On an Exemplary Kirtan  

[…] Such kirtan is madhur-madhur:

madhuraṁ madhurebhyo ’pi
maṅgalebhyo ’pi maṅgalam
pāvanaṁ pāvanebhyo ’pi
harer nāmaiva kevalam

(Song madhuram madhurebhyo ’pi; official song name—Śrī Śrī Kevalāṣṭakam)

This is ātma-nivedanam inducing. Right? It makes us want to give everything to the Lord. Very nice. Keep it up! Keep it up and do it for Krishna.

— Krishna Kshetra Swami at the evening kirtan led by H.G. Caitanya Hari dasa in Vaisnava Academy, Mayapur, India on February 28th during the 2025 Mayapur Friends Retreat

The Glories of our Mothers

We have this expression, mātājī. And oddly, this expression has been interpreted by some devotees as a negative term, although it's not. Mātā means mother, jī is a suffix of respect. So mātājī is honorific respect. It's showing respect. Recently I was in the Delhi area and sometimes I was overhearing devotee ladies speaking to, or referring to, other devotee ladies as mātājī. And I thought, “That's interesting. These are Hindi-speaking ladies and for them it's not a problem. It's proper, it's appropriate.”

My subject today is seven mothers. I've made some notes to give you some food for thought as we reflect on motherhood. First, let me ask: Do we have some mothers amongst us?

Good.

And do we have devotees who have or – your mother might not be alive – have had mothers?

Obviously.

Yet, this is the point we tend to forget and not appreciate. I was looking for this verse stating that there are seven mothers. Śrīla Prabhupāda refers to it, but doesn't give the source. It took me quite some time to find it. It's what is called subhāśita, which means literally ‘it's a good saying’. That's as far as I've been able to trace it, but it lists seven mothers—our own mother, the nurse, the wife of the guru, the wife of a brāhmaṇa, the queen, the earth, and the cow.

What do all of these personalities have in common? This is the idea of the verse: they are all mothers, which suggests that the idea of mother is expanded beyond our normal conception of mother as biological mother.

What I want to suggest for the next few minutes is that since we have this tradition of identifying seven mothers, the aggregate, so to say—all of these mothers together can help us to appreciate in multiple ways how we are dependent beings and are, as such, benefited by our mothers.

Most importantly of course, and most immediately, we are benefited by our biological mothers.
Speaking of our biological mother, we all have something on our bodies that remind us of our connection and dependence on our mother, the navel. Every time you're in the shower and you're cleaning your tummy, you can be reminded, “Oh yes, I have had a connection.” This physical connection was of course ended at the time of our birth. And that's something of an irony considering that our dependence on our mothers continues for quite some years. It's an unusual, possibly unique feature of the human species—our dependence on our mothers over such a long period of our lives. Our own mothers are, we can say, the embodiment of vātsalya-rasa.

If we're thinking in terms of relationship, which is developed in our bhakti tradition in terms of the aesthetics of rasa, what is called rasa theory, then we have what is called vātsalya-rasa. The word vātsalya comes from vatsa, which means calf, as in baby cow. That leads us to the subject of cow as mother. But that's getting ahead of myself. Still, it's good to keep this in mind, that this relationship with the mother is one of vātsalya. And we generally understand vātsalya as the feeling of the parent toward the child. But Srila Prabhupada explains in a purport in seventh Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, it can be the other way around as well. He's speaking in terms of father and son, speaking about Prahlāda and his father. But his father… Hare Krishna! The point is just that the relationship is going in both directions, vātsalya. In general, in a perhaps too theoretical expression, I like to say that our mother is the matrix of our very existence.

And of course, the word matrix is coming from the idea of metal casting. When you make a metal casting, say you want to cast a bronze bell, you first make the plaster matrix which is going to receive the molten metal and then when the metal is poured in and cools, you break the mold and then you have the bell. Our mother… We don't break the mother, but in a sense, because of the sacrifice she is making, she is also functioning in a similar way, giving her life for the child. And in this way she is the matrix of our existence.

The nurse: We all know that example given in the Bhagavatam and identified by Viswanatha Chakravarti Thakura as a demonstration of the perfection of the mercy of Krishna, that he considers Pūtanā, who has come to kill Krishna, as his nurse. And why does he consider Pūtanā as his nurse? Because she has offered her breast milk to him. The nurse is a kind of assistant to the biological mother, and I think we say “wet nurse,” so she will have a very close relationship with the child, which is very similar to that of the mother. It's a giving and supporting relationship in which, because of the child's utter dependency, her position is highly responsible, and she is entrusted by the mother to give that assistance.

lebhe gatiṁ dhātry-ucitāṁ tato ’nyaṁ kaṁ vā dayāluṁ śaraṇaṁ vrajema

She is regarded as dhātri. The example is Krishna. Krishna is seeing even Pūtanā as his nurse and thus when she's killed she becomes Krishna's nurse.

The wife of the guru: The guru is giving education to the child. The child is still in a position of great vulnerability and there would be wife of the guru to assist, because the tradition was that guru would be a gṛhastha, and as a gṛhastha he has his family. The wife is assisting him, and in particular she is assisting in the support of, we may say, the material needs of the child. Thus she is supporting the education of the child. And I think a relevant corollary to this is: the degree of education of one's own mother will have much importance, it will have a significant influence, determining the education of the child. To say that women should not be educated and should stay at home and raise their children… I would question this, because the first educator of the child is the mother. If the mother is educated nicely, she can foster the child's education from a very early time. And we have seen this demonstrated with some of the devotees I've met from the second, even third generation. Because the mother is caring so much for the education of the child, because she is educated, the children grow up and become very well educated. I can speak for myself to some extent in this regard. My mother was a talented musician. She played piano and church organ, and she was also teaching. Since I can remember, she was teaching piano. She was teaching piano to myself and to my brother from the age of five. I revolted at the age of nine, that's why I can't play piano now, but I can play harmonium. She was also teaching the neighborhood children. And this for me was also significant. She was in this way also – we may say – publicly conscious. She was concerned for the community, and her lessons in music made for a very nice community spirit. Children from the neighborhood were coming, they were learning. And then there would be recitals, so all the children would come together with their parents. This was very nice. My mother was quite religious from her Christian tradition. And from that, from her own culture, she was an avid reader of her scriptures, the Bible and related literature. And she would begin her study every day at five o'clock in the morning. This had an impression on me, such that when I met devotees and they told me that they start with their morning program at 4:30, I thought, okay, no problem. That made perfect sense to me.

The wife of a brāhmaṇa: Here I was thinking how we may consider the wife of the brāhmaṇa as being the mother of all of the varṇas. She is a kind of sustainer or maintainer or stabilizer of the varṇa system, the social order in general. And because of this, she is a very important influence for maintaining peace in society. The other varṇas are looking to the brāhmaṇas for stability, but behind every good male householder brāhmaṇa is a good stable householder woman, wife, who is probably also a mother. This principle of stability of society is very much sustained through the wife of the brāhmaṇa. Of course, in general, the brāhmaṇa husband and wife are supposed to be models of family order and stability for the rest of society. And we all work on the basis of models: yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas tat tad evetaro janaḥ. We look to others as models from day one, really, and it continues through life. If there are good examples of brahminical marriage, then the wife of the brāhmaṇa becomes a mother to the society as a whole.

Speaking of society as a whole, what about the queen, who is of course the wife of the kṣatriya? She is also identified as a mother. And here I would suggest the queen is the source of energy and inspiration for the kṣatriya ruler. She is the power behind the powerful, so to say. I was thinking about this earlier today in terms of the game of chess. Who knows how to play chess? You know that the queen is the most powerful figure on the chessboard. She has the most diversity of movement. She's the most powerful of all. Why is that? Because she is the power behind the powerful. Or she is the śakti of the śaktimān. The position of the king is one of power. The king is a power broker. He is concerned with gaining power, sustaining power, holding and managing power. That's his main business. The king's business is also disseminating justice. Sometimes he goes overboard. And therefore, the queen is there to soften, to balance, to bring in the element of mercy. There's need for justice, and there's need for mercy. Just like Draupadī. When Aśvatthāmā was being judged, Krishna was telling Arjuna: “Kill him!” Draupadi said: “Don't kill him. Do not make the wife of Droṇācārya [Aśvatthāmā’s father] cry like me.” Draupadī was showing the heart of the queen. And that becomes essential for, again, the sustaining of society as a whole. Further, the queen is also, by supporting the king, of course, protecting the earth. And what is the earth, or rather who is the earth?

The earth is dhāranī, she who holds, she who keeps us all from going into the netherworld. She is another mother. Dhāranī, the earth, accepts, she is receiving the weight, the burden of all creatures. She's receiving the burden of all creatures and she is giving. What is she giving? Her produce. In the Bhāgavatam, in the story of Pṛthu Mahārāja, in his interaction with Bhūmi, she is giving, as a cow, her milk. Her bounty is regarded as her milk, which she gives to different sorts of creatures depending on their particular needs and preferences. Always she is giving her bounty, unless and until humans are abusing it, which is what is happening today. And then what does she do? She withholds. She holds back her bounty. It's said that Earth is the mother of all beings, and because we are disregarding this identification of Earth as mother, we are abusing Mother Earth, forgetting that she is mother and thinking Earth is to be exploited, and as the result we have what is called an extraction economy. We are extracting from the earth, and this extraction economy is getting us into deep trouble. This is showing our disrespect for motherhood in general. The biological mother and respect for her is very closely related to our respect or disrespect for Mother Earth. If we get one right, we can get the other right and vice versa. If not, then we are in trouble.

Finally, we have mother cow. In my research on cow protection in recent months, I've met several people who are very dedicated in cow protection, and they all refer to cow as gomātā, mother cow. I asked them, what about the bull? And they say, they all are gomātā. They all are the offspring of gomātā. In any case, they're all gomātā. Cows, bulls, they're all gomātā. 

In the Bhāgavatam, the cow is identified with earth, and, interestingly, she speaks there also. She speaks about her vulnerability, her helplessness. We see that on the one side we have mother who is protecting the child, giving and nourishing, and on the other hand we have mother as the recipient of protection because of her vulnerability. The understanding, the appreciating of the motherhood needs to see both sides of this. The mother is giving benefit, the mother is also in a position of need. That is especially found in the case of cows. I just interviewed one devotee in Vrindavan who serves cows since many years. He said: “Taking care of cows is a 24/7 service. It's constant endeavor.” We might also say that taking care of children is a 24/7 job, but also taking proper care of mothers is also a 24/7 service.

Here we have it, seven different sorts of mothers from whom I would say collectively we get a very rich understanding of what motherhood is about, and how essential it is for us to properly honor mothers. Hare Krishna!

—From a guest appearance by H.H. Krishna Kshetra Swami made at the Institute of Spiritual Cultures presentation led by H.G. Devaki devi dasi, on March 3, 2019 in Śrī Śrī Rādhā- Mādhava's Jhulan Gardens in Sridhama Mayapur