Video Information: 07.06.2023, IIT Kanpur (Online Session), Greater Noida
Context:
Parents forcing marriage
Horoscope only criteria of marriage
Only marriage eligibility is to match the horoscope?
Why are women given away for marriage?
Why are educated women falling for horoscope?
What is importance of kundali in marriage?
Will a manglik husband/wife bring bad luck in life?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Context:
Parents forcing marriage
Horoscope only criteria of marriage
Only marriage eligibility is to match the horoscope?
Why are women given away for marriage?
Why are educated women falling for horoscope?
What is importance of kundali in marriage?
Will a manglik husband/wife bring bad luck in life?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
ЁЯУЪ
LearningTranscript
00:00Good evening, sir. I'm and I'm a PhD student here at IIT Kanpur. So I have a very personal
00:11question. Being a girl child, especially in India comes with very different sets of consequences.
00:19Despite being given equal opportunities, like education and skills, at the end,
00:25where we are supposed to get a proper match, we are being judged merely on two and I guess only
00:34two things, which is first, how you look and second, does your Kundali match with the groom
00:41or the guy. So I'm right now, I'm witnessing a very disturbing thing. There is a girl who is
00:49a surgeon by education. She's completely independent, yet her matches which are being
00:57filtered by her parents, who are well educated, are completely based on is the guy Manglik.
01:05Irrespective of whether the guy is fulfilling the education eligibility or personality or
01:12other things which are supposed to be considered. So how to handle this situation?
01:20Relieve yourself of the obligation to handle this situation.
01:26You handle a situation only when first of all you are in the situation.
01:33Just drop the situation. Just move past the situation. I mean the girl in question
01:44is a qualified doctor. You said she's a surgeon. The first thing I find amusing is how is she
01:54outsourcing all these matters to other people. I mean medical studies,
02:05they are long drawn affairs. She must be over 25 at least, 28, 30, maybe 32. I don't know what's her
02:14age. Right. That also means that she has gained a certain maturity. I do not see that as a
02:26disadvantage. If she is 32, she is more mature than the ones who are 25. Right.
02:33So she is mature enough and she's a qualified surgeon. She might be
02:38earning as well. If not a salary, then at least a stipend. So she is earning handsomely,
02:46educated. And when it comes on, that's a bit of a joke. Why is she looking towards the
02:59society which includes the family or whatnot to fetch her a groom?
03:04Why is that happening in the first place?
03:07See, let's say I'm an elephant. I am a qualified elephant. With all the mass,
03:17the size, the energy, the bulk, everything. I'm a qualified elephant.
03:22I'm a qualified elephant. And then, you know, I'm going to rabbits and to deer and to
03:37mice and I'm asking them, can you fetch me some grains, some grass? Does it behove me?
03:47I should do it for myself. Come on. DIY. That's my advice to all girls. Simple.
04:00And to all boys. Why are you unnecessarily troubling your old parents? What's the point?
04:08It's their time to get into deeper pursuits of life. Some pilgrimage, some spirituality.
04:20There are a lot of other things. Let them live their life to the fullest.
04:26First of all, the poor soul suffered in their own affairs.
04:32Now, you are putting the load of your affairs on their head. No, no, no.
04:40I'm telling you, they'll be very happy. Just tell them,
04:44Ma, Papa, you do not need to bother about this particular thing. I am Atmanirbhar.
04:55So, that's what is self-sufficiency.
05:02And once you have outsourced this function, you have lost the rights to complain.
05:13Now, how can you say that they are choosing the groom based on this criteria or that the groom
05:20is looking at me only with eyes of lust and physicality and the horoscope has become all
05:28important and the girl's figure and the body and the sexuality has become all important. Come on,
05:34you did it to yourself. How are you now complaining? If you didn't want this to happen,
05:41you should have, first of all, kept matters in your own hands.
05:48The elephant has been begging the rabbits, go fetch me some grains and grass.
05:56And the rabbits will choose the grass based on their own tastes.
06:04And when the rabbits bring the grass to the elephant, the elephant says, oh, I do not like
06:07this grass. I'll complain about it in an online interaction.
06:16But if you wanted the grass of your own size and color and flavor, then you should have done it.
06:24On your own. On your own and for yourself. It's such an intimate thing.
06:29It's the most intimate thing possible, is it not? What are others doing in this matter?
06:38And even if others do poke their nose in, they very well know that they cannot
06:45avoid the fact of the intimacy for too long.
06:51All kinds of interactions are going to happen between the girl and the groom.
06:57Will the parents be there to intervene and mediate? Will they enter the bedroom as well?
07:08Will there be a party to all kinds of things?
07:10Will they enter the bedroom as well? Will there be a party to all kinds
07:16of interactions that happen between the man and the woman?
07:20Not necessarily sexual, but of all kinds. So, I find those parents very irresponsible.
07:27Who make their presence mandatory in matters where they actually have no say, no reason to be present.
07:47The man is there, the woman is there, and both are adults and they will decide on their own matters.
07:52What is anybody else doing in this scheme of things?
07:58Now, obviously, if you want advice, you can respectfully seek advice.
08:07That is one thing, but it is another thing to be obliged
08:13to have a mediator or a governor or a decider.
08:26Are you getting it? And once you accept that kind of
08:35that kind of
08:39mediation or outsourcing,
08:45I do not think you have the right to complain.
08:50There are so many men in the world
08:56of so many types. A lot of them would naturally be lustful, given the kind of people we are.
09:04How are you obliged to bear
09:14the gaze of the lustful ones?
09:21If you come across a lustful one, what do you do? You walk away.
09:28Now, you stand in front of that person and he is ogling and staring and measuring your body
09:34with his eyesight and you still keep standing there right in front of him and then you complain,
09:41why are men like this? Why are men like this? Men will be men and women will be women.
09:44Why don't you simply walk away?
09:52We can start a program of social reformation, obviously.
09:56We can start a program to civilize the men folk, obviously.
10:04But when you are encountering a man who is measuring you mostly by
10:12the shape and size and attractiveness of your body, then that's not the
10:20point to keep engaging with that man. Disengage, look elsewhere, start walking.
10:34There is no point in complaining.
10:38There are so many of them. Pick and choose commodities, aloo, potatoes.
10:48What do you do when you come upon a rotten one?
10:53You just toss it away. You pick another one, right? You do not go to the Ministry of Agriculture
11:00and start proposing a way to have better potatoes. All that can happen in due course.
11:11But first of all, you pick up a rotten potato or a fruit or whatever it is.
11:19Then you embrace it for life and you keep cooking.
11:23And you keep cooking.
11:30There is no point. One thing that all wisdom is founded on is your right to choose.
11:45You have the right to choose. Why then must you act
11:56as if
12:01you are under compulsion?
12:07Nobody can force your hand.
12:14So, remember your right to choose.
12:21Always take the onus of your life
12:27on yourself. The responsibility is all yours.
12:31I could have
12:34gone into and launched myself into a long lecture on what kind of stupidity this horoscope matching
12:41thing is and it is absolutely nonsensical to think of Manglik and whatnot. But I'll not talk of that.
12:48Why must I talk of that?
12:50If there is something that you do not accept or like about yourself or your family or your
13:08you do not condone, if there is something that you do not accept or like, reject it. Simple.
13:23There is no need to even justify it to others.
13:33There is no need to even first of all try to correct that thing.
13:36Let the society believe in horoscopes. If you know all that is stupidity,
13:42just silently walk past that thing.
13:56An educated woman acting helpless and choiceless is not a pretty sight to behold.
14:07You are a human being. You are a consciousness with choice and you have been empowered
14:14internally with education and externally with laws.
14:22This country works on rule of law and the laws are very, very favorable to women.
14:29In fact, men complain that the laws are actually too favorable to women.
14:33So, you are educated, you have the support of laws. Why are you acting so dull and helpless now?
14:44Rise, exercise your choice and live a free life.
14:49And external freedom, even if it's guaranteed by law, will not be of much use if you are internally
15:12still enslaved. Enslaved by custom, tradition, emotions,
15:21ignorance. That's what happens with a lot of educated women as well.
15:27Highly educated, yet internally uneducated. So, they do not know their own emotions.
15:33PhDs from the topmost universities of the world. Indian women.
15:43And yet internally, they live in an emotional darkness.
15:49A darkness they have never bothered to penetrate with the light of wisdom.
15:55What is the result? Suboptimal decisions in life.
15:59Influenced decisions in life, destroyed careers, bad kind of relationships.
16:12Irreversible bondages. Not entirely irreversible, but difficult to tackle.
16:20Not entirely irreversible, but difficult to tackle.
16:25Why? Because there was education in terms of
16:35a degree, there is economic opportunity, there is legal support.
16:42Yet internally, she was still what women have always been since centuries.
16:49That internal freedom can come only from self-knowledge.
16:55That's Adhyatma, that's wisdom, that's Vedanta.
17:03I'm fond of saying spirituality is the best friend of a girl.
17:13That alone can empower her and give her wings.
17:20I personally agreed to what you have said and I am also a believer of it.
17:29Talking about why, I cannot talk about all the women, I'm talking personally about the
17:36case which I have shared. Why that individual is doing which is suboptimal to her is just
17:46for the sake of happiness of her parents. Because again, Indian thing I want to focus on.
17:55We do most of the things to make our parents happy and keeping our parents away from this
18:02life-altering decision, it's not the part of our tradition.
18:09That's why you need wisdom, so that you know the right definition of happiness.
18:16So that you know that what is the common goal of all individuals including your parents.
18:27You want good things to happen to your parents, right?
18:30You must first of all know the definition of goodness. Happiness is not goodness.
18:37A drunkard can start feeling very happy
18:40if served some nonsense. You do not want to do that to him, right?
18:47And all of us are drunkards. Entire humanity is drunk. That's what is meant by inner ignorance.
18:55So making somebody happy is not the right thing you want to serve to him.
19:04Think of what makes a little kid happy. Wants more and more chocolates. You want to feed that to him.
19:19Happiness is such a small thing and an influence thing and a conditioned thing.
19:26Similarly, tradition. What is tradition? What people have been doing since long is tradition.
19:32So explain how what people have been doing since long becomes the right thing to be done today.
19:41Please explain. There is no explanation anybody can offer.
19:46So what is the worth of any tradition? Truth has no patience with tradition at all, mind you.
19:56You can choose one of these two, either truth or tradition.
20:02And it's so amusing, rather horrifying,
20:06that people, especially in this country, have been conflating truth and tradition.
20:12They think if something is traditional, it is truthful. What can be further away from truth?
20:23I fully understand and I want kids to do good things to their parents.
20:29And I want parents to bring goodness to their kids.
20:34But goodness is contained neither in tradition nor in happiness.
20:41Goodness is a different being altogether.
20:45Goodness is welfare. Goodness is elevation of consciousness.
20:51Goodness is freedom, liberation. Goodness is the light of self-knowledge.
20:56That's what you must bring to your parents and to your kids.
21:05But it's a very, very difficult thing to do.
21:10But, you know, it's a very entangled mess.
21:22If you will have to go deeply into it, you will have to understand what love is.
21:25We think love is about making the other happy.
21:32So far removed from the truth, once again.
21:40But love is also not about making the other sad.
21:55Love is about bringing light to the other person,
22:01bringing wings to the other person, bringing sense to the other person.
22:04That's what love is.
22:07So if you love your parents, bring some sense to them.
22:10If you love your friends or your kids, bring sense to them.
22:14That's what love is.
22:19So I would like to ask just one last question.
22:24How to begin this conversation of bringing this light to the ones
22:31who we respect? And here I'm talking about our parents.
22:33I'll turn the question on its head.
22:35Why is it difficult to begin this conversation?
22:39Had it been easy, you wouldn't have asked me.
22:44Why must it be difficult?
22:46Just as you say tea or coffee, begin the conversation.
22:53There is no difficulty in it.
22:56You are trying to actually do something good.
22:59Why must that be, first of all, blocked by an inner sense of difficulty?
23:10Think of the surgeon.
23:11When she is to perform a surgery, would she consult her parents?
23:19And being a surgeon, she would perform like hundreds of surgeries in her career, wouldn't she?
23:27I suppose if she is a few years into her career, she would have already done a few surgeries.
23:34I suppose if she is a few years into her career,
23:38she would have already performed dozens of surgeries at least.
23:44Does she consult the parents?
23:46Now tell me, how many times do you get married in your life?
23:54Once.
23:56If you are lucky, once.
23:57If you are lucky, then you don't get married at all.
24:00Right?
24:02The probable number is one.
24:08Otherwise, it could be two or three.
24:10But the most probable number is one.
24:13Now surgeries, there are hundreds that you perform.
24:19Marriage, there is just one that you get into.
24:22Which one is more important?
24:28Which one is more important?
24:30According to me, both.
24:32No, not for the patients, but for the surgeon.
24:40Surgery.
24:42Now even for the surgery, which is of much lesser importance to her,
24:49she knows she is self-sufficient.
24:53Even for a thing of lesser importance, she knows she is self-sufficient.
25:00Whereas the thing is of a matter of life and death for the patient.
25:04Then how is she not self-sufficient when it comes to the marriage?
25:18Please, logic.
25:21And if the parents are to be consulted for marriage,
25:25then they should be present at the operating table also.
25:31And also that pandit with the kundali.
25:35Matching the horoscope of the patient with that of the nurse or the doctor or whatever.
25:40And saying that the operation can happen only in this particular muhurat.
25:50I mean, it's pretty interesting.
25:52Why are operations not done as per muhurat?
25:56Think, somebody's life is at stake.
26:04Or is life inferior to wife?
26:06When wife is at stake, you say muhurat.
26:10And right now, somebody is literally ripping open your stomach and your heart.
26:17Finding just blood there, no love.
26:21And no horoscope is being consulted.
26:26So, that's what happens in absence of a spiritual environment.
26:46Even simple things get complicated.
26:48All right.
26:58Thank you so much, sir.