Vaidya Mishra used to say: “whatever I am today in terms of ayurvedic wisdom, always I give credit to my father. But I want to give credit to my mother for way more things in life. The way she guided me since I started to understand things. She taught me to see the world in great depth; she showed me how to express my affections, and be kind towards people, animals, and all creatures of God; she taught me to be humble, and honor and value all the gifts that Mother Nature showers upon us…
In the Vedic tradition, ritual celebrations start through an expression of gratitude and recognition to the mother, then the father, and finally the guru. The verse goes:
In (you) mother, I identify/recognize/invoke the divine. And then, we acknowledge father, and finally guru:
Why does mother come first?
Women are embodiments of shakti, or dynamism. While men are shiva, or silence, and the ancient puranic stories tell us, the universe results from the joyful everlasting play of shiva and shakti. Neither one is complete without the other; and only when they are in harmonious interaction, can life exist. Men and women, on earth, are personified expressions of gender neutral cosmic energies. These energies are beyond male and female. They get expressed as male and female in the human dimension. On earth – all men and all women carry both in them, in different ratios.
Shiva, or silence, is inert and exempt from the play of time, change and transformation. Shiva is the ocean of full potential but that ocean remains silent and still, until Shakti, or dynamism, moves it, unfolds that silence, awakens it. Shakti is the spark that sets creation into motion, that gets the wheels of time rolling. Shakti personified by the goddess Kali, is time itself – impermanent, always becoming, transforming. She “devours” her own creation – as time flows it undoes itself. Together, shiva and shakti, form the one all.
But why do rituals begin with an express recognition of mothers first? Simply because as expressions of shakti, without mothers there would be nothing. Without the materializing power of shakti, there would be no existence, only an eternity of silence, deep, dark, unmanifest.
Upon conception, when the soul enters the mother’s womb, it is shiva, full of silence. It is the mother’s shakti energy that moves it into being, makes the seed sprout, so it unfolds into dynamism – a body that will be fit for life on earth. Mothers as shakti are the first and only enablers of life in this sense. Mothers are bhumi, mother-earth, from conception unto our timed dissolution. Mother holds us, shelters us, nourishes and sustains us. Mother is the powerhouse of dynamism, she is also the platform where the highest spiritual desire, the achievement of unity or yoga with shiva, takes place: the yoga of silence and dynamism, of shiva and shakti, that occurs in shakti herself in life on earth, Bhumi…
Happy Mother’s Day!”
~ Vaidya Mishra
SPRING DETOX NEWS
Our Spring Detox completed its third week. Participants have
now learnt how to do Samadhi Marma, and are exploring the recipes and protocols of Vaidya’s home detox. We were delighted to have Dr Lisa Raskin speak on the nightshades, and we look forward to Dr Teitelbaum’s presentation next week. Remember: Spring is the best time to offload extra baggage: mentally, emotionally, physically. Now is the time to materialize your new year’s resolutions. Nature supports us at every step in letting go, and resetting ourselves on all levels. We thank Vaidya Mishra for sharing with us the timeless precious knowledge of Ayurveda in a simple structured manner so we could apply and use it to help with our busy modern lifestyles. Namaste!
We want to help you protect your purchase – there’s been an increase in lost/stolen packages.
To protect your shipment – in case your shipping address is not secure – we have now added the “signature delivery” option upon check-out on www.chandika.com and we highly recommend you select it to ensure your package is guaranteed to reach you after it leaves our warehouse. Kindly note we are unable to replace stolen/misplaced packages once they are confirmed delivered by the carrier of your choice.
