Marriage and Love || Acharya Prashant (2016)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: Shabdyoga Satsang, 26.10.2016, Advait Bodhsthal, Noida, India  Context: ~ What is love? ~ What is marriage? ~ How to relate with others?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 So whenever I see what's my mom's life, what's my dad's life, also called married

00:13 life, and then I'll discuss with my friends that only that aisa hi hota hai, aisa hi zindagi

00:22 hai, and whenever that happens, that's a good thing.

00:31 So I don't understand, the way they live, the way they live, there's no shortage of

00:37 anything, if there's a problem, I don't understand that.

00:41 Why do we often talk of marriage?

00:44 As such, I have nothing against two people committing to stay together.

00:50 But why do I often talk of it?

00:54 I talk of it because the mind that is so eagerly wanting marriage is often a mind that wants

01:10 the marriage due to its insecurity, its dullness, and its inability to see what it is wanting

01:35 and doing.

01:40 That darkness, that ignorance reflects in all the actions of that mind, all the actions

01:47 of that individual.

01:49 But it reflects most starkly in the institution of marriage because it is so very permanent,

01:59 at least relative to the other things in life.

02:02 You can buy a shirt and you can do away with it.

02:06 That's not what you can do with your wife or husband.

02:12 That's why I talk so often of it.

02:14 I have nothing against marriage.

02:16 I have a lot to do with the mind of man, the mind that rushes towards security, the mind

02:24 that wants to possess and hold captive another living being.

02:30 I want to talk of that mind.

02:33 But when it comes to marriage, that mind acts almost in a suicidal way because now you have

02:43 gone into something which given your current state would be extremely irreversible for

02:49 you.

02:50 Not only would it be irreversible, it would be spawning a series of actions from here.

02:58 Marriage will decide the kind of work that you will do.

03:04 It will decide your relationship with the kids that you will breed.

03:08 It will decide practically everything about your life now.

03:13 That's why I talk about marriage.

03:16 Otherwise, why must I bother?

03:20 Two fellows can comfortably live with each other all their life and it can be very beautiful

03:26 as well.

03:29 But what if both of them have come to each other in sheer darkness?

03:33 What if they do not know what they are doing?

03:37 What if they are getting into an irreversible trap?

03:44 What if the mistake is final, incorrigible?

04:06 That's why I talk about it.

04:09 A Buddha entering marriage would be so very alright.

04:16 Why would one bother?

04:20 He is a Buddha.

04:22 In his Buddhahood, whatever he does is beautiful.

04:27 As an awakened one, in your wisdom, whatever you do would be beautiful.

04:32 You may decide to marry, you may decide to not to marry.

04:35 You may decide to live with one man, you may decide to live with three men.

04:39 You may decide to have no kids, you may decide to have ten kids.

04:42 Whatever you do would be wonderful.

04:45 Who am I to talk about your intimate and individual decisions then?

04:53 Whatever you do in your awakened state is just the right thing that you must do.

05:00 Why must me or anybody talk about it?

05:04 So I have nothing as such against the institution of marriage.

05:08 But I very well know why this institution is so all pervasive.

05:13 Why one may skip anything else in life but does not skip marriage?

05:21 Because it pertains to our deepest darkness.

05:28 And the deepest desire of the ego with a sense of incompleteness is to permanently latch on to somebody else.

05:43 Love is the one thing that can redeem.

05:51 And marriage acts as a very profane substitute for that.

05:59 What should have been the avenue for your redemption becomes your permanent enslavement.

06:08 Love can sublimate, love can help you break out from your regular patterns.

06:16 But love withheld by marriage becomes a pattern in itself.

06:22 Instead of showing up as a dynamite, as something that can revolutionize your life,

06:32 it becomes something that strangulates your life.

06:36 Do you see this?

06:38 You know the utter power of love, don't you?

06:40 You know what it can do.

06:42 And you must also know that when this power is socialized,

06:51 when this power is given a name, a shape, a pattern, a uniform,

07:03 then you have lost that which was your only possibility of redemption.

07:14 It's like having an axe that can break all your chains and using that axe instead to strike at your own legs.

07:30 Love would have helped you fly.

07:35 And now you have captivated love within four walls.

07:50 As wise men and women, if you are married, wonderful.

07:56 As wise men and women, if you are not married, wonderful.

08:00 The point is not really marriage.

08:02 The point is wisdom.

08:05 You get this.

08:12 I'm not crusading against a social evil.

08:22 My one and only concern is the mind of man.

08:29 Society and other things come way later.

08:35 No part of this recording may be reproduced

08:37 without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

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