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A conversation with mother

Mother was up early in the morning, waiting for me to wake up. On waking up, I took her blessings and then we finished our morning prayers.

Then over tea, she said, “Your teaching is so simple, yet at the same time profound. You have the blessings of great masters. But I have a doubt, why don’t more people take advantage of your teaching by attending classes regularly?”

“But many are attending my classes and my books are well read too,” I replied.

She smiled and said, “Yes, but I still feel more people should attend them.”

I agreed. “Sometimes I also feel that more people should attend. But many do not understand its value till now!”

Mother listened to this silently. Then she said, “Look at the forest flower. It is alone in the forest but still gives out its fragrance. It has its own dance and poetry. Just be like the flower, silently contributing and dancing in its loneliness.”

Mother’s words reminded me of a beautiful poem. “I once read a poem,” I told her. “Someone once asked a flower does it not pain, when people pluck you from the plant. The flower replied that though it felt pain, its pain disappeared when it saw the joy on the person’s face as they held the flower. Like the flower, we must learn to love others and be involved in rejoicing in other people’s joys. Sorrow happens when we are self-centered.”

This also reminded me of Lord Buddha’s teaching. I wanted to share that with mother. “Let me tell you the core teachings of Lord Buddha. The first thing he taught us was that life is full of sorrow. Second, the root cause of sorrow is desire. Third, when we remove the desire, we remove sorrow. And lastly, he told us to follow his path to remove desire.”

Mother asked me, “Why did Lord Buddha say that life is full of sorrow?”

“Life is full of sorrow because of the way people are living. People’s lives are filled with ego, anger, and foolishness. Hence Lord Buddha said life is full of sorrow. Look into people’s life. They are so busy complicating life and not simplifying life, isn’t it? They are busy acquiring and this greed for acquisition comes from being blind to the richness of what life offers. Why are people so busy acquiring?!” I said.

“In the greed to acquire, they have lost the ability to see the beauty of what is,” pointed out Mother. “Is not desire necessary in life? Why did Lord Buddha reject desire?” asked Mother.

I thought for a moment before replying. I knew why and I wanted to share that with her. It was why I taught students as well, and it was something I wanted to share with the world. “There are two types of desires. One is ‘desire to be happy’ and the other is ‘desire out of happiness’. The ‘desire to be happy’ keeps us in hell and ‘desire out of happiness’ is a form of creativity. But this is not the problem. One has to learn to live life out of happiness and not for happiness. The brain has to learn this with proper acumen. It is only then that the mutation of the brain cells can occur. Like how a mother does everything out of joyfulness for her children, similarly one should learn the art of being joyful. This is the art of being happy.”

Mother and I smiled at each other. I loved our conversations. They always reminded me about some important things in life.

 

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