Swadharma

Since we recently celebrated Navratri, the idea of worshiping God in the form of Mother has increasingly been on my mind. A close family friend recently sent me an email about a service she had attended in the New York Ramakrishna Vedanta Center, where the topic of the lecture was “Worship of God as Mother.” I really liked one of the explanations that Swami Yuktatmananda gave during the lecture:

It is like as long as a child is playing with toys his mother attends to all her other duties; but the moment the child throws away all toys and cries for Mother, she runs to him and take him in her lap. Mother — Mayamaya — also lets us play with things of world until we are not satisfied with them. As long as we are happy with the worldly enjoyments, she lets us be absorbed in them. Once we are done with these joys, we begin to search for something abiding, permanent. We begin the search for Mother, and finally find her so close to us.

I thought it was a really beautiful way of explaining Maya, as well as our relationship to God.

Related posts:

1. Testing our limits
2. A mother’s heart…
3. Different approaches to “Overcoming Greed”
4. We help ourselves, not the world
5. Happy Mother’s Day!