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DISCOURSE 33
131
WHY MARRIAGE ?
One vital point should not be forgotten. The purpose of human life is to attain salvation by means of spiritual austerities. In order to carry out these spiritual austerities, it is absolutely necessary to keep the passions and the sexual impulse controlled and pacified. If you cannot exercise an absolute control over your sexual impulses, you must marry and follow the path of a householder. You can pacify your sexual passions sensibly by means of the company of the person whom you marry and you can keep your mental propensities firm and concentrated. Apart from one's wife, one should not even look at another woman with passion. A woman should not look at another man with passion. She must seek a pacification of her passion only in the company of her husband. This is necessary because you as householders have to carry out spiritual austerities and activities. You cannot achieve concentration in your spiritual contemplations, if your passions are in a state of excitement. Excited passions bring about mental and emotional disturbances. Therefore, it is necessary that passions should be pacified and controlled. If you cannot pacify those passions by means of contemplation, concentration, spiritual studies and austerities, you must pacify them by means of gratification and then pursue your spiritual objectives with mental and emotional involvement and absorption.
PROVOKED PASSIONS IMPEDE SPIRITUAL ACTIVITIES
As long as anyone of the five senses is attracted by an object and as long as the mind is ranging towards sensual pleasures, you cannot carry out spiritual activities. Of these, hunger and sexual passion are very potent and when they are strong you cannot concentrate your mind and body on spiritual austerities and involve them deeply in those activities. A man who is extremely hungry unless he is a great muni or a great man, cannot exercise discretion in distinguishing between proper and improper food. In the same manner, a man who is under the sway of sexual passion cannot distinguish between propriety and impropriety. What he desires is the object that can gratify his passion and what he desires is enjoyment. He does not care
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