Chapter VI  Part 2

PRACTICAL VEDANTA IN THE HOME

In America today home life is so different from what it is in India, that we may think that Vedanta has little to tell us about the practical problems we face here. There, wife and husband have been considered fellow-pilgrims through samsara, the life of the world, with separation or divorce out of the question; the family is a joint-family, spreading its wings of protection and affection over aunts and uncles, cousins and in-laws, as situations require. In many homes the shrine is the center of the house and God the center of life, respect for parents and elders is deeply engrained. Our society, while sharing some of these ideals, has been organized by quite different ones and has departed so far from those of even a generation ago, that we are experiencing a national crisis in the coherence of family life. Divorce and remarriage and no marriage have long become standard alternatives. As one cynic put it, three out of five marriages now end in divorce, while the other two fight it out to the bitter end! The church ceremony and the marriage certificate are increasingly considered dispensable.
    Youth has power, money, applause and the corporate interests on its side; women are taking on their new status;  the permissive society is a cliché. What values, traditional to the Indian philosophy of life and culture—and therefore arguably a part of Vedanta— are applicable to us now? This is the question.The answer  is to be found in one word: worship. And same-sightedness is the essence of this particular practice of worship. Let us try to make this  clear.
   
Situations in the traditional, integral home
   
    When the husband is the wage-earner and the wife in the home, both are homemakers, yet the wife has to play the major role. Here we are addressing her. How is she to spend the hours, often alone, when children are at school and husband is at work? If she is ready for it, there is hardly a more ideal situation for spiritual practice. Are you alone and lonely? But who better to cultivate the company of God?
   
    It is excellent if the family can have a shrine. If you have a small room, or can convert a closet or even a niche in the wall, reserve it just for devotions and spiritual practice. Resort to this refuge at regular times—not only when feeling lonely—and think of the Lord's presence there as the center around which the family gathers. The wife/mother can cultivate the thought that she cooks for the Lord, keeps his house clean, she feels his presence in husband and children. Then the feeling of worship will grow. Before setting out the meal you may offer it, mentally or ritually, to the deity enshrined in your home: then feel it is he who has accepted it again in the form of the family members; it is also he who has given you the strength and the skill to prepare the food.
   
    Lest you wonder why a monk would talk about how a housewife feels, let me say that in the Ramakrishna Order in the West, as in many other orders, the monks “keep house” with all its inevitable cooking, cleaning, laundering and gardening; they wash the dishes and at times there may be many guests. And for him whose turn it is to be the housekeeper, there can be long hours when he is alone with it all. We learn to offer everything to God. Our work, our food, our thoughts—even our worries and anxieties—and most of all, the fruits of our activity. For one who stays at home, the path of devotion is the best. It can lift housework from drudgery to joyous worship. God must be real to the homemaker, very real. She needs to get into the position where she can help each family member to regard each other as another embodiment of the Lord. Where the bond between husband and wife is strong this may not offer much difficulty. Wife and husband may not recognize their mature and intense relationship for what it really is. They can be conscious of the spiritual essence of that bond and try to spread it to the family as a whole. “It is not, O Maitreyi,” the Upanishad tells us, “for the sake of the husband that the wife loves him, not for the sake of the wife that the husband loves her, nor for the sake of the children that they love the children, but it is for the sake of the Self which is in them all.”
   
What if one partner disapproves?
   
    It is rare that wife and husband can be awakened simultaneously to the need for spiritual practice. Going it on one's own is more often the case. But there are families where it has been done together successfully. In some, the partners were of different religions: each gave the other freedom to pursue his or her own way. In one case we know of,  when children were born, the parents took the family to the Vedanta Society on one Sunday and to church the next, for many years.
    Problems arise when one partner has a dominating personality and is unwilling to see the other going down a different lane. It seems to offer a challenge and they may feel threatened in a vague, subconscious way. Here the best solution is for the spiritually more active partner to keep a low profile. In general, for all, the less others know about our personal spiritual life, the better off we are. Much can be done in private. There is no blame in concealing from unsympathetic persons one's spiritual practice, if necessary. Why does he/she need to know that you practice meditation when you are alone? And japa, the repetition of a mantra, is not difficult to keep to oneself.
   
    One of the most frequent allegations made by the objecting party (especially if it be the husband) is that your spiritual pursuits may be making you “indifferent” to the work at the house or care of the children or insensitive to the spouse's needs and feelings. This can happen; we have to be careful about it and compensate for it. Sometimes we may feel like getting lost in our devotions or meditations at the expense of other activities, and to avoid trouble we may have to resist this. Actually, however, when we learn to make our spiritual emotions and expressions pervade the whole of our life, we will find that then we have more energy and all our duties are being accomplished with greater efficiency, giving no cause for complaint.
    A show-down may  still  be necessary in some cases. Nevertheless, patience, love and prayer are effective. Force and violent argument (seen daily on television!) are seldom of any avail and only counter-productive. If it does not come to a show-down, see if you cannot explain what your intention and ambition are, in the realm of spirit, to your spouse. Try to get him/her to agree to Sri Ramakrishna's solitude formula: “Knowledge and devotion are acquired by practicing spiritual discipline in solitude for some days. At that time keep yourself away from your family.... Think: 'I have no one else in the world; God is my all.' If you can spend even one day in this way, it will be good. Three days would be better.”
   
Can there be success on both spiritual and social levels?
   
    Simply, the answer is yes. One way is to celebrate differences. This is very different from just tolerating the differences that arise between spouses, trying to paper them over, as it were. Why not think positively and openly accept and rejoice in mutual independence? If the husband has one religion or the family tradition of a particular form of God, and wife another, combine them in a family shrine. Try to make home life attractive to parents and children alike so that no member needs to feel he or she must be going “out” constantly in order to be happy and fulfilled. Rituals and ceremonies can play a helpful part here. “The family that prays together stays together.” To be sure, it goes against the grain of modern custom to establish a family pattern of group worship, meditation or scripture reading; the fact is, however, if you care enough about making your home and your family life spiritually secure, you will do it, one way or another. You can let your close friends and relatives know that at this time you are not available; this is the family quiet time; some people say, “We want this time to be together”; or the phone can be put  on answering machine.
   
Cultivating the art of non-attachment
   
    For this we can turn to Sri Ramakrishna. “Do your duties with one hand and with the other hold fast to God,” he says, illustrating this with the example of the mudfish in the Indian ponds, who lays her eggs in the bank and then goes swimming about for food. Her mind never gets very far away from those eggs. Or the ducks, who are constantly going in and out of water yet whose feathers do not get soggy and pull them down. Or the maid, hired in a wealthy home, who carries on the game of taking care of the family as if it were her own, all the time knowing she has her own family elsewhere. We are to practice this non-attachment with great skill, attaching our mind permanently to the Supreme Being, and to our worldly duties only for the time being, like an acrobat walking on wire high overhead without losing balance. This is mental renunciation, the giving up of possessiveness, more than possessions; not the killing of the ego so much as getting it to loosen its stranglehold over our goods, our partner, our children, our reputation etc.
   
The Master warns against the obstacle of pride
   
Homemakers are warned to be on guard against building up three kinds of pride: that of wealth, of learning and of social position, perennial enemies of spirituality. If we truly practice the non-attachment spoken of above, we can hardly expect to be scintillating socialites, “the life of the party” (if we ever were), or examples of conspicuous consumption. On the other hand, the pride of a sort of spiritual aristocracy—”ours is a devout family, one of spiritual traditions” etc., is probably  a helpful sort, at least in the early stages of our journey.
   
The children—what should we, who are on the spiritual quest, expect of them?
   
    Not, surely, that they be little clones of ourselves.  Examining carefully our expectations might reduce frustrations and disappointment  in the outcome of child-raising. What exactly is meant by obedience? What did that mean to you when you were a child? Is there not a difference between love and trust? And can a child who does not feel respected and trusted by parents ever have an obedient spirit? The guru's love transforms. Can you love someone and still want him to be different? That creates frustration for us. Parents know it very well. Why doesn't their love transform the child? Because it has selfish interests in it. The guru's does not.
   
    I always ask parents to read and re-read the chapter “On Children” in The Prophet,  Kahlil Gibran's classic. “Your children come through you but not from you.” “Seek not to make them like you.” “You are the bows, they are the arrows.” In just a few penetrating words he gives us the attitudes essential for parents today and always.
Far too many of us assume that schools or churches or “society at large” are going to teach our youth the needful in morality or religion. Home is the place for that training and nothing can substitute for it. The maximum influence on the child's basic character is likely to be exerted during the first eighteen months of its life. Alas, this is just the time when we are usually most unaware that the baby is picking up our emotional tone, our intentions and drives, from the tone of voice, the facial expressions and the gestures we use. These days we even leave the baby with sitters and day-care employees where, in this sensitive period, we have no control over, or knowledge of, the influences at play there. Barring a genetically defective inheritance, nothing whatever is so influential on the future of the child as parental example. The byword: what you want your children to do, do yourself!
   
Between a rock and a hard place!
   
    Steering between over-restriction and over-permissiveness seems to be what is needed in the home. Some parents who were raised in India tend to the former, Western parents to the latter. Confinement and rigidity in child-raising stunt growth and stifle potentialities. On the other hand, giving many options and failing to set guidelines of behavior and attitude can so deprive the children that they themselves are filled with pain at the lack. There is also a sort of “occupational disease” in Vedantic parents: they may be too anxious to make the children religious. But if the parents themselves are spiritual, are the children not more likely to be attracted? Religion cannot be forced without damaging mental health and family unity, and attempting it can be counter-productive.
   
What about the “awkward stage”?
   
    Most children of the age nine to thirteen are in their most questioning and rebellious phase. Some experts say that conflicts should be avoided at this time. But  conflicts of the ordinary sort can be a blessing, if handled by parents who have themselves achieved some spiritual maturity. In that case one need not be afraid of argument or discussion but can face it squarely, yet with patience and understanding. The normal pattern for maturation is the breaking of the shell by the chick, the leaving the nest by the fledgling and relinquishing proprietary rights by parents. Sibling rivalry too is often a problem at this stage, and earlier as well. To ensure that each child feels equal love and attention (in spite of instinctive preferences) requires an attitude of genuine respect and worship. Great care and tact must be used by a parent who feels drawn more to one offspring than another.   Because a great deal of mental illness in later life is traced to this, we have to be on the alert. We must try to help each child to shine in his or her own special way, whether that way appeals to us personally or not. Help the budding soul to be incandescent!
   
Our standards and peer pressure
   
    We know the standards we want to set for our children, while they are under pressure from their friends and peers to behave otherwise, and the clash tears apart the generations. Here again, it is very important to take the younger set into our confidence quite early and set the example ourselves—again the double danger of overprotection and under-supervision. I once met in this country a mother from India who tried to keep her two teenage daughters virtually locked up, prisoners in the house. Another lesson from former days comes from the Quakers or the Amish: they became so different from those around them that their children grew up peculiar, out of phase with society, self-conscious and misfit and prone, of course, to deep psychological maladjustment.  The damage from over-permissiveness, evident to us all, is as bad or worse. Expose your child to all the values you know as best, and try to adhere to them in your own life, but do not compel; we have discovered that if we attempt to make angels by force, we may have devils on our hands, so this is just about all we can do. We show and tell; we have done our best—the rest lies with them and with God.
   
Special problems: should we take the elders into the home?
   
    In this country today grandparents and other elderly relatives are being turned over to the care of institutions. This can be a severe irritant to the conscience. Older persons in the home who are able-bodied, active and caring may be of great help in the running of the household. But when they become badly ill or invalid we have a different situation. The question can become, who is willing and able to remain at home to nurse and foster the disabled and sometimes querulous relative? One hears of relatives who do just that, and for years together, but who were under pressure from family and conscience, and had not really agreed to it or accepted it in their own heart. Before making such a commitment we need to be quite sure this will not happen. Once more we see how much we need an intellectual and emotional understanding of the divine element in the one who is being served and that the service done is worship.
    These institutional homes originally sprang up to serve those who simply could not care for their elders; then the necessity (as so often) became a convenience and attitudes have hardened. In this sensitive matter it is difficult to hew to a general principle, except to say that a spiritual aspirant will show as much care and worshipfulness as possible to those who deserve it, and will give in each individual case, the time, prayer and planning to facilitate a solution.
   
If infidelity occurs?
   
    I have no statistics to support it, but I would be willing to wager that a large proportion of marriages fail simply because the partners have assumed, unreasonably, that their mate would be totally faithful. After all, isn't that what  we say in the vows? When the reality is discovered, the reaction is often one of panic. The situation in which a spiritually or morally oriented, chaste and faithful partner receives this shock can result in disillusionment, depression, even mental breakdown and suicide attempts. The test of our spirituality, however, will be found in the ability not to be overwhelmed with jealousy and resentment and despair, and by the attitude which is sustained toward the offending spouse. It is not easy to go on loving, “carrying the torch,” wanting his/her welfare and working for it through prayer, sacrifice and the absence of condemnation; to be open to a regretful partner's possible return. Occasionally there is a mirror-image tendency to self-condemnation in an attempt to turn all the blame upon oneself. Psychological counseling may be needed or helpful.
    We have to cultivate and pray for positive emotions, expanding our heart. This is not even “forgiveness,” but rather more than that; it is a waiting and watching, a vigil with suspension of judgment, and an unwillingness to close the mind and heart against offense. And we have seen it work  wonders in many cases.
   
    If the breakup of a union or a family is clearly unavoidable, the application of Vedanta principles becomes a question of non-attachment. Let us avoid becoming like the divorcee I once knew who went on berating her former husband and everything pertaining to him for years together, unable to let go of her self-pity. That is attachment writ large!
   
In case both partners have to be employed?
   
    The pattern of life today in which both parents feel they need to be employed to make ends meet is admitted on all sides to be one of the chief reasons for the breakup and degeneration of the family bond. The spiritually minded need to weigh this very carefully, knowing the serious consequences of leaving young children in the care of others. The Indian culture values the solidarity of the home and family. Hazards are posed by the wife going off to employment, leaving the children without both parents for long periods of time. In some cases we have seen, the supposed urgency for both to go out to work is little more than boredom, restlessness, ambition or the frantic fear of accepting a more modest income and lifestyle. Sri Ramakrishna warned against this kind of monetary ambition. On many occasions he said to the devotees or visitors, “Why do you have to seek advancement? Haven't you enough now for your needs? Why go on multiplying your duties and desires? Why court troubles? Rather pray to the Lord to make your duties fewer and fewer so that you will have more time to think of Him.” No doubt  some mothers, when they are older and the children grown, may wish to find work outside the empty house. And there is volunteer work. It all depends on the individual case; we are trying to  indicate here only some guiding principles.
   
To summarize:
   
    Everyone is our “own”, for a Vedantist, as Holy Mother made clear in her last words to us. If we cannot properly love and care for our near ones, and learn how to worship the Divine in them, shall we ever be able to expand our hearts like hers and make everyone our own? We do not want to leave this life having managed to cherish only three or four other individuals! We begin where we are, to practice this, in our wife, husband, children, parents, siblings. For Sri Ramakrishna “every pebble was a diamond.”