62
Generation Gap
All these relatives are temporary adjustments. As long as
you adjust to them, everything will be fine. Your intentions should
be to preserve the relationship, even though others try to destroy
it. Try to keep things as stable as you can, but when you feel that
your efforts are in vain, then you can let go. As long as possible,
try to keep things together.
(P.371)
In your worldly interactions, you should conduct yourself
as though you are an actor in a play. Internally you should remain
detached from the situation. Do everything that you have to do,
but without emotional involvement. A mother who hugs her child
dearly may do so to the point of smothering it and then naturally
the child becomes irritated. It is the ignorant that display such
possessive behavior. Whereas the Gnani Purush remains detached
from all worldly interactions and so everyone remains happy with
him.
From the Gnani’s perspective, it is a worldly matter when a
girl gets married and it is also a worldly matter when she becomes
a widow. It is not real. Both the situations are relative and no one
has the ability to change them. People agonize over the death of
their young son-in-law. They become so distraught that they have
to seek medical help. All such emotions and reactions are due to
attachment and abhorrence. It is all because people have not
understood worldly life as worldly life and nothing else; they have
not understood that the worldly life is temporary.
You may have to scold your child and at times you may
even have to say something to your wife. But you should do so in
a make-believe way, as if you are an actor in a play, without any
emotional involvement from within.
(P.378)
ALL RELATIONSHIPS ARE MERELY GIVE AND TAKE
If your wife and child were truly yours, then they would