Stuck in a bad relationship? || Acharya Prashant
Video Information: 09.09.2022, Vedant Mahotsav, IISc Bangalore
Context:
~ How to come out of a toxic relationship?
~ What to do if my spouse beats me?
~ How to tackle violence in a relationship?
~ Why are people afraid to move on?
~ Why do we get into abusive marriages?
~ Who are our mentors today?
~ What is the impact of movies you watch?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant #wedding #relationship #marriage #violenceprevention #domesticviolence #spouse #intimatepartnerviolence #abusivemarriage
Context:
~ How to come out of a toxic relationship?
~ What to do if my spouse beats me?
~ How to tackle violence in a relationship?
~ Why are people afraid to move on?
~ Why do we get into abusive marriages?
~ Who are our mentors today?
~ What is the impact of movies you watch?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant #wedding #relationship #marriage #violenceprevention #domesticviolence #spouse #intimatepartnerviolence #abusivemarriage
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:19 All of us are Arjuns, caught in their own flesh, in their blood, in their tears, in their emotions, in their past
00:28 and being caught we forget what our dharm is. Therefore, Bhagavad Gita is immortal.
00:35 As long as Arjun lives within us, we will continue to need Krishna.
00:41 [Music]
00:46 Why are people afraid to step out of even abusive marriages? The reason is exactly the same as for those who feel compelled to get into marriages.
01:12 That is the pressure to conform. That is the pressure to belong to the crowd.
01:27 The fear to not to be labelled abnormal.
01:39 The urge to not to miss out on something that has been glamorized as extremely important and central.
01:53 Here in India, what are 90-95% of our movies about?
02:04 Man and woman getting together, right? In some way or the other.
02:13 Right? So that's what it is. Obviously there is the biological urge embedded in the body itself.
02:30 But much more than that, it is the social norm that first of all pushes us into this institution of marriage
02:43 and then compels us to stay there even if that institution is sapping the very life out of us.
02:55 See, don't we wear what Bollywood does or Tollywood or whatever, depending on your taste.
03:06 We are in the South right now. We speak the way they do.
03:14 We even raise our kids the way they teach us to do. They tell us how to handle our maternity.
03:23 They tell us how to be good parents.
03:28 They are our teachers, mentors, guides, philosophers, de facto gods.
03:43 Do we see how much is our life dictated by the forces of entertainment?
04:00 We spend such a lot of time on avenues of entertainment that we are bound to fully absorb the values they are giving us.
04:24 If you read the Gita, there is no man-woman angle.
04:30 So that kind of center, that feeling, that very issue will not even be activated in your mind.
04:39 Will it be? Some other more important issue will take dominance.
04:48 What is the right action? When to indulge in a war and when to retreat?
04:58 How to pick the right battle to fight?
05:03 Who exactly am I? What is my relationship with the world?
05:09 If you spend time with the Gita, these are the issues that will get activated within you.
05:15 You will feel involved with these issues.
05:20 Whereas if you watch a movie, what is the issue that will gain importance in your mind?
05:29 How do I get my man? How do I get my woman?
05:35 Even if you go to the Ramayana, what you find is that a noble and honorable man is prepared to give up on marital, conjugal pleasure for the sake of a higher ideal.
05:58 Now this kind of a higher thing you will never find in the venues that supply you your values.
06:12 And all the time we are with entertainers.
06:18 And so much of our entertainment is simply related to sex.
06:32 If you think of 10 jokes that make you laugh, 7 or 8 or 9 would be sex related, right? Directly or indirectly?
06:53 So right from the age of 6 or 8, we become deeply indoctrinated.
07:07 Please understand this.
07:12 We are forcefully made to believe that the purpose of life is to chase a man or a woman.
07:25 And the highest possible ideal is to spend time or life with some nice and right person.
07:35 Right? That is what you also call as settling down.
07:42 Now that ideal is ingrained in our minds from a very very early age and it refuses to leave us even after we turn 80 or 90.
07:56 What is life for? No, life is not for a noble cause, life is not for liberation, life is not for knowledge, life is not for exploration.
08:11 Life is so that you can have somebody's hand in your hand.
08:19 Life is for romance. Right?
08:28 Life is when you have that right and perfect person with you, next to you.
08:37 That's when life is right.
08:39 It becomes impossible for us to even imagine a life that is not welded to somebody else's.
08:53 What else is welding?
09:02 That's why so much fire is there.
09:14 It sounds scary if you imagine, if I tell you, you have to spend your life without being hitched to some person of the other gender.
09:28 Most of us will start feeling scared.
09:34 I can understand the situation of those who are already welded.
09:39 But even those who are fortunate enough to not yet have been welded, even they will start feeling scared.
09:54 Oh my God! What a scary vision!
09:58 All alone, what will happen to me?
10:02 Where did this feeling come from?
10:06 Definitely this feeling is not coming from the body.
10:11 Definitely this feeling is not prakritic or genetic.
10:18 Because this kind of feeling is not found in animals.
10:24 Animals do form pairs, but only for a while.
10:30 And then they go their own way.
10:34 Till the next mating season, they are away.
10:43 This kind of a welded relationship, this concept does not exist in prakriti.
10:50 So surely it is coming from the society, not biology.
10:56 And from where in society is it coming?
10:59 It is coming from our avenues of entertainment.
11:06 Songs, you go to YouTube, which is the most watched YouTube channel across the world.
11:21 And what do you watch there? Songs. And what are those songs necessarily about?
11:28 Man and woman, man and woman, man and woman, man and woman.
11:35 The entire world is watching that.
11:39 That particular channel is in Hindi, but even otherwise, east or west,
11:45 that's what we are constantly crooning.
11:49 Where is my man? Where is my woman? Where is my man? Where is my woman?
11:59 That's the reason why the day you turn 12, you actually start looking for a partner.
12:08 I have heard kids of age 6 and 8 have boyfriends and girlfriends these days.
12:17 That's because this mass culture through media is now reaching them even earlier.
12:25 They all have mobile phones.
12:28 So even they are thinking that the highest thing possible in life is a boyfriend or girlfriend.
12:37 And if you have that, then you have arrived, you have succeeded.
12:47 With that kind of ideal, how will you ever have the courage to walk alone?
12:58 And when I say walk alone, that does not mean that you cannot be in a relationship.
13:04 When I say walk alone, that means being free of the compulsion to be in a relationship.
13:13 These are two very different things. You can be in a relationship out of your freedom.
13:19 It is an expression of your freedom that you are in a relationship. That is possible, right?
13:24 Since I am free, hence out of my choice I am in a relationship.
13:29 But that's not the case very often.
13:33 Most of us are in relationships not because of freedom but because of compulsion.
13:43 And that's the reason why we have so many husband-wife jokes.
13:48 Otherwise, how can there be something to joke about in that?
13:52 You don't have mother-son jokes. You don't have brother-sister jokes.
13:56 Why do you have so many husband-wife jokes?
14:00 Just to mitigate the suffering a little.
14:04 Just to be able to laugh at your own sorry situation a little.
14:15 Isn't the mother-son bond an important one?
14:19 Why don't you have mother-son jokes then?
14:22 Why only husband-wife jokes?
14:26 Because without joking it will be even more difficult to tolerate.
14:45 This institution has ruined so many people and continues to do that on a daily basis, especially women.
14:54 Here we have a man stating his predicament and suffering.
15:03 But this institution has been equally if not more harsh upon women.
15:13 Because they are even more scared to step out.
15:20 How is it possible for a simple, normal, average, powerless lady like me to survive all alone in this big, bad, bullying world?
15:41 So she will tolerate all kinds of nonsense and abuse and violence but will stay put.
15:49 And she will say, "Oh, you know, I am doing it for the integrity of the family and welfare of the kids."
16:03 Same goes for men because now women are as nastily empowered as men used to be.
16:14 So they are as nastily exploitative as well.
16:27 Kindly get into your own mind and ask yourself,
16:31 Who has taught you to put up with daily abuse and humiliation?
16:41 Who declared that to be your destiny?
16:48 Who is that script writer?
16:54 Whose is this decree that cannot be reversed?
17:09 Why must you act as if you are helpless and powerless?
17:17 Why must you behave as if there is no choice?
17:25 I do not know what you must do.
17:28 You have been with me only since a week.
17:31 I do not know the intricacies of your situation.
17:38 But I can talk of a general principle.
17:41 Nothing in life is irreversible. Please.
17:47 The only thing that you should never compromise on, never negotiate on is the central purpose of life and that is liberation.
17:58 All else is dispensable.
18:05 Nothing is cast in stone.
18:10 You are free to be, you are free to not to be.
18:19 And there is no God sitting upstairs to declare a mandate.
18:35 Existence will not curse you if you are solo.
18:40 And there is no special reward for remaining hitched.
18:52 You know, the curse that we experience in our daily life acts both ways.
19:00 One, we feel compelled to stay in rotten relationships.
19:08 Second, we feel constrained from entering the right relationships.
19:23 Both.
19:25 And I am not necessarily talking of, you know, giving up on one woman and being with another one. No.
19:34 The right relationship might as well with travelling.
19:43 Travel that you cannot afford because the other person won't allow you to.
19:50 So that relationship is not only abusive in itself but also an impediment to another right relationship.
20:15 That's the reason why wisdom literature right at young age is so important.
20:27 So that you may have higher ideals, especially girls.
20:33 Both.
20:35 It's the age of empowerment.
20:40 Else the only ideal you will worship is the ideal of a couple. The happy couple.
20:46 And that is the ideal almost everybody has.
20:51 Done your UG, done your PG, now what? Now I will happily settle down.
20:56 [Music]