Love, marriage and happiness
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?
Acharya Prashant (AP): I think even you don’t agree with marrying her.
Q: I do, Sir.
AP: You don’t. He is saying that ‘I am a Hindu’. You probably are a Hindu and you love a Muslim girl; you really love her; you want to marry her, but no one in either of the families is agreeing, right? If you really love her, why do you want to marry her? The whole thing is about whether or not you want to marry her, right? If you really love her, why do you want to marry her? Is Love not sufficient?
He is your friend, right? (Pointing to the questioner’s friend who is sitting by his side) Will you take your friend to a temple and ask the pujari (priest), “We two love each other, so can you please give us a certificate?” Will you do that? Love is sufficient—why do you need a certificate? Will you take your friend to a court and tell the judge, “We two love each other, so please give us a certificate of friendship”? How many of you have a certificate of friendship? From religion, from the court, from society? Then, why do you want to marry her? Do you really love her, first of all? Then don’t marry her.
Q: Then how to spend my life with her?
AP: Just spend your life with her—how does marriage come in between? You can spend your life with your friend without marrying him.
Q: It is not possible.
AP: It is not possible because you don’t love her.
Q1: Sir, He fears society.
AP: He is afraid. And those who Love are not afraid. He is afraid, so it is proven that he does not love her. If you really love her, why will you be so afraid? If you really love her, forget about the families, you won’t even bother whether she loves you; because Love does not demand anything in return. Forget about marriage or anything else. You love, you know love, and that is all, sufficient.
But no, we don’t love, you know. What do we want? We want that she should be my wife, she should cook food, raise my children, give me sex. We have all these expectations, demands, images and hopes—this is what you want; that is why you want to marry—because without marrying, you are afraid, “How can I have sex and have kids?” If I have kids without marrying, then what will happen to those kids? These are the images, the future projections that are coming to your mind—that’s why you are insisting on marriage, right? So, you are actually not a lover; you are a would-be husband. Love is not the issue; the issue is marriage.
Love unconditionally, and then a way will emerge.
Unconditional Love is very intelligent and never afraid. Unconditional Love is very, very intelligent, and knows no fear. It knows where the solution is, it will find a solution.
Family support, family opposition, these are minor matters—Love does not bother for them. And the funny part is; in Love all these minor matters get resolved on their own. Today your family can resist you because they know you are afraid. When I know that you can be scared, only then will I try to scare you. If I know that this fellow cannot be scared, I will not even try to scare him.
Real Love is a very pure thing. It is pure and it purifies. Fear, social adjustment, compromise, family consent—these things are not known in the country of Love. These words are not from the dictionary of Love.
Q: Sir, I have a highly paid job, but my happiness does not lie in that; I am not concerned about the job. I want to do what I really want to do, so how should I deal with this? Again, should I be concerned about my family’s happiness?
AP: Will your family get happiness if you do what they want you to do? Your family must have been doing thousands of things—have they ever become happy? How do you know that if you do what they want you to do, then they will become happy? Do they know what gives them happiness? Do they have any understanding of real Happiness? If I know what real Happiness is, wouldn’t I have already become happy by now? And if they could not become happy on their own, then how can you give them happiness? You are just a baby, their child. If the father and mother cannot get happiness on their own, all their life, if they do not know what happiness is, then how can they get happiness by expecting something from the child? Whatever the child will do will be secondary. If you could give them happiness by doing what they want you to do, I would have said go ahead, do what they want you to do.
Unfortunately, whatever you do, they will never be happy. No one is ever happy by doing this or that, no one is ever happy by expecting this or that from his son or daughter. So, they’ll still be dissatisfied. Whatever you do, ultimately you will find that after five years, ten years, they are still dissatisfied. All the parents of the world are dissatisfied. You go and ask them and tell them, “Honestly, please tell us, whisper in our ear, are you really happy with your child?” They will say no. That’s the story of all the parents. It is not about the ‘child’; it is about their ‘internal hollow’. They cannot be happy because they do not know the key to Happiness. And the child will not be able to give them the key to Happiness. It’s an inner thing. They are unnecessarily pressurizing the child. What can the poor child do? If you could not do that on your own, then how can the child do it for you? After all, it’s your child.
Tell them, “Your expectations are useless. I can meet your expectations, but that will not help you; you’ll still be hungry and weeping; you will find some other reason to be unhappy. Today, you are unhappy because I am not married; tomorrow, you will be unhappy, because you don’t like the daughter-in-law.” Is that not the story of every household? Till the time the son does not marry, the mother is very unhappy—why? The son is not getting married. Now the son has gotten married. Fast forward two years—the mother is still very, very unhappy. Why? The daughter-in-law is evil. What is going on? What is going on is that unhappiness sits ‘here’ (pointing towards head). It has nothing to do with the son’s marriage or the daughter in law.
Your ‘own’ ignorance is the reason for your unhappiness. And your ‘ignorance’ cannot be treated by expecting something from others.
Tell everybody that if you are unhappy, it is because of your ignorance. “Treat your ignorance or allow me to help you remove your ignorance.” Only that will remove your unhappiness, nothing else will remove it.
Ignorance leads to unhappiness and only awareness will heal unhappiness. Yes? Is that clear?
