Respecting Our Parents

Jai Sri Hari everyone.😁😁

In India, we have the culture of touching elder’s feet as a gesture of respect. We touch feet of our elder family members, persons we know or are close to or just any person who is elder to us by a significant measure. Actually, by doing that we are doing nothing but opening their heart to positive feeling for us.  In Hindi we call elder brother “Bhaiya”, elder sister “Didi”, and we apply “ji” after taking anyone’s name as another gesture of giving respect to a person. As a matter of respectful greeting we do “Namaste” by folding our hands.

People who are born in India automatically have this inculcated in them no matter who they are. This trait is generally observed in anyone even the naughty boys, or prankster kids. At least they will respect you in front of you. But somewhere this culture is fast diminishing also. Young kids and new generation being influenced by media and Western culture are somewhere forgetting the traditions we have in India. Anyway it does not matter much if people harbor respect in their hearts especially for their parents to whom this post is dedicated. 

I have heard parents –the father and the mother, are like the sky and the earth. The mother gives you nourishment and ground to stand on. The father is like the sky that takes care of you and keeps you under his protection.

They, the parents are the most significant ones in our lives for believe it or not they love you more than anyone else in the whole wide world irrespective of what their nature is or what equation you have with them. They truly do love you the most and thus become the most important people. Our mothers keep us in the womb for 9 months, bear the labor pain and when we are born she takes care of us and so does our dads by being there for us.

Blessed you are if you love your parents and respect them but even if they don’t understand you or are harsh to you they still love you. It would be so unwise to give respect to an elder especially a parent only if they are perfect and not flawed, or do things or behave only in accord to you. Nobody is perfect in this world so respect cannot be given in expectation of a flawless behavior. We are all flawed and so are our parents and elders and that does not mean we stop loving them.

And yeah, like all beings, our parents too have the Divine in them. They are the manifestation of the Divine Father and the Divine Mother in each of our individual lives. They love us. They really do. I have seen that. I have felt that. I have known that. Even Swamiji will agree that before him or Sri Hari comes the place of our mother and father in each of our individual hearts for as they say ‘Mata, Pita, Guru, Devta’ (first comes mother, then comes the place of father, then the Guru and then our Isht, our Bhagwan, our God).