The First Duty of Every Parent

2:09·1080p·Part 1 of 5·Hindi audio, English subtitles

“And yet, are happiness and security not attained through a person's own deeds (karma)?”

Krishna, in this teaching

About this teaching

Drawn from the teaching's own words — auto-transcribed and translated. The full transcript is further down.

Chapter 2 — Parents

Chapter 2 of 35 — 5 parts, 10 min in total.

Parents, and the long shadow their wishes cast over their children.

Almost every catastrophe in the Mahabharata can be traced to a parent. Dhritarashtra cannot refuse his son. Gandhari blindfolds herself rather than see. Kunti abandons a child and keeps the secret for a lifetime. Shantanu's desire costs Bhishma everything.

The epic is unusually clear-eyed here: it does not present parents as villains, but as people whose love, unexamined, becomes the instrument of harm. What a parent wants for a child and what the child owes the world are not the same thing, and the gap between them drives much of the plot.

Terms you'll hear

Pitr-rina: The debt owed to one's forebears — a real obligation in dharmic thought, and one the epic keeps testing.

Background on the theme of this chapter, not a summary of this particular clip. Watch it for what Krishna actually says.

Transcript

English translation

To strive to fill the future of one's children with happiness — this is held to be the foremost duty of every parent. Those whom you have brought into this world, and by whose deeds this world will one day know you as well — what could matter more than to plan for the happiness of their future? And yet, are happiness and security not attained through a person's own deeds (karma)? The good or bad conditioning (samskara) that parents give, the fit or unfit education they provide — is not the worth of all one's present deeds shaped by that conditioning and that education? From conditioning and education is a person's character formed. And so, the kind of character parents build in their children is the very kind of future those children will have. Yet still, most parents — in their anxiety to secure their children's future — forget the work of building their character. Reflect on it yourself.

हिन्दी — as spoken

कि प्रंतानों के भविष्य को सुख से भरने का प्रेत्न करना यही हर माता-पिता का प्रधंध कर्तव्य होता है कि जिन्हें आप इस संसार में लाए और जिनके कर्मों से यह जगत आपका भी परीचे पाएगा भविष्य में उनके भविष्य के सुख की योजना करने से अधिक महत्व और हो भी क्या सकता है किन्तु सुख और सुरक्षा क्या ये मनुष्य के कर्मों से प्राप्त नहीं होते माता पिता के दिये हुए अच्छे या बुरे संस्कार उनकी दिए हुए योग्य अथवा योग्य शिक्षा क्या आज के सारे कर्मों का मोल नहीं संस्कार और शिक्षा से बनता है मनुष्य का चरित्र अथात माता पिता अपनी संतानों का जैसा चरित्र बनाते हैं ऐसा ही बनता है उनका भविष्य किन्तु फिर भी अधिक्तर माता पिता अपनी संतानों का भविष्य सुरक्षित करनी की चिंता में, उनका चरित्र निर्मान का कारे भूल ही जाते हैं। स्वेम विचार कीजें।

Auto-transcribed from the audio; lightly imperfect on Sanskrit names and terms.