Matru devo bhava, Pitru devo bhava

[Guest guest]

Dear Fellowship,

 

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, it is stated:

Matru devo bhava, (revere your mother as God)

Pitru devo bhava( revere your father as God)

 

However, what if your father is such a person that you cannot even look at him in the eye. What if he is a wife beater, insults God and his holy men, treats his children as animals, treats his own parents like mud, under these situations are we still obliged to abide to 'Pitru devo bhava'.

 

I am unfortunately writing about my own father, but i am trying to lead the way of life prescribed in our sasthras. I cannot however look at my Father as a Godly figure as it disgusts me everytime i look at him due to the things he has done to us (his children) and my mother and his own parents. But, i do not want to go against our sasthras.

 

I would like to hear in particular from people like Theist and gHari and other advanced spiritual souls on this forum as your posts are always inspiring.

 

I don't have a guru who can advise me on such matters.

 

I apologise if such posts are not allowed on this forum.

 

anonymous_guest

[Guest guest]

 

Dear Fellowship,

 

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, it is stated:

Matru devo bhava, (revere your mother as God)

Pitru devo bhava( revere your father as God)

 

However, what if your father is such a person that you cannot even look at him in the eye. What if he is a wife beater, insults God and his holy men, treats his children as animals, treats his own parents like mud, under these situations are we still obliged to abide to 'Pitru devo bhava'.

 

I am unfortunately writing about my own father, but i am trying to lead the way of life prescribed in our sasthras. I cannot however look at my Father as a Godly figure as it disgusts me everytime i look at him due to the things he has done to us (his children) and my mother and his own parents. But, i do not want to go against our sasthras.

 

I would like to hear in particular from people like Theist and gHari and other advanced spiritual souls on this forum as your posts are always inspiring.

 

I don't have a guru who can advise me on such matters.

 

I apologise if such posts are not allowed on this forum.

 

anonymous_guest

According sastra the very term father implies more qualification than just the ability for reproduction.

 

Shreemad Bhagavatam Canto 5

 

18. “One who cannot deliver his dependents from the path of repeated birth and death should never become a spiritual master, a father, a husband, a mother or a worshipable demigod."

 

In other words, sastra stresses qualification - unless we're qualified we shouldnt call ourselves for example a father and in case our material father is

something like a tyrant we should see this as a divine hint to seek for a spiritual father, a genuine spiritual master.

[Gaea]

 

Dear Fellowship,

 

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, it is stated:

Matru devo bhava, (revere your mother as God)

Pitru devo bhava( revere your father as God)

 

However, what if your father is such a person that you cannot even look at him in the eye. What if he is a wife beater, insults God and his holy men, treats his children as animals, treats his own parents like mud, under these situations are we still obliged to abide to 'Pitru devo bhava'.

 

I am unfortunately writing about my own father, but i am trying to lead the way of life prescribed in our sasthras. I cannot however look at my Father as a Godly figure as it disgusts me everytime i look at him due to the things he has done to us (his children) and my mother and his own parents. But, i do not want to go against our sasthras.

 

I would like to hear in particular from people like Theist and gHari and other advanced spiritual souls on this forum as your posts are always inspiring.

 

I don't have a guru who can advise me on such matters.

 

I apologise if such posts are not allowed on this forum.

 

anonymous_guest

 

My view (devoid of any in depth vedic knowledge) is that if one is in such a situation, then your True Father is God and the biological one is just somebody else. Eventually, i would hope, even he would see the light through your good work and love. God is the ultimate divine Mother and Father.

[Guest guest]

Prabhuji,

 

Namaskaram. We are currently residing in food-based body or anna-maya kosha in world called mrtya loka, material world. This world is like upside down banyan tree. Everything here is opposite of what takes place in the Karanaloka or world of Eternal Love and Eternal Life with Eternal Parents.

 

Especially it is kali-yuga then is particularly severe and getting worse every year and decade in some respects. For symptoms of Kali Yuga as well as picture of upside down banyan tree I refer you to Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhag Gita As It Is respectively. The Tibetan Buddhists also believe it is the

Kali Yuga and each year they have prophecies of new diseases affecting the

population which are coming true.

 

So all of these platitudes encouraging us to be good very difficult to apply in the present age for some people. Seems as if you have the mercy of the Lord otherwise your family life would be so pleasant. Many times the good Lord gives this mercy of hellish family life to encourage the sadhaka to understand to seek spiritual realization to reconcile these apparently contradictory things:

our biological father is like animal or lower and we are HSP or Highly Sensitive Person.

 

Look to the saints who tolerated these things for a clue that even people like

Sage Prahlad had hellish parents. Many others also; some the nicest most saintly kind helpful and sensitive people I know have really selfish demoniac parents who take delight in even torturing their kids, or have the nature to be exceedingly brutal, crass, or stingy. I am not kidding or making this up.

 

Sometimes this happens when a person is on their last incarnation then they are winding up their time on this earth. If we have had millions of births perhaps in a former life we were like them. Not you but myself certainly if

we have been everything from Indra to Indragopa insect. So in a past life

perhaps we were crass also and sinful. Therefore now we are suffering like we made others suffer; in my case probably this is true but not you.

 

Another possibility is the good Lord gives some persons this hellish experience so that they will never forget how much children and battered women suffer;

then perhaps it will be their live's work to help children, the underprivileged, the homeless and destitute, the abused and battered ladies, etc. Perhaps you

are innocent soul but the good Lord giving you first hand knowledge of how

much the jivas suffering under the hands of various types of despots. Then perhaps you will become one of these saintly people we read about who single-handedly helps others who are downtrodden.

 

In this way the good Lord is ensuring that you will progress and acquire much punya as well as sukritya by helping others. The good Lord is making sure you

will not become selfish puffed-up petulant narcissist who gets easily fried hearing about the sufferings of others.

 

The good Lord making you very sensitive soul so that also your inner strength will develop. "Lean on your own spine". In your spine is your kundalini and as you mature as a soul, your life force begins to rise up these chakras. One of the things that is a catalyst, sorry to say, is suffering: extreme suffering and

anguish when you are a sincere person. Is like putting pressure on a plastic

bottle or balloon externally then the liquid or air rises when you squeeze it.

 

So when you "feel the squeeze" these hellish circumstances then by sincerely

praying from the core of your heart to the good Lord for deliverance then this

burns up the dross of the ego or the anava mala. You are so fortunate my friend if this happens, in fact the sastra says that a brahmana always prays to be dishonored so as not to develop the anava more.

 

At any rate go deeply within and what everyone said previously is true. We have had millions of births: and all of the tears we cried during them can fill up all of the oceans and all of our ashes and bones piled up would be the tallest mountains. So if we have had millions of births, the Tibetans tell us that therefore everyone we see has been our mother in a previous birth. Perhaps when we were any one of 8, 400, 000 species of life, such as a

worm in stool and an amoeba and so on.

 

Therefore as we progress on the path yes we bow to all living beings and honor them as our father and our mother. All living beings are teaching us either how to behave or not to behave; therefore all are our teachers and

in that sloka says we should worship our teachers also, correct? And all

have been our parents also.

 

Therefore in Tibetan devotional Buddhism they tell us we should strive for

enlightenment and think, "All of these living beings are tirelessly working; therefore I shall strive to help all of them obtain release from samsara."

Prabhuji try if you can to develop this broad vision that in truth all were our mother or father in previous birth. Then it will help you develop detachment

from this one lifetime's horrors.

 

And in truth the spiritual preceptors and the saints as well as the good Lord in all of His forms are our only mother, father, and everything. In the songs

of the Gaudiya traditions has some very nice saranagati sentiments expressed such as this. Use this hellish situation to develop one-pointed determination to obtain release from this material world. Namaste.

[gHari]

Anon,

 

You are talking about my step-father. They do however set a good negative example. There are many places I haven't been, fortunately, because of his fine negative example. That ain't for me, man, I said.

 

I guess we have to try to be like the swan who separates the good from the bad. We can recognize the spirit soul, part and parcel of Krsna, and as such every creature is glorious. We can recognize the service they offer us in the thankless task of raising, feeding kids. We can understand that somehow this jiva has been given our association by Sri Krsna. There must be some good in there somewhere waiting to be ignited.

 

A command performance, but I'm afraid I wasn't very good in a similar situation. I turned my back and never looked back. He died and I thought nothing of it - a non-event. Still, twenty years later, a non-event.

 

gHari