Parents, Apologize to Your Children!
Questioner: If a child, because of his suffering, asks his parents, “Why did you give me birth?” then what should the parents answer? Giving birth to the child is easy, but dying and mukti (liberation) is difficult.
Acharya Prashant: First of all, if the child says, “Why did you bring me into this world?” the parents must straightaway apologize.
(Laughter)
It’s not a matter of laughing; it’s a thing of basic honesty. And it is because parents have first of all committed the mistake of bringing another person into this world of agony, longing and suffering that they compensate by investing themselves in raising the kid. That is why it is imperative for the parents to bring education to the kid, give food to the kid, spend money on the kid. It is a compensation.
Have you seen how much of the parents’ time, especially the mother’s time, gets spent on the kid? It has to be done; it is a thing of justice. It is not a favor to the kid; the parents owe it to the kid. And the kid is very justified in asking, “Did I really plead to you to bring me in this world? Did I send a formal application? You, in your moment of personal wisdom and planned indiscretion, or unplanned lust, gave birth to me. Now, I sue you. Now, I demand damages.”
And all the money that gets spent on the kid is actually a compensation—compensation for that moment of indiscretion. It could be conscious indiscretion, by way of a planned birth, or it could be unconscious indiscretion, when you say, “Oh, the child just came; we didn’t plan it.” Whether conscious or unconscious, the fact is that it is an indiscretion. Because it is an indiscretion, so you pay for it.
Now you know why you have to pay so much for the kid’s school fees: it is a fine. It is a fine that you are paying. You are being penalized by existence. Now you know why the mother has to carry the kid for nine months: the mother is being severely penalized. What made you go so blind in emotion or in lust that you allowed yourself to get pregnant? Now, pay the fine. Now a shrieking, screeching thing will come into the world. Pay the fine. It begins by paying the hospital fees. No kid gets born without the hospital charges being paid. Does that not tell you that the whole thing starts as some kind of a penalty?
See, after you fight with someone, you are carried away to the hospital. You know that something wrong has happened; that’s why you have been brought to the hospital. And when you get pregnant, you are taken to the hospital. Don’t you see the parallel? And every kid must ask this.
And therefore, giving the best environment to the kid to rid him of all body and social identification is the minimum that the parents can do for him. The parents have given the kid the cage that the body is. The body is a cage, and as the kid grows up, there is much more to engage him. And it is not merely a mistake, it is actually a crime. There was nobody to suffer, and you unnecessarily brought suffering to the world. Now the minimum you can do is, liberate him; give him conditions that would enable his liberation.
And that is the role, the dharmā of parents: give the kid conditions that would enable his liberation. I repeat, this is not a favor that the parents do to the child; it is their obligation. And if you cannot meet this obligation, then you are committing a double crime. The first is to give birth; the second is to give birth without having the credentials to act as worthy parents.
Let all parents remember this. The day the child is born, he is born as someone to whom you are deeply indebted. You have to clear the debt. It is not the child who is indebted; the parents must be very clear on who the debtor is. Classically, it has been said that the child owes a lot to the parents—maatr-rin (maternal loan), pitr-rin (paternal loan). The fact is totally different: the parents owe a lot to the child.
So, be very cautious while giving birth. When you are giving birth, you are actually giving birth to a big debt, a humongous debt, and you will have to settle that debt. Otherwise, you won’t be able to settle in peace. If you don’t want to increase your debt manifold, then be very cautious while giving birth. Giving birth is not a plaything. “There was nothing else to do, so we just decided to break the bed, and a few babies we got. Here are two; where is the third one? Look behind the almirah, under the carpet, behind the curtain, somewhere… The third must be there!”
It’s not a casual affair. Giving birth is not for kids. Law just says that there is a legal age—eighteen, twenty-one, and such things. First of all, giving birth requires that there has to be mental maturity. Unfortunately, ninety-nine percent of the world’s population is not at all mentally mature enough to be parents. The funny thing is that the one percent who are mentally mature enough to be parents would never want to give birth.
So, all the instances of baby-making belong to those who should never have been allowed to make babies. It’s almost like a five-year-old baby girl giving birth—oh, she looks twenty-five; she is actually five. A four-year-old boy giving birth—oh, he looks like a brute of thirty-four, six feet, eighty kilograms; he is actually just four. Just as a four-year-old runs behind mamma, this thirty-four-year-old runs behind the kid’s mamma.
We must fully understand what procreation is beyond the social myth. There is a huge social myth around becoming parents, giving birth to babies. We don’t beget babies; we beget stories. We do not know what a baby really is; we fall for stories. We have stories, we don’t know reality, and we become part of those stories. Those stories are all false. Open your eyes and see what the thing actually is like. It is not the fairy tale we have been told it is. It is something drastically different.
