Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Swami VivekanandaRead
According to the Hindu way of thinking, marriage is rather a duty than a privilege.
Interpretation
Marriage is seen as a responsibility rather than a personal benefit in Hindu philosophy.
Swami Vivekananda highlights the perspective in Hindu culture where marriage is considered an obligation and a duty rather than simply a personal choice or privilege. This understanding reflects the societal and spiritual significance of marriage in promoting family harmony and fulfilling oneβs duties towards society and the universe.
In practice
During a wedding ceremony, reflecting on the deeper meanings of commitment and duty can illustrate the importance of marriage.
Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Rama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, of morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, and above all, the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaster, none more beautiful, and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the great poet has depicted the life of Rama.
Hinduism threw away Buddhism after taking its sap. The attempt of all the Southern Acharyas was to effect a reconciliation between the two. Shankaracharya's teaching shows the influence of Buddhism. His disciples perverted his teaching and carried it to such an extreme point that some of the later reformers were right in calling the Acharya's followers "crypto-buddhists".
According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already.
I have come to deal with principles. I have only to preach that God comes again and again, and that He came in India as Krishna, Rama, and Buddha, and that He will come again. It can almost be demonstrated that after each 500 years the world sinks, and a tremendous spiritual wave comes, and on the top of the wave is a Christ.
Salvation means knowing the truth. We do not become anything; we are what we are. Salvation [comes] by faith and not by work. It is a question of knowledge! You must know what you are, and it is done. The dream vanishes. This you [and others] are dreaming here. When they die, they go to [the] heaven [of their dream]. They live in that dream, and [when it ends], they take a nice body [here], and they are good people.
We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.
No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.
People run away to be alone,' he said. Some people had to be alone.
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.