, wife of the spiritual master, wife of a _brahmana_, wife of a _ksatriya_, nurse, cow and mother earth. So we must not only respect our mother but all these 7 types of mother.
8. It is described that a mother while giving birth go through an almost death like experience. Where do all the qualities of the mother come from? In the Bhagavad-Gita, the Supreme Lord Krishna says that He is the source of everything.
9. Everything that is a source, we worship them. Like we worship the mother, we worship the river, the father and so on. Here, Lord Krishna mentions that He is the original source of everyone and everything. The scriptures like _Brahma-Samhita_ also confirm this.
10. We refer to Durga Mata also as mother. She is referred to as the shadow of the Supreme Lord. She always desires to fulfill the desires of the Supreme Lord.
11. The mother’s milk is highly respected and held in very high esteem. We generally take it for granted, but a lot of research has been done on the mother’s milk. Even the research says, mother’s milk is like food. A child cannot take any food at that point and cannot consume medicines too when sick. It serves as a complete diet for the child and also as a medicine.
12. The chemical composition of milk also differs depending on whether the child is a boy or a girl. Was it a conscious choice by the mother to produce such milk? It is produced by nature. So hence, we should not have attachment only to the mother, we should also have attachment to the source of such precious milk.
13. In the Bhagavad-Gita 10th chapter, the Lord says that He is the Original Father and Original Mother also and hence He knows exactly what we require and he kept a mother ready for us with that milk.
14. Our thinking is very narrow that we think of only the mother who is the immediate cause of our body. But we have our original mother, Lord Krishna who when we didn’t know what food we need and how to ask for the food, He had kept a mother with a milk that was sufficient to nourish us. The entire nature runs under Lord Krishna’s control and he ensures that it runs in such a way that we have the milk ready at an appropriate time.
15. The Lord is sitting in everybody’s heart giving us guidance. When the mother is unreachable for us, she has passed away for example, it is the Lord in our heart guiding us at all time.
16. The Lord is so merciful that despite all our sins and mistakes, the Supreme Lord supplies us with all our necessities like sun, air, water and so on without charging us even a bit for it.
17. There are many videos where people lament that they couldn’t repay their mothers when they were around. But we are born in a land that trains us on how to repay our mothers. The perfect mother is one who teaches you the absolute right in your life. The same scriptures also mention that the mother can become an enemy if she doesn’t teach this.
18. The perfect gift that one can give to our mothers is to lock all her problems and miseries of her life. We can elevate her from this cycle of birth, death, old age and disease and this knowledge to elevate her will remain with her life after life.
19. Greatest example of this is Dhruva Maharaj. Being a perfect mother, she advises him to go to Lord Krishna when he was upset about being rejected by his father. He then follows Narada Muni and performed _tapasya_ and the Lord was extremely pleased and blessed him to be a pure devotee. When he was been taken by the Vishnu Dutas to _Vaikunta_, he said he can’t go without his mother and then the Lord shows that she is being taken in a separate _Vimana_.
20. So in summary one must serve both the birth giving mother and also the Supreme Mother and when we do this in perfection, we live up to the saying _Matru Devo Bhava_.
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