Darshan 15 March 1978

[A sannyasin and her young son are present. She says: It's very difficult for me - I feel he is very strong and I don't feel strong at all. I don't know what to do in certain situations.]

Let him be strong! Why should you be worried about his strength? It is good. He has to be strong and the mother has to be soft. He has to be strong; only then can he grow into an individual. If he is soft and the mother is strong, he will be killed. That's what happens to many people: the mother is too strong and they are soft, or the mother would not allow them to be strong. Then they go on hanging around the mother for their whole life. Even if they are old and the mother is dead and gone they are still holding on to her apron strings; deep down they still psychologically depend on her.

That becomes pathology. Then the man may start looking at his wife as if she is his mother. He cannot live without a mother; he needs somebody to mother him.

Because of this tendency, breasts have become so important. Artists go on painting breasts, sculptors go on sculpting breasts, poets go on writing about breasts; it seems to be really a great obsession. Basically it is just an indication that these people are still hankering for the mother; the breast represents the mother. If children are free of the mother, the breast will disappear from poetry and films and painting. They will take the right proportion, they will be natural parts of the body. Right now it seems that it is not the woman who has breasts but the breasts who have the woman; the woman seems to be secondary. This is a very pathological state.

Children have to be very strong, so help him to be strong. It will be difficult for you to manage because the stronger he is, the more trouble he will create for you; if he is weak, there is no trouble.

But one has to be strong in life: life creates trouble, life is risky, it is challenging. If he is dull and stale and just dead, he will sit in a corner and will not give you any inconvenience but then he is not alive! If he is alive he will create many many problems for you. You have to face them. That's what

it means to be a mother: to face those problems. And by facing them you will also grow, by giving him freedom and strength you will also grow. Mother and child grow together.

Remember always, the day the child is born the mother is also born. Before that you were just a woman, not a mother. Once the child is born you are a separate phenomenon, a mother; something has bloomed in you. And now the growth of the child will be the growth of the mother too. If one day you can help the child to be completely free of you, you will also attain to your inner freedom. So help him to be strong.

[To the son:] It is good.... Create trouble!

Daya means compassion, and compassion is the highest flowering of love. In love a little bit of lust remains; love remains contaminated with the earth. Love has something of the sky in it and something of the earth in it. It is dual: its body belongs to the matter, its soul belongs to consciousness.

Compassion is pure soul, it is pure sky: it has no matter around it. It is the ultimate blooming of the flower. Even the flower disappears in it, only fragrance remains.

Shanti means silence, deva means god - god of silence. Help him to become as silent as possible.

By being silent yourself, he will learn.

Children are imitators. If you sometimes find something in your child which you don't like, look within yourself, you will find it there; it is reflected in the child. The child is only a sensitive response. The child is simply there imbibing you, repeating you, imitating you. So if something wrong appears in the child, rather than putting it right there, put it right in yourself, and you will be surprised: the chi!d drops it automatically. The child does not only depend on the mother for physical food, he depends on her in every way - for spiritual food also. So if you become silent, the child will follow it, he will learn it unknowingly; if you become meditative, he will become meditative.

Whenever parents come to me and they complain about their children, they are not aware of what they are doing, because my own observation is that if something is wrong with the child, it must have come from the parents. It is almost always so: ninety-nine percent of it comes from the parents; the smaller the child, the more is the percentage. When the child becomes a little bigger and starts moving in society, then of course he learns from others too, but in the ultimate account, almost ninety percent always comes from the parents. So whatsoever you want the child to become, be.

Be silent, be compassionate, be loving, be joyous, and you will be surprised that just by your being that, the child starts imbibing those qualities. And this will be the greatest thing for him, if he can imbibe silence.

[The vipassana group is present. One participant says: There's some conflicts in the technique for me. Before I came I was watching the breath here, (indicating his nose) and it was working fine. I went into Vipassana here and I'm watching the breath here (indicating his navel).]

All three are possible alternatives. Either you can watch the breath where it touches the nose or you can watch it at the very end where it raises up your belly, you can watch the whole process going in, coming out, or you can watch the gaps. But the real thing is the same - watching. Where you focus the watching irrelevant; these are just excuses for watching. So you can do any, whichever suits you, but stick to one because if you get confused that will be a disturbance.

All are good. It is not that this way is better and that way is not so good. All are the same, but everybody has to choose one, any that feels good for you. There are a few people who cannot feel it in the belly - they are not so aware there; it is better for them to choose to watch at the nose.

[The participant then says: During Vipassana I got ill. I use a kind of pranayama usually but the leaders said don't use any breathing techniques.... Can I use the pranayama just for health things?]

Yes, you can use it - but don't mix it up with the Vipassana.

Mm, you can use it, you can use it separately; that is no problem.