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The Homeless Ones
437
the last of the children, still quite a young man, conceived the same desire and then mother and son adopted the ascetic state together, she among the sādhvis and he among the munis.40
Sometimes dikṣā took place in fulfilment of a vow, as when, to give one example, a young widow had two children, out of which the boy was carried off by a virulent disease and the girl fell ill in her turn. The mother made a vow to receive dikșă along with her daughter, if this latter were restored to health, which in fact happened.41
Sometimes also it happens - and such cases are not rare - that, of a young couple, one or other partner, often the young wife, feels herself attracted to the way of asceticism after some years of married life. If there are no children it is simpler, though the husband and his family often oppose the young woman's desire and seek to deflect her from the course she has chosen.42 Frequently the young husband marries again.43 If one asks á sādhi why she did not choose this path before
40 For example, Sadhvi Bālū was initiated at the age of 43 with her son, Muni Nathamala, who was 10 years old. She had brought up the three other children and was waiting to depart till the youngest should have no further need of her; as it turned out, he too. felt called; cf. Surānā, 1972, pp. 8-15.'At Pālītāņā, in June 1973, a widow received dikşā along with her son and her daughter, both adolescents; cf. Kuśala Nirdeśa, July 1973, pp. 44-46. Mahasati Umarāvakumvara, a young widow of 15 years, received dikṣā with her recently widowed father. After the ceremony the new muni blessed the young sādhvi; cf. Umarāvakusvara, 1962, pp.5-6.
41 This was the case with Mahāsati Śri Kailasakaṁvara and her daughter Mahāsati Sri Kusumavati, who is now a guruņi.
42 Biographies of the sadhvis relate examples of this sort, one of the most characteristic being that of Sadhvi Sri Ratnavati (P 609 ff.).
43 In instances like this, it is not always easy to decide the fate of the children; I met one sādhvi who had brought her little girl with her, when she joined the sadhvis. Her husband remarried and came to look for the girl when she was old enough to do without her mother's attentions, for he did not fancy a second sādhvi.
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