JUST TO GIVE BIRTH TO A CHILD IS ONE THING – to be a mother is totally different.
Any
woman can give birth to a child; that’s a very simple phenomenon. But to be a
mother needs great art, needs great under-standing.
You
are creating a human being – that is the greatest creation! A painter paints a
picture; we call it great art. Picasso – we call him a great artist. But what
about the mother who created Picasso? A poet writes beautiful poems, but what
about the mother who created Shakespeare? We don’t think about mothers as the
greatest creative people on the earth. That is one of the reasons why women are
not great painters and great poets – they need not be:they can be great
mothers. Why does man try to become a great scientist, poet, painter, this and that?
– he is jealous of women: he cannot create children. He feels impotent. Sigmund
Freud has talked much about phallic Jealousy – that women suffer from a
jealousy because they don’t have penises. Now this is utterly meaning-less,
absurd. It is as if a woman Sigmund Freud is born and starts talking about men
suffering from breast-jealousy because they don’t have breasts.
But,
one thing is certain: deep down man always feels jealous that he cannot mother,
that he cannot carry an alive life in him, that he cannot reproduce life. To
substitute it he paints, he sculpts, he writes poetry, he composes music; he
goes to the moon, he goes to Everest. He wants to prove at least to his woman
that ”I can also do something,” otherwise he feels impotent. Compared to woman’s
capacity, he looks like a child, looks almost accidental. His work is not much:
giving birth to a child, he simply triggers the process. A small injection can
do that; that is not much of a work.
The
woman passes through those nine months of agony and ecstasy. And then the work
is not
finished!
In fact, then the work, the real work, starts – when the child is born. And the
child brings again a fresh quality to life. Every child is primitive, a
barbarian; now the mother has to civilize.
Every
child is a barbarian, remember; he is animal, wild. And the mother has to give
him culture,
has to teach him the ways of life, the
ways of man. It is a great work.
You
have to remember that – that your work has not finished, it has started. Take
it joyously!
You
are creating something immensely valuable – you are carving a life, you are
protecting a life. The work is such that no sacrifice is great enough for it –
any sacrifice can and should be made. One thing.
Second
thing: don’t take it too seriously, otherwise you will destroy the child. Your
seriousness will become destructive. Take it playfully. The responsibility is
there! but it has to be taken very playfully. Play upon the child as one plays
upon a musical instrument – and she knows how to play on musical instruments.
Let the child be your instrument now. Play carefully but play playfully. If you
become serious, then the child will start feeling your seriousness and the
child will be crushed and crippled.
Don’t
burden the child; don’t start feeling that you are doing something great to the
child. When I
say
you are doing something great, you are doing something great to yourself. By
helping this child to grow into a beautiful human being, into a Buddha, you
will be becoming the mother of a Buddha.
You
will not be obliging the child: you will be simply enjoying your own life; your
own life will become a fragrance through the child.
This
is an opportunity, a God-given opportunity.
And
these are the two pitfalls: either you neglect the child, you are tired of it;
or you become too
serious
about the child, and you start burdening him, obliging him. Both are wrong.
Help the child – but for the sheer joy of it. And never feel that he owes any
debt to you. On the contrary, feel thankful that he has chosen you to be his
mother. Let your motherhood bloom through him.
If you
can bloom into your motherhood, you will feel thankful to the child forever.
And,
naturally, there will be sacrifices, but they have to be made... joyously. Only
then is it a sacrifice!
If you
DO it without joy it is not sacrifice. Sacrifice comes from the word ’sacred’.
When you do it
joyfully,
it is sacred. When you don’t do it joyfully, then you are just fulfilling a
duty – and all duties are ugly, they are not sacred.
This
is a great opportunity. Meditate over it, go into it deeply. You will never
find such a deep
involvement
– in fact, there is none as it is between a child and the mother. Not even
between the husband and the wife, the lover and the beloved – the involvement
is not so deep as it is between the mother and the child. It cannot be so deep
with anybody ever – because the child has lived in you for nine months as you;
nobody else can live in you for nine months as you.
And
the child will become a separate individual sooner or later, but somewhere deep
down in the un-conscious the mother and the child remain linked. If your child
can become a Buddha, you will be benefited by it; if your child grows and
becomes a beautiful human being, you will be benefited by it – because the
child will always remain connected with you. Only the physical connection has
been disconnected; the spiritual connection is never disconnected.
No comments:
Post a Comment