There was a housewife in Sāvatthī who had ten children. She was always occupied with giving birth, with nursing and raising her children, with educating them, and with arranging marriages for them. Her whole life centred upon her children, and she was therefore known as “Soṇā with many children.” We may find such an abundance of offspring in one family somewhat strange, but in the past this was not at all uncommon in Asia and is not unusual even today.

Soṇā’s husband was a lay follower of the Buddha. After having scrupulously observed the precepts for several years as a householder, he decided to devote himself fully to the holy life, and so he took ordination as a monk. It was not easy for Soṇā to accept this decision, yet she did not waste her time with regrets and sorrow but decided to live a more devout life herself. She called her ten children together, turned her considerable wealth over to them, and asked them to provide her only with her bare necessities.

For a while all went well with this arrangement: she had sufficient support and could spend her time in religious activities. But before long the old woman became a burden to her children and their spouses. They had never really accepted their father’s decision to enter the Order, and even less did they sympathize with their mother’s religious devotion. Indeed, they thought their parents to be fools for forsaking the pleasures that their wealth could purchase. In their eyes their parents were mentally unstable religious fanatics, and thus their attitude toward their mother quickly changed from respect to contempt.

They no longer gave thought to how deeply they were indebted to their mother for all their wealth and for the many years of care and attention she had lavished on them. Looking only to their own convenience, they considered the old woman a nuisance and a burden. The words of the Buddha, that a grateful person is as rare in the world as a saint, again proved true in this case (AN 3:112, 5:143, 195).

The disdainful treatment from her children was even more painful for Soṇā than separation from her husband. She became aware that waves of bitterness arose in her, that reproaches and accusations toward her children intermingled in her mind. She realized that what she had taken to be selfless love, pure mother’s love, was in reality self- love coupled with expectations of requital. She had been relying on her children completely and had been convinced that she would be supported by them in her old age as a tribute to her long years of solicitude for them; she had assumed that gratitude, appreciation, and participation in their affairs would be her reward. Hadn’t she, then, really looked at her children as an investment, as insurance against the fear and loneliness of old age? In this manner, she investigated her motives and found the truth of the Enlightened One’s words in herself. that it was a woman’s way not to rely on possessions, power, and abilities, but solely on her children, while it was the way of the ascetic to rely on virtue alone (AN 6:53).