Why all this in weddings? || Acharya Prashant at Mithibai College Mumbai (2022)
Questioner: Why are some social norms told to be followed that don’t make any sense? For example, we apply mehendi (Henna) in marriage, what’s the use?
Acharya Prashant: Kid, when I was your age I would ask much the same question and I had actually never imagined that the questions would survive even after twenty-five years. I had thought that these are just relics of the past and within a few years or maximum a decade or so, all these things will be gone. Right? I think I was wrong. I had underestimated the strength of dead stuff to just continue. It continues. It continues, well because there is something within us that continues.
Every child, you see, that is born is born with a lot of inner ignorance. Think of a newborn child, keep aside the fact that it looks cute and all, how intelligent is it at that moment? Can it make sense of what’s going on? Does it know what is right, what is wrong? What is useful, what is not? Is it free and independent or is it totally dependent on others? Does it have language, knowledge? Nothing at all. Wisdom? No. But it certainly has hunger, thirst, even anger and envy. Am I right? Fear, a lot of it. And misery, immeasurable—all the time wailing. Ask mothers. The kid is crying all the time. That’s how we are born—with a lot of misery, lot of ignorance, fear, anger, envy but no wisdom, no language, no knowledge, no sense of right and wrong. Do you get this? That’s what is continuing.
Every newborn brings with itself a lot of primitive ignorance again to the world, primitive ignorance; animalistic ignorance right from the prehistoric jungle. That primitive prehistoric ignorance from the jungle takes birth again and again in the form of kids. Equally, the kid has the potential for illumination and liberation but illumination and liberation are present in the kid just as potential. Whereas ignorance, etc. are present in the kid as its reality. Liberation, enlightenment, all these are merely potentials. Potentially, the kid can achieve greatness but its reality is that of ignorance and misery.
