10 May 2015 - QA 9

Gurudev, tomorrow in America, we are celebrating Mother’s Day. You said that your mother was your first spiritual teacher. Could you say something about the spiritual values of motherhood, and may be a story about your own mother?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Mother is the first connection for you to this manifest world. You came into this world through mother, and of course because of your father too. There is motherhood in each and every one of us. Motherhood is wanting the best for others and not expecting anything in return. Every mother wants the best for their kids. Sometimes kids don’t recognize it.

There is a verse in Sanskrit written by Adi Shankara in which he said, “Bad sons are born, but a bad mother has never been born”.
So there is a certain sweetness with mother, and whatever she says, we take it.

My mother was a perfectionist. Whatever I would do, she would say, “You did not do it properly. You could have done it better”.
She never said sorry to anybody in her whole life. Can you imagine this? She was very thorough and alert in anything she did. She had no regrets and she did not do anything that she would have regrets about. At the same time she was also very sharp. So there is one lady who always said that I could have been better. She thought I didn’t know how to run an ashram.

Usually, in my talks, I say drop all your problems here at the Ashram. Once in our ashram in Bangalore, a devotee asked, “My biggest problem is my mother-in-law. Can I leave her here and go?”
I said, “Let me ask your mother-in-law first, what is her biggest problem.”
Then I asked her, “Has there been many times when you been in conflict with your own mother?”
She said, “Yes. All the time she finds fault with me”.
Mothers find faults in their daughters and they fight a lot, but that doesn’t get into the heart. If a mother scolds you, it doesn’t really get into your heart. But when the mother-in-law says just 10% of what your mother said, it touches you so deep in your heart. Is it not the case?
After hearing this she said, “Oh yes, I never thought of it like that before.”
I said, “See, they are of the same generation. If the mother-in-law finds some fault in you, then why do you react differently towards her than you do with your own mother?”

You know, this one thing has saved many families. Just making a shift in awareness has made a huge difference. Seeing the patterns in mothers and mothers-in-law and seeing that they are the same makes the daughter-in-law take things in a much lighter manner. They feel much better in dealing with their in laws. So it should not be just mother’s day. It should be mother-in-law’s day too.

In 2011, I saw that there is a world toilet day. At that if you remember, I had tweeted, “There is a world toilet day but there is no world yoga day. It should happen”.
Of course now they have declared 21st June as World Yoga Day. The purpose is just to create a little awareness about this. I am happy that finally after a long time, yoga has found a place and 177 countries from around the world have endorsed the World Yoga Day.