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DISCOURSE 42
HOW CAN YOU EULOGISE VIRTUES WITHOUT SEEING THEM?
It is not possible to glorify virtues without seeing them. If you do not see virtues, you cannot also glorify those who love virtues, and eulogise them. If you do not glorify those who love virtues, virtues cannot bloom and flourish in your life. Without the development of virtues, no progress can be attained on the path of salvation and profound spiritual felicity cannot be experienced in life. Both Shripal and Mayanasundari admired and appreciated men of virtues. Shripal heartily praised Mayanasundari in the presence of his mother. He glorified her virtues.
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An eye for virtues is absolutely necessary. If you want to carry on your life as a householder in an excellent manner, you must possess an eye for virtues. Owing to the absence of an eye for virtues, today, the life of a grihastha is caught in untold sorrows, misunderstandings and dissensions. Even family life is being undermined. People see only one another's defects. Hatred increases on account of the tendency of seeing defects and of speaking of only others' defects. True love and friendship are consumed by the terrible fires of animosity. As long, as you see defects, and as along as you keep dwelling on defects, the nectar of amity cannot be attained. If after his marriage, a man glorifies his mother and admires her virtues in the presence of his wife, she would not like such talk if she has no eye for virtues. She would only misunderstand her husband's words, "My husband is a servile and subservient devotee of his mother; he loves only his mother; he does not love me". Then in order to possess her husband's heart she would begin to condemn and calumniate her mother-in-law. She commits the sin of encouraging her husband to live separately from his mother who bore him and brought him up facing and enduring many difficulties and agitations. Can she attain any happiness from her husband by doing such a thing? Those who slaughter the filial love and devotion of a son for his mother can never attain happiness. An eye for defects and the tendency to dwell on defects bring about the ruin of such women. Such a woman would look at even her husband with an eye for defects. She
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