Marriage and Love

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): Sir, whenever I see my parents’ life and the so-called married couples and then I discuss with my friends, they tell me that “This happens. Life is led like this and whatever is happening is a good thing”.

I mean that I don’t understand this kind of life being led. When I see them, there is no apparent lack visible, and there is no problem as such. Just that I am unable to understand this.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Why do you often talk of marriage? As such, I have nothing against two people committing to stay together. But, why do I often talk about it?

I talk of it because the mind, that is so eagerly wanting marriage is often a mind that wants the marriage due to its insecurity, its dullness, and its inability to see what it is wanting and doing. That darkness, that ignorance reflects in all the actions of that mind, all the actions of that individual. But it reflects most starkly in the institution of marriage because it is so very permanent. At least, relative to the other things in life. You can buy a shirt and you can do away with it. That’s not what you can do with your wife or husband. That’s why I talk so often of it.

I have nothing against marriage.

I have a lot to do with the…