Category: Dancing With Siva

What Is the Hindu View of Sexuality?

ŚLOKA 74
The purpose of sexual union is to express and foster love’s beautiful intimacy and to draw husband and wife together for procreation. While offering community guidance, Hinduism does not legislate sexual matters. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Sexual intercourse is a natural reproductive function, a part of the instinctive nature, and its pleasures draw man and woman together that a child may be conceived. It also serves through its intimacy to express and nurture love. It is love which endows sexual intercourse with its higher qualities, transforming it from an animal function to a human fulfillment. Intensely personal matters of sex as they affect the family or individual are not legislated, but left to the judgment of those involved, subject to community laws and customs. Hinduism neither condones nor condemns birth control, sterilization, masturbation, homosexuality, petting, polygamy or pornography. It does not exclude or draw harsh conclusions against any part of human nature, though scripture prohibits adultery and forbids abortion except to save a mother’s life. Advice in such matters should be sought from parents, elders and spiritual leaders. The only rigid rule is wisdom, guided by tradition and virtue. The Vedas beseech, “May all the divine powers together with the waters join our two hearts in one! May the Messenger, the Creator and holy Obedience unite us.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

What Are Special Duties of the Wife?

ŚLOKA 73
It is the wife’s duty, her strī dharma, to bear, nurse and raise the children. She is the able homemaker, standing beside her husband as the mother and educator of their children and the home’s silent leader, gṛihiṇī. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The biological differences between man and woman are part of their human dharma. The two together constitute a whole. They are equal partners in joy and sorrow, companions and helpmates, yet their functions differ. The Hindu home and family is the fortress of the Sanātana Dharma, which the wife and mother is duty-bound to maintain and thus to perpetuate the faith and create fine citizens. As long as the husband is capable of supporting the family, a woman should not leave the home to work in the world, though she may earn through home industry. The spiritual and emotional loss suffered by the children and the bad karma accrued from having a wife and mother work outside the home is never offset by the financial gain. The woman’s more intuitive and emotional qualities of femininity, gentleness, modesty, kindness and compassion are needed for the children’s proper care and development. The Vedas encourage, “May happiness await you with your children! Watch over this house as mistress of the home. Unite yourself wholly with your husband. Thus authority in speech till old age will be yours.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

What Are the Duties of the Husband?

ŚLOKA 72
It is the husband’s duty, his purusha dharma, to protect and provide for his wife and children. He, as head of the family, gṛiheśvara, is responsible for its spiritual, economic, physical, mental and emotional security. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
By their physical, mental and emotional differences, the man is suited to work in the world and the woman to bear and raise their children in the home. The husband is, first, an equal participant in the procreation and upbringing of the future generation. Second, he is the generator of economic resources necessary for society and the immediate family. The husband must be caring, understanding, masculine, loving, affectionate, and an unselfish provider, to the best of his ability and through honest means. He is well equipped physically and mentally for the stress and demands placed upon him. When he performs his dharma well, the family is materially and emotionally secure. Still, he is not restricted from participation in household chores, remembering that the home is the wife’s domain and she is its mistress. The Vedas implore, “Through this oblation, which invokes prosperity, may this bridegroom flourish anew; may he, with his manly energies, flourish the wife they have brought to him. May he excel in strength, excel in royalty! May this couple be inexhaustible in wealth that bestows luster a thousand fold!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

What Is the Central Purpose of Marriage?

ŚLOKA 71
The two purposes of marriage are: the mutual support, both spiritual and material, of man and wife; and bringing children into the world. Marriage is a religious sacrament, a human contract and a civil institution. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Through marriage, a man and a woman each fulfill their dharma, becoming physically, emotionally and spiritually complete. He needs her tenderness, companionship and encouragement, while she needs his strength, love and understanding. Their union results in the birth of children and the perpetuation of the human race. Marriage is a three-fold state: it is a sacrament, a contract and an institution. As a sacrament, it is a spiritual union in which man and woman utter certain vows one to another and thus bind themselves together for life and for their souls’ mutual benefit. As a contract, it is a personal agreement to live together as husband and wife, he to provide shelter, protection, sustenance, and she to care for the home and bear and nurture their children. As an institution, marriage is the lawful custom in society, bringing stability to the family and the social order. Marriage is a jīvayajña, a sacrifice of each small self to the greater good of the family and society. The Vedas exclaim, “I am he, you are she, I am song, you are verse, I am Heaven, you are Earth. We two shall here together dwell, becoming parents of children.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

How Can Peace on Earth Be Achieved?

ŚLOKA 70
Peace is a reflection of spiritual consciousness. It begins within each person, and extends to the home, neighborhood, nation and beyond. It comes when the higher nature takes charge of the lower nature. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Until we have peace in our own heart, we can’t hope for peace in the world. Peace is the natural state of the mind. It is there, inside, to be discovered in meditation, maintained through self-control, and then radiated out to others. The best way to promote peace is to teach families to be peaceful within their own homes by settling all conflicts quickly. At a national and international level, we will enjoy more peace as we become more tolerant. Religious leaders can help by teaching their congregations how to live in a world of differences without feeling threatened, without forcing their ways or will on others. World bodies can make laws which deplore and work to prevent crimes of violence. It is only when the higher-nature people are in charge that peace will truly come. There is no other way, because the problems of conflict reside within the low-minded group who only know retaliation as a way of life. The Vedas beseech, “Peace be to the Earth and to airy spaces! Peace be to heaven, peace to the waters, peace to the plants and peace to the trees! May all the Gods grant to me peace! By this invocation of peace may peace be diffused!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Is Vegetarianism Integral to Noninjury?

ŚLOKA 69
Hindus teach vegetarianism as a way to live with a minimum of hurt to other beings, for to consume meat, fish, fowl or eggs is to participate indirectly in acts of cruelty and violence against the animal kingdom. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The abhorrence of injury and killing of any kind leads quite naturally to a vegetarian diet, śākāhāra. The meat-eater’s desire for meat drives another to kill and provide that meat. The act of the butcher begins with the desire of the consumer. Meat-eating contributes to a mentality of violence, for with the chemically complex meat ingested, one absorbs the slaughtered creature’s fear, pain and terror. These qualities are nourished within the meat-eater, perpetuating the cycle of cruelty and confusion. When the individual’s consciousness lifts and expands, he will abhor violence and not be able to even digest the meat, fish, fowl and eggs he was formerly consuming. India’s greatest saints have confirmed that one cannot eat meat and live a peaceful, harmonious life. Man’s appetite for meat inflicts devastating harm on the Earth itself, stripping its precious forests to make way for pastures. The Tirukural candidly states, “How can he practice true compassion who eats the flesh of an animal to fatten his own flesh? Greater than a thousand ghee offerings consumed in sacrificial fires is not to sacrifice and consume any living creature.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

What Is the Inner Source of Violence?

ŚLOKA 68
Violence is a reflection of lower, instinctive consciousness—fear, anger, greed, jealousy and hate—based in the mentality of separateness and unconnectedness, of good and bad, winners and losers, mine and yours. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Every belief creates certain attitudes. Attitudes govern our actions. Our actions can thus be traced to our inmost beliefs about ourself and the world around us. If those beliefs are erroneous, our actions will not be in tune with the universal dharma. For instance, the beliefs in the duality of self and other, of eternal heaven and hell, victors and vanquished, white forces and dark forces create the attitudes that we must be on our guard, and are justified in giving injury, physically, mentally and emotionally, to those whom we judge as bad, pagan, alien or unworthy. Such thinking leads to rationalizing so-called righteous wars and conflicts. As long as our beliefs are dualistic, we will continue to generate antagonism, and that will erupt here and there in violence. Those living in the lower, instinctive nature are society’s antagonists. They are self-assertive, territorial, competitive, jealous, angry, fearful and rarely penitent of their hurtfulness. Many take sport in killing for the sake of killing, thieving for the sake of theft. The Vedas indicate, “This soul, verily, is overcome by nature’s qualities. Now, because of being overcome, he goes on to confusedness.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.