Until you can go beyond justice, you can’t get out of the material world. Because justice means profit and loss, gain and and safety, that’s what justice is for. Justice is to maintain the principle of gain and safety. You’ve done right, you gain; you’ve done wrong, you lose. If I do right I am protected, it’s safe. I do wrong, I’m not protected. So it’s very, very important for that platform of economics or extended sense gratification. So it and morality, ethics basically are the same platform. So you find, many times also devotees fall into that trap: they get, they become very judicial minded and very moralistic. But it’s still, it’s not spiritual, unless it is connected to Kṛṣṇa. But for oneself one has to give up justice, one has to give up this pursuit of gain and safety to actually get somewhere.
So, therefore, one just has to accept this is what’s there. Now, how to deal with it? Okay, husband expects certain things. Are they within the religious principles? If they are, fine, if they are not, that needs to be addressed. There needs to be discussion, that has to be worked out, it has to be within religion, otherwise it is not progressive. But if it is, then what’s the problem? Because you put into it, it’s a party, who… Means, whichever one is waiting, just like two people sit down and take prasāda, right? One finishes first, the other one sits and waits. And so, that’s the whole point, is that it has to be seen, it’s a partnership. So then you do what you… Means, in other words, until the taste is dealt with, it doesn’t necessarily go away. But it only goes away in knowledge, therefore the vānaprastha discusses these things, and discusses them in a way that is discussing the philosophy, not just justice. You know, and ‘I feel you’re attached and I’m not,’ and… You know what I am saying? That level it can’t be done at because then there is a threat and the ego, and all these things. It is a matter of the philosophy going through and then both discussing and both coming to the realization that this has to be given up. So, but it becomes easy to give up if it is being dealt with nicely, right? Sometimes if it is being dealt with badly and there is no taste, then it can be renounced, but the desire for the thing as an ideal still remains. But if it is dealt with then it just is dropped. Because wife is taking care, wife is doing all these nice things, at the same time is, what is the purpose? You know, by that knowledge, and then at one point then that’s given up and then the whole thing simplifies.
So you will find, many times it is the wife first, the husband first, you know. Because women tend to be more religious, in some, many situations you’ll see the wife is the first one to figure this out because of that natural… So if the man is trained in the philosophy and the control of the senses then traditionally they’ve figured it out first. But if that hasn’t been the background, women no matter what the background is are religious by nature. Does that make sense? So, many times you see the women will, their performance of their duties is going more smoothly sometimes than that of the men’s, depending upon their background, their training and all those kind of things. Plus then you have on top of that just the individual and what is their background, what is their saṁskāras, so what they require to purify themselves. So that’s the whole point: gṛhastha āśrama is how to purify, like that, how to engage what are the desires in the Lord’s service. And so, the gṛhastha āśrama gives the most fullest extent of engaging the greatest variety of desires in the Lord’s service. So all, dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa and bhakti – all of them have been engaged. While the other āśramas it is reduced. Bhakti is always open, mokṣa is always open and dharma is always open, but artha and kāma are reduced. So if there is desires in that area, then those are taken care of through other āśramas. Does that make sense?
So it is a matter of if the mind just accepts, life becomes so simple. It just becomes so easy because otherwise generally it’s our mind is the biggest problem, not the other people. Śukadeva Gosvāmī has no problem with anybody, he is happy. You know, he has got kids following and making all kinds of comments and doing funny things and calling him names, and he doesn’t care. So he is happy, and the kids are in anxiety, though they think they are having fun, but they are the ones that will suffer. But he doesn’t. And you can say, what they are doing is injust, it is improper, here is a self-realized soul, you know, all these different things, and… But the point is is, by justice-wise then Śukadeva Gosvāmī is right and all the kids are wrong. But that doesn’t help the individual. The individual is helped by, they just forget it, give it up. Then you are free, it doesn’t matter. Everybody else can do all the craziness they want, what does it matter to you? So as soon as we just give up, ‘Okay, these are the duties to perform, these are the reasons that these duties come up, these are the reasons why I am in this position,’ and so therefore one just goes with it, and automatically the mind is peaceful and one is happy, one is satisfied. And then it doesn’t matter because what’s the big deal? You know, pick up some socks, okay. No, but they are devotee socks. Like that kind-of thing, you just, it depends how you look at it. If you look at it, ‘Why can’t he pick up this? Why can’t he put his socks in the right place?’ That’s a point of justice. But if it’s just service if I, ‘Oh, here is some service we can do,’ then it completely changes. You know what I’m saying?
We are saying this not based on political correctness, or so… We are basing this purely on: do you want to get out of the material world or not? That’s what we are basing it on. Because if we are looking at it from other angles, yes, we could make comments, we could say, ‘You talk to the husband, he should be more considerate,’ all these different things. But that is his life. But for your life then it’s, if you want to get out of here, this is what you can do: you just detach yourself from it and perform the duties. Then it just goes away. You are free. You are liberated. And then by your sādhana, then you’ll develop love for Kṛṣṇa. You know what I am saying? Like that. So that is the combination, and what the other person does, don’t worry about. Means, if they do nice, great. But if they don’t then it doesn’t matter. You are already free, and if they also then endeavor in such a way that it makes it more progressive, then it just makes it that much easier for you. But it doesn’t change the paradigm. Like that. That principle is purely in your hands, that you fully have control of, is: how you want to value it, how you want to deal with it? No one else is imposing that on you, no one else this and that. How you set up your value system in the way of your priorities for spiritual life, that is in your own hand. Does that make some sense?


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