|| Shri Hari ||

Duties in a Household Life

 continued

Question -  If a couple have no son,  who will serve them in  their old age ?  

Answer -  Do all sons serve their parents ?   How will the sons, who want to lay claim to their parents’ property and regard the offering of obsequial oblation as a futile activity,  serve the parents ?   They prove to be troublesome to their parents.  A man receives service and comforts according to his fate whether he has sons or no.  We have clearly notices that people serve the dispassionate saints more than sons serve their parents.  It means that sons don’t necessarily serve parents.  

Question -  If we have no son,  who will offer us oblation and water;  and how shall we meet with a good fate without the offering of water and oblation ?   

Answer -  Those who receive the offering of water and oblation have to follow the cycle of birth and death.  As a traveller breaks his journey on account of hunger and thirst and again starts his journey having eaten food and drunk water;  so do the departed souls stop at a place without the offering of oblation and water.  But when oblation and water are offered to them,  they start from that place and their cycle of birth and death begins but they don’t attain salvation.  

In fact,  salvation does not in the least depend on offspring.  If salvation depends on offspring,  it means that salvation is dependent.  Then how is the human life independent ?  When even attachment to the body is an impediment to salvation,  how will the hope of receiving oblation and water from sons after death lead a man to salvation ?   It will lead him only to bondage.  Therefore the person who wants to attain salvation,  should renounce the three desires -  of sons,  of honour and of wealth,  because all these three are the stumbling blocks to God Realization.

  

(to be continued....... ) 

 ‒From the book ‘Jeevan ka Kartavya' by Swami Ramsukhdasji