Generally, when a person is ready to take sannyas, he is pretty much frustrated with his family life. ‘I have been so long, now I will be liberated from all of these anxieties, all of these demands, all of these entanglements.’ But Mahaprabhu, his wife, she was the most perfect, loving, beautiful, gentle, she was only, I believe, sixteen years old, and she was helpless without him. And his mother was an elderly lady, who is a widow, who is willing to do anything and everything for him at any moment; whatever he did, as far as she was concerned, was perfect and she will support him. How to give up such a mother? There is no such thing as mother like this. There is no such thing as wife like this in today’s society and if they have a fraction of these qualities, we cannot give it up. But Mahaprabhu renounced it all for the sake of the Lord’s service.
