Gita 01.42 Today’s war against family increases self-centeredness and obstructs spiritual growth
Thank you. Arjuna speaking about the devastation which should be caused by the destruction of family and dynasty. Arjuna expresses valid concerns, although in that particular context, those concerns are not valid because something else is more valid.
That is, Arjuna feels he should do his kula dharma. And although from the point of view of the soul and the point of view of bhakti to Krishna, that is subordinate to what Krishna wants him to do. But Arjuna is noting genuine and valid concern for the well-being of the social fabric, which is founded on society.
In today's world, there is happening what researchers call the war against the family. That is, sociologists, especially those who are more of a… recognize the importance of traditional conservative values. The idea that children are unnecessary and marriage itself is not necessary, we can just live together.
We needn't have children, we can simply have pets. In many countries, in parks, people are walking, in many parts of America especially, people walk their dogs because their dogs replace their children. So the whole idea of treating children as burden, treating marriage as a restriction, that is actually destroying the social fabric today.
In the Vedic context, often the dialectic is between householders and renounced order. And the householders are often encouraged to see, look at the freedom and facility that the renounced order have for pursuing spiritual life and to focus on that. And because of that focus, especially in the Moksha traditions on the renounced order, often the importance of the householder life, of marriage and social institution, of the family as the founding unit of society, that is not given due attention.
Without a stable family, there cannot be well-formed individuals. There cannot be proper, harmonious development of the next generation. So the war against family refers to the whole idea that there is so much propaganda made today as if there is no need to get married.
Now, in today's world, it is a culture of hook-up, shack-up, break-up. So hook-up means people just meet each other somewhere and they hook-up. And they just start having sexual relationships together with each other.
That is the culture of hook-up. And then when they want to have a little more prolonged, they shack-up. That means they start living together without marriage.
And after that, hook-up, shack-up and then there is break-up. In break-up, what happens is that they focus primarily, we are not able to get along, just let's do something else. Let's go our own ways.
So this culture of hook-up, shack-up and break-up, the result of this is that people don't form any lasting relationships. Relationships, especially dharmic relationships, such as the relationship of husband and wife, the relationship of parents and children, all these are meant to help us bring out our higher side. These can be the bonds that set us free.
These are the bonds that free our higher side to emerge. That means that all of us have a lower side and a higher side. And it is often in our relationships with others, when we have some affection for them, then out of that affectionate regard for them, to try to please them, to serve them, to benefit them, we bring out our better side.
That means our lower side, which is constantly making us, pushing us here and there and everywhere in different directions, we can, that selfishness that is there, in every relationship. So, Narayana is expressing concern over here that the whole society will get disrupted if the family is disrupted. And in a family, the bonds that are there, they help people bring out their better side.
So, when parents have children, so, the miracle is not that parents have children, the miracle is not that parents make children, the miracle is that children make parents. That means that the children make parents into parents. They may become biologically, they may unite and produce a child, but then the whole sense of responsibility that comes when they have to take care of a child, that helps them to mature, that helps them to give up their impulsive side, which often makes them irresponsible, uncaring, self-centered.
So, there is a, in the evolution from selfishness to selflessness, in the evolution from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, there can be intermediate stages. You know, one way of looking at them is, say, the family, the community, the nation, and all these identifications, at one level, we could say they are simply illusory. They are just connected with the body, and they have nothing to do with the soul.
That's true at one level. At another level, we also understand that for a person to act, to move from the bodily level to the soul level, from the self-centered level to the selfless level, that doesn't happen naturally, immediately. Although we may say that, it doesn't happen.
And there are natural stages in the expansion of one's love. So, when we have a family, then we care for someone else in the family. And we need to put that person first.
If not always, at least sometimes we have to put ourselves behind and put the other person ahead and do what they want us to do. And that often pushes us to go against our mind and what its moods are at that particular time. And in a sense, if we consider the process of spiritual growth is a process of fighting against the mind, of resisting and overcoming the mind, then that calmed mind can focus on Krishna wholeheartedly.
So for us as souls, at one level, just directly renouncing everything and focusing on Krishna, if we can do it, that's fine. But even there also, we still live in a community, we are a part of a broader society and we need to put others first. Even in the devotee community, even in the renounced order.
And that same progression, if it is stopped, where one loves one's family, one loves one's community, one loves one's country, but then that's all. And one thing, God is not at all important to me. One sees all these as organic progressions towards the goal of developing love.
Then they are very valuable. So in today's world, when there is an attack, war against the family, this war against the family is not at all, it is not going to expand human consciousness, it is not going to expand selflessness. So for one whose selflessness is restricted to the level of the family, for them to expand it further, the limitations of that family attachment are talked about so that one can expand one's selfless love towards Krishna.
But when in a materialistic culture, not in a spiritual setting, the family bond is criticized, the result of that is that people shrink inwards. Their consciousness does not expand outwards, they don't become more selfless. Rather they shrink inwards, they fall into themselves and they become more self-obsessed, more I-first kind of people.
And that attitude of I-first is damaging. When I say I-first, actually it means my mind first. Because I, when I am alone and often dominated by my mind, I am often made to dance here and there by my mind and thus we end up consumed by our circumstances, by our conditionings and we are unable to progress in our journey towards spiritual evolution, towards growth.
So aversion to commitment is not detachment. Bhakti is about taking up a higher commitment and not letting a lower commitment come in the way of the higher commitment. So having a family is a commitment.
And devoting oneself to Krishna is a higher commitment. So we shouldn't let the lower commitment come in the way of the higher commitment. But sometimes we give up the lower commitment but we are not really having commitment for the higher cause and then we end up sinking into ourselves, we end up committed to only one thing, that is our own mind.
And we just do whatever we feel like doing. So it is that makes people very narcissistic. Narcissus is a character in Greco-Roman mythology.
He was very handsome and he was very proud of his good looks. So one time he was passing by a river and he looked into the river to see how good he looked. And he kept peering over, peering over, peering over.
And finally he tried to look more and more at himself and he just fell, toppled over and fell into the river. He drowned and he died over there. So similarly people are narcissistic.
They are so caught in themselves. They are so consumed by themselves that they consume themselves. Their self-obsession eventually consumes themselves.
They don't care for others. I, I, I, I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do that. And that obsession with I, I, I, eventually there is nothing left.
The self-obsession consumes them, themselves entirely. And to avoid such, to avoid being consumed by one's own compulsive attachments, one's own mind's moodiness, we need relationships. So if we are in family relationships, we need to take up those relationships and the responsibilities within those relationships seriously.
Of course, we need to see them also spiritually as ways in which we are serving Krishna and we also need to have time for serving Krishna directly, exclusively. But in today's world, for the fabric of society to survive, every relationship requires a certain level of selflessness. And the family is a time-honored system by which it's a structured social arrangement for the evolution of selfishness towards selflessness.
We don't want to limit the evolution of selfishness only till the family. We want the evolution of selflessness to commence, go further. But when it doesn't go even up to the family, then it becomes a serious problem.
Then we end up consumed by our own attachments, our own moodiness, and we just don't do anything worthwhile in our life. We can't do. We're just driven by our mind here and there.
As Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says, Desiring pleasure for the tongue, for the belly, for the sensual organs, one just ends up not achieving anything worthwhile in one's life. One cannot attain Krishna and one cannot even do any material piety. That is actually so that obsessive self-centeredness, narcissism is the recipe for misery both in this life and in the next life.
In this life, one can get no deep fulfillment when one is so self-centered. And while being self-centered, you will inevitably do some or the other bad karma because of which we will suffer. And thus, we will end up courting suffering both in this life and the next life.
And if we see the evolution of selflessness from the self to the family, to the community, to the nation, to God as a progression, then we can move towards Krishna steadily and ultimately attain Krishna. In a way that is sustainable for us to practice lifelong. In a way that is an example for society in general to see.
And in a way that helps us to protect the fabric of society, the foundation of society from the war of obsessive individualism, the war against family that is being waged in today's world.