"I Have a Mother"

ॐ तत् सत् 

Today is Holy Mother Sarada Devi's birthday tithi and this is the first posting on this blog. I want to start with what Hindus consider the most sacred sound (ॐ) and the most ignored truth: God alone is real. 

ॐ tat sat. The Sanskrit, tat ("that") here refers to the Supreme Being or God, and sat means "real". Compared to the reality of God, everything else is at least "less" real, the way our dreams are less real than our waking experience. There will be enough opportunities in future postings to reflect on this in a philosophically more rigorous way.

ॐ tat sat is probably the best reminder we can send ourselves from time to time that God alone is the ultimate reality and, other than the divine, nothing really matters. Everything can be sacrificed for that highest ideal. 

My favorite quote from Swami Vivekananda is this: “Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else” (CW 5. 251-52).

॥ ॐ तत् सत् ॥

"Holy Mother": Painting by Swami Tadatmananda