After some experience with dating a girl from another country where dating is the culture, and given my past experience in a country from where Yogis, the perfect humans, come, I now think I have gained some knowledge to answer the question why one should get married. I am talking about the spiritual purpose of marriage; I am talking about love, which is inter-personal in nature, but not bhakti, which is the devotional love of God.
I say the path to God has innumerable obstacles, the most important of which are addictions that give illusory pleasure to our senses. Examples include spicy/tasty food, smoking, drinking, sex, drugs, and the worst of all, inter-personal relationships. The relationships I am talking about are between ANY two persons: Mother and child, husband and wife or sister and brother. I say they are the worst, because they last a lifetime.
I see a trend in the life of any person. A human is born to his parents, and he starts his life at the receiving end of love. His mother and father practically live for the child, and give him love. Love brings everything he needs. It can turn the world around. I completely agree with J.K.Rowling that it's the most powerful force in the entire universe. I could probably call it the only force in the universe. The child progresses through that stage to the next stage, where he shares that love with his siblings. A desire for independence starts with fighting with siblings (for toys?) and parents (for a bike?). Love that is shared, begins to cause conflict; but however, he gets used to it, and adjusts his life to suit the situation. He is learning. He is still at the receiving end of love. After going through that stage, he turns independent and is now single, or a brahmachari. He is living by himself now. But, he is not perfect yet. The role of love is not over in his life. The real fight has only just begun. When he is ready, he gets married. This is where he both gives and receives love. He is simultaneously in both the receiving and giving ends of love. Married life is both love and war. The received love is a desire, and the war is misery. He becomes a man now. The man is on a path to find the equilibrium between the two forms of love, and that conflict is not giving him what he really wants. He cannot find that eternal peace of mind we really craves for. Then arrive his children. Here begins the next generation. The man now is at the giving end of love, and remember, parents always love children more than children love their parents. The love the man gives to his children, is not returned to him in full. (This is kind of a law of nature. I don't know why.) But, he seems happier with his children than with his life partner. Now, why is that? He realizes that the happiness that comes from love, comes from loving, and not from being loved. Realization must come here, and that realization tells the man, that ideal love must be one-sided in one's heart, that is, only outwards, towards all creatures on Earth (or in the Universe, I could say). This is when the man realizes that receiving love is an addiction, and is a life-long illusion. This is why I called human relationships the worst of all. Because it takes a lifetime to end that addiction. A Turkish friend of mine, gave me that wonderful statement: "Love is an illusion." But then, what is the reality?
The Reality is God. It's as simple as that. It's eternal. "The whole world is an illusion." Hearing this statement, Robert Pirsig (author of a book on Philosophy, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"), who was studying Oriental Philosophy in Banaras, India, got crazy. He couldn't believe that the whole world was an illusion. He quit studying Philosophy and went back to the US to be a reporter. Shakespeare said "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players..." Statements like this make most people crazy. They poisoned Socrates, and crucified Jesus. Ha!
Good to know that you are thinking in this angle.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate this point a lot: "... realizes that the happiness that comes from love, comes from loving, and not from being loved." Small clarification. Real happiness comes from giving and not taking. Be it money, education, or love, whatever.
Love for all is considered to be one of the spiritual virtues. Spiritually advanced say that "if you notice that the bounds of your Love (for anything and everything) are expanding, learn that you are stepping towards Realization."
This is like a chain reaction. One virtue brings others along with it. Love brings in forgiveness. That culminates in finding no fault with others no matter what they may do. You start worshiping ahimsaa. Simultaneously, as you start loving in its actual sense of the word, you won't anymore look for any result from it nor will you need any object. That means you are satisfied with what you get, and are not looking for anything more. Satisfaction! And as your love is beyond any object, you gradually overcome the desire for sex. This is what we call brahmacharya. Note that brahmacharya does not mean 'not getting married'. It actually means preserving the sexual force and subliming it to a higher form of energy called ojas.
Coming back to the actual point of why should one get married, there is this beautiful section in Srimat Devi Bhagavatam which deals with the same question in the form of a series of arguments between Suka Maharshi and Vyasa Maharshi, and Suka Maharshi and Janaka Rajarshi. See this.