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Sarada Devi served Sri Ramakrishna
and his innumerable devotees and disciples for fourteen years
simultaneously receiving rigorous spiritual training from her
husband. This life of sacrifice, sadhana and selfless struggle of
Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi resulted in the accumulation of
great spiritual wealth that powers the Math, Mission and the
devotees forever.
She was thirty-three years of age
when Sri Ramakrishna passed away. The compulsion to play diverse
and different roles devolved on her immediately thereafter. As a
homemaker she had to bear, forever, the onslaught of unreasonable,
dissatisfied and demanding relatives. Again, she had to be the
spiritual guide to the monks of the Ramakrishna Order and the
ever-increasing spiritual aspirants. “Far from shunning a
distracting world, she embraced it and enfolded it in her love. In
the midst of a thousand distractions, she preserved the naturalness
and peace of her personality.”
She was the most ideal woman who
shouldered enormous responsibilities against all odds and still
radiated the core of womanhood viz., purity and motherly love. The
unceasing flow of abundant love from her large heart was easily
perceptible to all alike that she naturally became “Sri Ma”, the
Holy Mother.
The self-effacing Sarada is the
ideal source of inspiration to the women of all ages and nations, an
ideal guru to all seekers of truth, a source of solace and peace to
all struggling souls and above all, the loving
mother, always ready to shower her extraordinary love and
abundant compassion on all of us.
“Whose character is all pure
whose life is similarly pure;
who is the embodiment of purity and
divine;
that shining goddess I salute again
and again.”
Swami Abhedananda on Sri Sarada Devi
“I am the mother of the wicked, as I
am the mother of the virtuous. Whenever you are in distress, just
say to yourself, ‘I have a mother.’”
- Sri Sarada Devi
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