No one has ever married for fun. None has said — “ Hey! let’s get married now, we will have a lot of fun”. One reason is that, fun always ends and, marriage is for ever. As per Hindu dharma it is a commitment for 7 lives.
Marriage is the start of the journey of the last three ashram’s of life — Ghristh, vanprasth and sanyasa. This makes marriage a discipline in itself.
Principals of Yoga — knowing, regulating, practicing and mastering ( Gyan, Aayam(आयाम), Abhyas (अभ्यास) and Siddhi (सिद्धि) ) apply to marriage as well. One has to know and understand oneself, and the spouse. After understanding each other they have to regulate their emotions, desires, demands etc.. rather than forcing them on to the other person. Next, they have to keep practicing this for decades in order to achieve mastery/siddhi /contentment in their marriage. So, marriage is a spiritual pursuit instead of a mere union of two people with sex at its core.
This is where the modern people get it all wrong and rather than aligning with the spiritual aspect of marriage they start focusing on desires and then on unfulfilled desires.
Marriage can also be compared with Yagna — a Hindu ritual, where one gives offerings in fire (called as fire sacrifices) to connect with their inner self and nature to attaining purity in intent and action. If we consider “love” as a fire and give offerings of our desires to this fire then, marriage becomes a Yagya that serves to purify and elevate our minds and souls. If we are not ready to sacrifice our desires in the Yagya of marriage then it can never give us any fruits of Yagya, like peace, prosperity, purity or happiness.
Unfortunately, rather than focusing on the inner aspect of marriage, today’s business and sex oriented world has had our minds diverted to the outer aspects of marriage like clothes, destination weddings, etc…
The champions of women’s empowerment have not done much good either. They teach emotional intelligence to women at workplace but, applaud fights at home with divorce being the epitome of success.
For continual happiness the need of time is to connect with the spiritual aspect and perform the yagya of marriage. If both man and wife follow the spiritual pursuit of marriage then, gaining Siddhi or mastery in it is only a matter of time.
