Marriage

Love would have helped you fly. And now you have captivated love within four walls. As wise men and women, if you are married, wonderful. As wise men and women, if you are not married, wonderful. The point is not really marriage. The point is wisdom. https://dev-main8.vedant.life/en/articles/marriage-and-love-1_0ff5cad

In our country, most people marry because that is sometimes the only way of getting some good sex—good and assured sex. Otherwise, the fellow would either have to spend a lot of money or a lot of time, or both, and then still return empty-handed. Isn’t that so?

You already have enough troubles, right? We don’t want to invite another trouble into your house, into your bedroom, do you? But yes, if someone can bring joy and Truth to you, invite them right into your heart, and then marriage is inconsequential. With the right person, you marry—wonderful! You…

When a great scientist, or a devoted politician, or a committed author decides to remain unmarried, it is wonderful. But only then. First of all, figure out something great to be immersed and absorbed in. If you can figure that out, then you get the licence to remain unmarried. Only…

I have nothing against marriage. I have a lot to do with the mind of man. The mind that rushes towards security, the mind that wants to possess and hold captive another living being, I want to talk of that mind.

Marriage will decide the kind of work that you…

“Why am I with someone?” That question has to be asked. If that question has been honestly asked and reasonably answered, then you cannot go wrong, whether you marry or not, whether you remain with someone or not.

And mind you, these are not really permanent decisions to be made.…

A woman is not allowed to work after marriage—nobody cares. It doesn’t make headlines at all.

A woman has unsafe work environment—doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make headlines.

A woman dies during childbirth—who bothers?

Companionship is wonderful. Be with one person, ten persons, anybody who helps your mind be centered. Being with such a person or a group of persons is wonderful.

If marriage is another name for beautiful companionship, marriage is wonderful. But what matters is not the social institution of marriage but…

Even if you get married, what do you do? You bring a man or a woman to your house, or you move to his house, sharing a common bed and gaining the authority to slip your hand inside somebody’s pants. Even the courts of law call that as consummation of…

The best way to save a marriage is to forget that you are married. Till the time you remain married, the marriage is doomed to fail.

If you want to redeem your wife, drop the wife and you will get a lover.

If you want to save your husband, drop…

If the two persons who are in this social arrangement of marriage are also spiritual friends, then they rise above the social arrangement. The social arrangement by itself is a recipe for disaster. But when the social arrangement is purified, consecrated by the spiritual touch, then the poison in it…

Drop the idea that the marriage is the problem, and then you will be able to look at her as an individual. Drop the image that she must be a wife, and then you will be able to look at her more sympathetically, more intimately.

Look at your husband like…

If you are just looking for decent looks and somebody to accompany you to the movies, then anybody would do. But if you are looking really to not make a waste of your life, and if you are looking for someone who just refreshes you, gives you freedom from all…

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, I am a Hindu and I want to marry a Muslim girl. I love her, but my family is not supporting. Nobody agrees with me. What should I do?

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, should one not leave money for his children? Is that not my responsibility towards my family?

Acharya Prashant (AP): By giving them X or Y tangible things, would you really be able to do them some good? You have a son, and that son becomes an…

The man who married a harlot, on living dangerously.

The prince of Tirmidh said one night to his court-jester Dalqak, 'You have taken to wife a harlot in your haste. You should have mentioned the matter to me, then we might have married you to a respectable woman'.

Question (Q): There is a growing trend of having live-in relationships as opposing the marriage. We are finding more people falling into a live-in relationship. Is that a movement forward? Would that be considered something that would take us to freedom?

Acharya Prashant (AP): We are very good at playing…

Question: Sir, I was reading a study in the 'Times of India'. It said that women are happier being single. Now, when I read this as an Indian woman, brought up in the Indian culture, this is very conflicting because women in India are looked down upon if they are…

Question: Why do I need to get married? Why do I need to take a certificate from somebody regarding my love, regarding my decision to live with someone? Why does it need to be certified by someone?”

Acharya Prashant (AP): Pulkit (questioner), it’s a very good question that you are…

Questioner: Acharya Ji, a lot of changes have happened in my lifestyle and in my relationship with my wife after I have started watching your videos and reading your books. We spend a lot of time alone now. We don’t get into escapes easily, don’t get into such entertainment activities…

Question: Acharya Ji, before marriage, every relationship that I had has been very natural. I never did anything to be good with them. But once I got married, it is not coming that natural.

Please guide.

Acharya Prashant: Companionship is wonderful. Be with one person, ten persons, anybody who helps your mind be centred. Being with such a person or a group of persons is wonderful. If marriage is another name for beautiful companionship, marriage is wonderful.

But, what matters is not the social institution…

Question: If there is a fight going on with my wife, and she gets angry, and I too get angry. Won’t that create more friction?

Acharya Prashant: You know what, you don’t get angry when fighting with your spouse, because you assume that she is not as strong as you.…

Questioner (Q): Is it possible to live alone?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Why does this question arise?

Q: Because I don’t want to get married.

समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रिय:।

ये भजन्ति तु मां भक्त्या मयि ते तेषु चाप्यहम्।।29।।

samo ’haṁ sarva-bhūteṣhu na me dveṣhyo ’sti na priyaḥ

Sunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian Column

हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।

Questioner: A lot of students that I talk to — it’s the fear of the society, it’s the fear of the unknown, it’s fear of the expectations that they are carrying, that pushes them to become an engineer and then they figure out that probably this is not something that they wanted to be. And that is the reality of a lot of individuals and not just engineers. Probably, here is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself, right? Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for ten years to take that step to get married. Where does this fear come from? Acharya Prashant: Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge. You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity, to something that is unreliable, I will have to be afraid. It’s like putting my heart on this table. Now, how can I live in security? The heart is out there on the table, anybody can take it away, anything can happen to it. Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own. My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control. Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear. My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account, I will be afraid. That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen. My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance. I very well know, time will take it away, I will be afraid. Right? Who am I? I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society. Oh! I will be so afraid, so afraid! You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life. Because, their heart is out there in the hands of strangers. Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people. So, the image can be distorted or can disappear any moment. Just imagine, how afraid they would be all the time. That’s with the ego. Because, the ego, as I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness. Therefore, to complete itself, it just associates itself to anything possible. And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable. They belong to the world and the world can take them away. They belong to time. They came with time and with time all those things will disappear. And you have tied your identity to those things. Now how can you rest in peace? That’s fear. If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid. My identity is linked to my husband’s identity. Now the husband has two legs. And the husband has a brain, a mind of his own. If your identity comes from your husband’s name, as happens in India at least, you would always be afraid as a wife. The husband can change his mind any day. You would always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary, and the other eye in his email and mobile phone. What’s he getting into? Who’s texting him? Why is he on the phone so late in the night? Because you are afraid if husband goes away, what happens to you? Your very existence depends on the husband. That’s fear. When you operate from the ego centre and make something very, very important for yourself and that something belongs to the world, it can go away anytime, and you are afraid. And in that fear, there can never be love, never be love. If you are afraid of losing something, you will be very violent towards it. Nobody lets his money go and have a walk down the road. What do you do? You lock up your money. That’s violence. When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up. You don’t want it to have freedom. And that’s violence. So, love and fear just cannot go together. If you are dependent on something or somebody, you will be afraid. And that dependence cannot be called love. And that is a confusion, we often get into it. Just because you depend on somebody and somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it is love, it is not. Questioner: Just like the way political parties think that people love them but it actually is fear. Acharya Prashant: Exactly! Love is a rare quality and rarer in politics. Questioner: So, if I am interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly? Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can either be zero or one? Acharya Prashant: One has to go into the very nature of interest. Aren’t we interested in cricket? Aren’t we interested in seeing songs in movies? Practically, everybody in India is interested in cricket, nobody in Brazil is. And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey. So, that’s how flimsy the whole thing about interest is. In India, if you don’t get a movie with songs, you say, “I am disinterested.” The movie would bomb. In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what’s going on? Occasionally, you have an OD song but typically there is no song. So, that is the nature of interest. It is never something of the heart. Love and interest are not the same thing. Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random chance, your circumstances and all these. So that’s how your interests come to you. So, if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Just two years back, I was interested in something else and two years before I was interested in that and when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot. What happened to all those interests?” Today, I smile at those things and just shrug them off, “I don’t want to be a fighter pilot.” What you want to be today? Oh! I want to be an investment banker. What happened to the fighter pilot? You were so interested in that. And how do you know, tomorrow you will not be looking at this I-banker, just the way today you are looking at the fighter pilot. The self of a five-year old appears so naïve and immature when you are twenty-five. How do you know that at thirty-five, you will not look back at this twenty-five year old self and say, “What the hell! How was I taking this fellow so seriously?” So, interest is something that you must look at with healthy contempt. Interest, mind you, can even be induced in you. Interest can be aroused in you. That’s what the entire advertising industry is about. They can make you feel Interested in things that is intrinsically worthless to you. So, of what value is this thing called interest? But, then in today’s world, we place so much premium on this word 'interest.' Do what interests you, this, that. Whereas, it is wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should ever go after. Then people come up and say, “No, should we do things that we are not interested in? No.

How do you, asks the chief of police, patrol a city, where the butcher shops are guarded by vultures, where bulls get pregnant, cows are barren,

Does the person you are with encourage you to read? You have to ask, “What does he bring for me, roses or books?”

Be very cautious of those who bring roses for you, especially red roses. Books are what we all need, and books are dangerous. Books are dangerous because…

सङ्करो नरकायैव कुलघ्नानां कुलस्य च ।। पतन्ति पितरो ह्येषां लुप्तपिण्डोदकक्रिया: ।।1.42।।

Overview

We want to reach the end of wanting. We want completion, fulfillment in such a final way that we are left with nothing to want anymore. That’s the destination. Born a human being, you will have to act. Act rightly. Act for the right purpose. Live for the right

“I will beat him!”

“I will destroy her!”

“Did you just insult me? Did you?”

Four hours forty-eight minutes of deep intellectual perspiration!

Hurt is not automatic. Somewhere there is an admission from you that you are hurt, and that you would be hurt, and that you would call yourself as hurt. Don’t call yourself as hurt, and see what happens.

Hurt is not an obligation. Hurt is a choice. Insecurity, fear, temptations—none…

Most people never evolve beyond their psychological age of three, four, ten, or twelve years. So they have to be consoled like kids.

What does it mean to have an inauthentic relationship?

There might be people around you who make it compulsory for you to smoke, not because they urge you to smoke, but because they put you in so much of tension that you will need to smoke. But you are deriving some benefits from those people, so you will never…

One can become an entrepreneur, for example, in the field of killing animals, cutting animal flesh, and supplying freshly cut flesh to people at their doorsteps. And this might be a successful business model.

This kind of an entrepreneurship is idiocy, perversion, profanity. The evil was present right in the…

She won’t directly say, “Get me a sari.” Often when they need a sari, they do not say they need a sari; they say, “Janu (beloved), you do not love me!” And janu understands: she needs a sari.

Similarly, janu does not need to say…

When you meet a person, meet in friendliness, meet in love, meet to share, meet to play, meet to rejoice. That’s right relationship. Don’t meet to sit at that person’s feet. That’s vulgar. You don’t need to sit at anybody’s feet. This head can bow down only in front of…

Just as the ego loves to take credit, it also loves to play the victim.

If something good has happened, “I did it!”

If something bad happened, “It happened to me.”