Don’t be Childish

The nature of the mind is that sometimes you like each other and sometimes you don’t like each other; sometimes you are angry with each other and sometimes you are happy with each other. This is because the ego is very flickering, the mind is even more flickering, and the senses are all the more flickering — Radhanath Swami

A child may cry for a new toy he sees in the toy store and won’t let you get out of the store unless you buy it. So, you give into its plea and shell out a large amount. The child stops crying and plays with it the whole evening. Next morning you find him uninterested in the toy and he now wants something new to play with! Similarly, our desires are flickering and insatiable. Our mind always tries to seek something new, something different. So, if our relationship is based on these superficial principles such as desires of the mind or the senses or the ego, then our relationship is very superficial, it is without much substance and may soon lose sheen.

Radhanath Swami reminds us that marriage is a sacred event and therefore it is sanctified in a sacred place like a church or a temple. It is to be taken as a priority, above everything else. When we focus on the sacred principle that has brought us together, and harmonize whatever that may come in our lives according to that, our relationship deepens, and is no longer based on the flickering nature of the ego, mind and senses.

‘The embodied soul may be restricted from sense enjoyment, though the taste for sense objects remains. But, ceasing such engagements by experiencing a higher taste, he is fixed in consciousness.’ (Bhagavad Gita 2.59)