Queen of the House
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. Sir, I'm very happy to see you here. I've been listening to you for 11 months. And I applied many times to talk to you, and today I got the opportunity. I'm very happy.
So my question is: as you always tell, Parādhīn sukh dekhu sukh nāhī̃, as you have written also in the Stri book and in your talks on women empowerment. Simultaneously, you said that women always live dependent on men, and she is solely responsible for that. As we are seeing, cases of domestic violence and alcohol consumption in homes by men are increasing. Women and children, especially a girl child, suffer a lot because of this. But, as I said above, women are responsible for that due to attachment and unawareness.
If I see around me, there are many women who are victims of domestic violence, but at the same time they have pride in themselves, like they are living in their house, their queen of their home. How to approach them to help out? Please explain.
Acharya Prashant: See, it's a question of instilled values. Most people, men or women, just don't have an independent original center. They do not have any original internal yardstick with which to measure the worth of things. So then how do we accord value to things? How do we know what is valuable, what is not, what to be proud of, what to be ashamed of?
We use the values that have been supplied to us, rather implanted into us by our upbringing and our conditioning. That's a very dead process.
We do not know what is respectable. We do not know what is valuable. But because we have seen others respect something, we have been told that that particular thing is valuable. So we not only start according value to that thing, we actually begin to feel as if by having that thing we have made an accomplishment.
So movies and popular culture and folklore, they taught the girl that maintaining the family is her foremost role in life, and she was never taught to question things. She was never taught to not accept anything without understanding it. These values were not given to her. What was the value given to her? Whatever is given to you, just take it. There are centers of authority, and if something is coming from those centers, then you dare not question those things or investigate them. You're just supposed to blindly take them in. So the girl kept on imbibing those things.
So this value is very deeply ingrained in Indian society. It exists all across the world, but in India it is especially very powerful that the woman is the axis of the family, and not only is she the axis of the family, she is also supposed to be the axis of the family. When we say, "the woman is the axis of the family," we are trying to narrate a fact, right? A fact can be questioned. A fact can be investigated.
And when we say, she is also supposed to be the center of the family, her primary job in life is to run the household. The moment you say, "this is what she's supposed to do," now you cannot even question it. How is she supposed to do this? This nobody asks. Who told you this? Even this nobody asks. It is taken as some divine axiom entrusted to man by the skies. The woman shall raise the family. The woman shall run the household.
I was in a very prestigious institution of medical sciences recently, in fact this very month, and the occasion was Women's Day. And I was talking about the liberation of women, it came from one of the young women in the audience, “Roti kaun banayega, bacche kaun paalega.” These very words, and these words are not coming from some male chauvinist. They are coming from a woman, a young woman, and a woman student in an institution of higher professional education. That's where this is coming from.
Irrespective of your station in life, irrespective of your professional qualifications, it's been drilled very deeply into Indian women that their life is first and foremost about the husband, the kids, the bed, and the meals. ”Roti kaun banayega.” Who will do the meals, right? ”Ghar ka kaam kaun karega.” Who will take care of the household chores?
Why do you need to have so many household tasks? What is this household for? Do you exist for the house, or does the house exist for you?
If the house is such a big and unmanageable deal that it consumes most of your time, then change the house, shift to a smaller one, hire a domestic help, or use mechanized instruments. How can this be the primary reason for the existence of a human being? How can a human being claim that she exists for the sake of the household, laundry, and the kitchen, and doing the bed, and washing the linen, and raising kids, and making life comfortable for the husband and the in-laws? Isn't it all very nauseating?
We are talking of a human being, right? It's incidental that the human being is a woman. We are talking about a conscious human being. How can a human being exist for this purpose? What do you mean by being the queen of the home? By what stretch of imagination is that shabby home of yours a kingdom? How dare you exalt yourself even in your imagination? “Queen of the house.” All that you are doing is more than 50% replaceable by domestic help. And that's what you call as being a queen.
In fact, that's what happens. As soon as a household becomes more prosperous, the work of the woman largely reduces. You hire a cook, you start eating out, the washing purposes are outsourced to a laundry, right? You get a maid or a couple of maids. So you know very well that these things are very much noncore activities. The worth of these activities is just a few thousand rupees. And had these activities not been worth just a few thousand rupees, how could you have transferred them to a domestic help so easily?
A prime minister cannot outsource his job, can he? A king cannot outsource his job. Equally, a queen ideally should not be able to outsource or transfer or hand over her tasks to somebody else. But we see that happening daily. The moment that queen gets some money in her hand, immediately all her queenly tasks are dumped on somebody else.
So it's just that we deceive ourselves. We live very lowly lives. And then, to justify that lowliness to ourselves, we use such decorated phrases: "Queen of the house." And these are not words used by just women. When men want to keep women caged, they too say the same things. They say, "Why do you want to go out and do something? See, right now you are the queen of the house, and when you go out to work, you'll be the dirt of the road."
You know the kind of arguments that they give. They say, "Suppose you have a diamond in your house. What will you do with it? Will you take it out on the streets? Will you ask your diamond to go out and do the shopping? No. You'll just keep the diamond very, very safe in a nice, protected, clean, and decent place. So darling, you are the diamond of my house. You're not supposed to go out like the diamond; you're supposed to stay in." And a lot of women get taken in. They don't apply any discretion. They don't apply any sense. They don't question such statements and the intent behind them.
Questioner: Sir, I have one question. As I see around me, there are girls who have opportunities, like they have education, but instead of setting an aim for themselves, they spend all their time on Instagram, focusing only on their body — what I look like, what to wear today, what to wear tomorrow, what to wear a month after. All their attention goes to their body. They have equal opportunities to study in labs. Like me, I am a science student; apart from me, no other girl pays attention to science. They say, "What is science? Just make a reel for Instagram." What is this? And there are also fake feminists, girls who think whatever they want, they can do. How to combat this?
Acharya Prashant: See, as you would have noticed a while back, I like to begin by looking at a human being as a human being. The sex or the gender comes later. And being a human being, the woman is prone to all the vices that affect any other human being. So greed, for example, affects her. Ignorance, she's vulnerable to. Just because she's a woman, there is no reason to defy her. Just because she's a woman, there is no reason to treat her as somebody special. Biologically, we are all just monkeys.
So the woman is every bit as much of a fool as the man is. Why do you expect the woman to be any better? What is the nature of human beings? What is the biological conditioning of any animal? The conditioning is, "Let me have the maximum comfort with minimum effort." That's what every single species in the world wants, right? No species wants to take the longer route. No animal, no organism wants to needlessly work hard. Comfort, sleep, leisure, relaxation, good food, minimum effort. This is something every single creature in existence covets. Man covets that, and so does the woman. What's the surprise in that?
You see, we all have certain resources available to us, and we want to lead a comfortable life using those resources, right? For example, if you have knowledge, that's a resource you have. Now you want to use your knowledge to get a comfortable life. How? Using your knowledge, you'll get a job, and that job will fetch you some money, and you'll live in comfort, right? So we have our resources, and we want to use these resources for the sake of a normal comfortable life.
Now unfortunately, the woman has one resource that is unique to her, and that is the body. The market for this particular asset is huge, and the market for this particular asset is huge also because men control 97% of the wealth of the world. Now look at the situation. Women have a tremendously attractive asset, right? Their body, and the men have all the money.
Do you see supply and demand coming together here? You have a market. The moment there is demand, and when there is demand, then the one making the demand must have money to pay for the thing he demands. Men demand women's bodies, and they also have all the money to pay for it. And the women have bodies. So there is the market. So there is a quick tendency then to have an easy life by just using the body.
Why work hard in life? Why exert oneself to understand science and conduct experiments in the laboratory? Why take the long route? The short one is so easily available. You are young, and the body is naturally attractive. You don't have to work too hard to make yourself sellable. So you just need to record a jazzy video bordering on erotica. And you will be paid for it in several ways, not necessarily in cash. People will give you attention. You'll be noticed, and sooner than later, money too will follow. Are you getting it?
So it's a normal human tendency. Do not take it as something specific to women. I'll explain this through an example. Let's say there is a country where women control all the money. In that country, you will find a lot of men demonstrating their sculpted bodies. The reason is obvious, right? They are demonstrating their bodies to very, very able buyers. The buyers have a lot of money. If they have money and I have the body, why not make a deal? That's how it goes, right?
So, do not treat it as a gender issue. It's a human issue. Very few people live for the sake of their liberation or for the sake of upliftment of consciousness. Be it man or woman, very, very few people live with this purpose. Most people live just to spend their 60 or 80 years comfortably. Let there be a cozy bed. Let there be ample money. Let the heating or air conditioning be proper. Let there be ample avenues for fulfillment of my desires. And I'll ask for nothing more. That's the maximum I can ask for. That's what most people live for.
And when you understand that, then it will be very obvious why men and women behave in the ways they normally do. It's just plain old greed and ignorance. Nothing more than that.
Questioner: Sir, as you said, like they have inherited centers. So how, as I am a person, but since my birth, like the childhood days, I have another kind of aura around me, like another kind of environment around me, always being alone. I have an interest in space, so that's why my personality is somewhat different from other girls. So, as a person, what things do you suggest for me to make that center strong, which you are talking about?
Acharya Prashant: That center is the center of consciousness, the center of understanding. Consciousness seeks to understand. The body seeks to sleep.
The body needs comfortable sleep. In that sense, the body favors lack of consciousness. So, how do you nourish your center of consciousness? Deepen your understanding. That's what your consciousness, your mind really craves for — to know, to understand. And this craving can also be called love.
So consciousness loves, consciousness understands, and consciousness loves to understand. So love and understanding go together.
Give yourself opportunities to engage in discussions. Give yourself the courage to question things and not accept them blindly. Don't let people just hand things over to you. Seek company where open debate and rational discussions are favored over emotional bonds. Between reason and emotion, try to choose reason as much as possible. Read and read and read. Without knowledge, understanding is a far cry. Though knowledge is not understanding, knowledge aids understanding. So read. Sit with knowledgeable people, ask as much as you can. Even when you are alone, keep meditating.
No, not that usual kind of meditation. When I say meditating, I mean very, very deep thought — deep and honest thought. Let that process be continuous within you, just as the breath is continuous to the body. The body is always busy doing its own thing. The heart is beating. The lungs are breathing. The mind too should be all the time busy doing its own thing. Otherwise, the body will win because the body works incessantly. But consciousness does not work incessantly for its liberation. Therefore, the body wins. The one who works continuously will obviously have an edge.
The mind should also be constantly thinking about reality. Wherever you are, whatsoever the occasion, you should always have an eye, rather both the eyes, on Truth. Don't let yourself get carried away by all the stuff that happens in our daily lives. Always remain attentive. That's a beautiful word — Attention. That’s very close to love. I love to know. I love to attend to the Truth. And that will give you a blossomed personality and a great life.
