Women and Spirituality

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Women should always be worshipped

and treated with affection.

The Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva, Section XLVI

 

Bhishma said: Respect, kind treatment and everything else that is agreeable, should all be given unto the maiden whose hand is taken in marriage. Her sire and brothers and father-in-law and husband’s brothers should show her every respect and adorn her with ornaments. If they be desirous of reaping benefits, for such conduct on their part always leads to considerable happiness and advantage. Women should always be worshipped and treated with affection. There where women are treated with respect, the very deities are said to be filled with joy.

 

There where women are not worshipped, all acts become fruitless. If the women of a family, in consequence of the treatment they receive, grieve and shed tears, that family soon becomes extinct. Those houses that are cursed by women meet with destruction and ruin as if scorched by some Atharvan rite. Such houses lose their splendour. Their growth and prosperity cease.

 

Do ye men show them honour. The righteousness of men

depends upon women. All pleasures and enjoyments also

completely depend upon them. Do ye serve them and worship them. Do ye bend your wills before them.

 

The begetting of offspring, the nursing of children already born, and the accomplishment of all acts necessary for the needs of society, behold, all these have women for their cause. By honouring women, ye are sure to attain to the fruition of all objects.

 

In this connection a princess of the house of Janaka the ruler of the Videhas, sang a verse. It is this: Women have no sacrifices ordained for them. There are no Sraddhas which they are called upon to perform. They are not required to observe any facts. To serve their husbands with reverence and willing obedience is their only duty. Through the discharge of that duty they succeed in conquering heaven.

 

In childhood, the sire protects her. The husband protects her in youth. When she becomes old, her sons protect her. At no period of her life does woman deserve to be free.

 

Deities of prosperity are women. The persons that desire

prosperity should honour them. By cherishing women, one

cherishes the goddess of prosperity herself, and by afflicting her, one is said to afflict the goddess of prosperity.

_

 

From The Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva, Section CLXII

 

Bhishma said:

As the sacred fire waits for libations to be poured upon it when the hour for Homa arrives, even so a woman, when her functional period is over, expects an act of congress with her husband. One that never approaches one's spouse at any other time save after the functional period, is said to observe the vow of Brahmacharya.

 

 

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WIFEHOOD VERSUS MOTHERHOOD

By Swami Ranganathananda

Sri Ramakrishna Ashrama, Belur Math

 

It is in this sphere that Indian thought, with its spiritual view of life, has much to contribute to steady the feet of men and women in East and the West. Motherhood is a spiritual transformation of wifehood. The wife may and does demand and take; but the mother feels it her privilege to give. If woman as wife is socially significant, woman as mother is spiritually glorious. The culture of the Hindu trains him to look upon all women as forms of the one Divine Mother. The mother is more worthy of reverence than father or teacher according to our scriptures.

Says the manu Smriti (ii. 45):

 

"From the point of view of reverence due,

a teacher is ten fold superior to a mere lecturer,

a father a hundredfold to a teacher, and a

mother a thousandfold to a father."

 

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Hindu ideals versus Western ideals

By Swami Shivananda, Divine Life Society, Rishikesh

 

In the West the wife governs the home.

In an Indian home it is the mother who controls.

 

In the West the woman is wife. In India she is the mother. The mother is worshipped as the goddess Lakshmi (Goddess of prosperity) of the house. The Sruti (Taittiriya Upanishad) emphatically declares:

"MATRU DEVO BHAVA" (Let thy mother be thy God).

 

In the West the wife governs the home. In an Indian home it is the mother who controls. In the West the mother has to be subordinate to the wife. In India the wife has to be subordinate to the mother.

 

If a woman is pure she can save and purify man. She can purify the race. She can make a home a sacred temple. Hindu women have been the custodians of the Hindu race. Hindu religion and civilisation still survive in spite of the many foreign invasions. Other civilisations have come and gone, but only Hindu civilisation has survived on account of the purity of Hindu women. The women are taught to regard chastity as their most priceless possession, and the loss of it equal to the eternal damnation of their soul. From their very childhood religion is ingrained in Hindu women. As such they illumine and enliven the home through the glory of their purity. This is the secret of the endurance of the Hindu religion, civilisation and culture.

 

That home is a miserable place, a veritable hell on earth wherein the husband moves up in spirituality and the wife pulls him down into sensual grooves, and vice versa. Both should be harmoniously blended or joined by the sacred thread of self-knowledge, each aspiring eagerly for God-consciousness. That home really is heaven where the husband and wife lead an ideal divine life, singing the Lord’s name, repeating His mantra, studying sacred scriptures, controlling the senses and serving devotees and renunciates.

 

Manu Smriti says:

"Where women are honoured, there the gods are pleased, but where they are not honoured, there no sacred rite is fruitful."

Such is the glory of Indian womanhood.