Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Sacred Secret #5: Refrain from Fighting

Where there is no fighting
between husband and wife,
the Goddess of Fortune lives in that home.
                                                                                                                        --Canakya Pandit

Part of me finds it hard to talk about this subject, because it gives me so much pain when I hear married couples fight.  It brings me back to my childhood.  I'm sure my Dad must have deserved it, but when my Mom would scream and yell at him in the night when we were all in bed and supposed to be asleep, I would lie awake terrified (I'm sure my eyes must have been as big as saucers) and feeling deep compassion for my father, who was a dutiful, affectionate, generous man.  Even though Srila Prabhupada says that one should not take the fights between husband and wife very seriously, as a child, I took the fights between my father and my mother very seriously.  I still have deep emotional scars from those traumatizing episodes. 

Maybe it's because I grew up with seven brothers or maybe because I hated hearing my Mom denigrate and abuse my Dad behind closed doors that I have always been a champion for men.  I can't stand to hear a woman yelling at her husband.  It just feels so wrong to me.

The goddess next door

During the first eight years of our marriage, our house in Fullerton, California was the ISKCON preaching center for the entire Orange County East Indian population.  The house faced Chapman Avenue, a busy four-lane thoroughfare without parking spaces to buffer a child's proximity to danger, and which at most hours of the day could have been categorized as a freeway.  Although a stone's throw from Disneyland, the little white one-story house-cum-temple was, in my estimation, no place to raise children, but it was what Krsna had provided for us, and we made the best of it.  One feature of our colorful life as the caretakers of  Fullerton Temple was the interesting neighbors flanking our little house.  

For the first few years of our time on Chapman Avenue we had a next-door neighbor who was a very sweet, gentle, hard-working stay-at-home-mom who was obviously devoted to her husband Ron.  They had two little toddlers who were rambunctious and fun-loving, and would make huge messes like all toddlers I have ever known.  Yet Teri would remain undisturbed, picking up after them religiously so that her house always looked neat as a pin and clean as a temple.  And not only her house looked nice, but she looked nice.  Always.  When her husband came home from work, she was ready to greet him with a smile and a kind word of appreciation.  Having read and become a fan of Fascinating Womanhood, I was impressed, to say the least.

Then one day Teri broke the news to me that she and her husband had to move because of his job.  I knew I would miss her, but she assured me that her very own sister Janet planned to move in after they left.  I thought, Well if Janet is anything like Teri, maybe I won't have to miss Teri so much.  Teri and I hugged good-bye, wished each other well and agreed to stay in touch. 

The goddess's sister

Janet and her husband Jim moved in.  I baked some banana bread and took it over to welcome them to the neighborhood.  I smiled warmly at their two little kids who seemed to cower in fear.  I didn't know why.  I figured they were just nervous and unsure of their new surroundings.  Janet looked quite different from Teri.  I would never have guessed they were sisters.  With her distant, deep-set eyes and scattered dark hair, Janet looked more like a scared bird than her wholesome, rosy-cheeked, blond sister.  With his square-rimmed glasses, khaki slacks and forced smile, Jim looked like a model from a Kmart flyer.  When he spoke (and though a man with even a smidgen of pride would probably never admit it) I thought I detected a slight hint of insecurity, an ever-so-subtle tremolo of fear in his voice.  Or maybe it was just in his aura.  Despite the initial impression, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, although in the back of my mind, I was somehow getting a feeling that this family might be quite different from the family that had just moved out.  The word "dysfunctional" glanced across the screen of my mind, but I quickly erased that word, shrugged off my initial impression as premature, and made a determination to get to know Janet.

But Janet stayed to herself, despite my efforts to make contact.  As the weeks went by, I seldom saw her.  From my bedroom window, I could hear Jim leave for work every morning and come home every evening.  I would say hello over the back fence whenever I saw Janet out hanging laundry or policing the kids, but she never showed any interest in cultivating a relationship with me, so I eventually gave up trying to befriend her.

My life was intensely busy anyway.  With a young toddler of my own and a temple to help run, I had little time to hang out drinking tea and eating crumpets with neighbors.  Being the temple president's wife, I had a heavy load of responsibilities.  Distributing Srila Prabhupada's books, teaching vegetarian cooking classes with my husband, cultivating new devotees (we almost always had a new bhakta or bhaktin living with us), Nama-hatta programs at congregation members' homes, cleaning the house, cooking daily meals as well as cooking the Sunday and Wednesday night feasts, counseling congregation members, teaching harmonium lessons, keeping up with the laundry, etc., etc., etc. kept me very, very busy.  So I made the excuse that I didn't really have time to pursue a relationship with a neighbor who didn't show any interest in me.

Things seemed quiet next door for a few weeks.  Suddenly, one day, I heard a woman's voice screaming and yelling obscenities.  My heart was seized with fear.  I ran outside, expecting to find some poor woman being robbed or mugged or raped on the sidewalk in front of our home.  I saw no one.  I heard the screams and the curse words again.  My head turned toward the sound.  To my horror, I realized it was coming from the direction of Jim and Janet's house!  I then knew it was Janet's voice.  Jim had just come home from work, and this was how Janet greeted her husband?  I was horrified.  She went on and on and on, screaming and yelling expletives at the top of her voice.  I could barely make out Jim's soft, gentle voice responding to her tirade.  He seemed to be trying to calm her.  But on and on she went.  My mind shot back to those nights on Detroit Street in Denver, as I lay frozen, trembling in fear on my bed, waiting desperately for my Mom to stop cursing my Dad at the top of her voice.

I felt sorry for that husband and those children.  I cringed for their sake.  I swept up my little girl who had come looking for me and ran back into the house, clutching my baby.  I closed the windows on the west side of our house, but still, the sound penetrated the bedroom walls.  I closed all the windows and both doors, but still the awful cacophony, though muffled, persisted.  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the ranting and raving died down.  My nerves were shot, frazzled.  I could feel my heart pounding and my mouth was dry.  I couldn't imagine how traumatized Jim and his kids felt.

The next day, I discovered that this was a pattern.  As soon as Jim came home from work, Janet would start, screaming and yelling obscenities.  This went on for weeks.  Finally, one day we saw a moving van pull up to their house.  I didn't want to be seen gawking, so I kept to my duties inside the house.  After the moving van drove off, there were no more tirades.

I hope none of you have, but probably all of you have had experiences like this.  Maybe even in your own marriages.  Sometimes our husbands can really annoy us.  Sometimes we feel like screaming and yelling obscenities at the tops of our voices.  But really, what good does that do?  Maybe it helps us feel a little better temporarily when we vent, but Srila Prabhupada tells us that anger poisons the system.  And what kind of impression does it leave on our husbands?  Our children?  Our neighbors?  The damage that this type of misbehavior in women causes leaves deep scars in children, and can drive husbands--even good, well-intentioned husbands--mad.  It can even drive them away.

Does your stool smell like roses?

Good husbands who really mean well can still make mistakes.  They can still go through spiritual slumps.  They can have really annoying idiosyncrasies, too, that push our buttons to the max.  I remember one time when I was so mad at my husband for insulting me with sharp words that I wanted to leave him.  I packed my bags and loaded the car.  I was ready to take off.  Just then, a dear friend stopped by and asked me where I was going.  I told her I had had enough and I was leaving.  She talked with me gently and compassionately.  I could feel her love and felt that she really cared about me.  Not only me, but she cared about my whole family.  She made me think about what I was doing, what the ramifications of my leaving would be.  She reached for my hand and quietly asked me, "Can you give him another chance?"  By her simple, humble yet direct question, she made me think twice.  My husband, who is essentially a good man, would be without a wife.  My children, who were innocent and had done no wrong, would be without a mother.  I would be alone, wandering in the world with no protector.  Srila Prabhupada and Lord Krsna would be disappointed in me for throwing in the towel and "quitting my job."

I thought, I am not perfect.  My husband is also not perfect.  I need to remember that both my husband and I are conditioned souls.  I need to be patient with him just as I am with myself.  I am able to forgive myself for my mistakes.  Can't I also forgive him?  Can't I give him another chance?  Why should I expect perfection from my husband?  Am I perfect myself?  Does my stool smell like roses?  If my stool doesn't smell like roses yet, do I really have room to criticize anyone, what to speak of criticizing my husband, my pati-guru, whom I am supposed to see as the Supreme Lord?  

I took a deep breath and decided to give it another try.  I went back into the house with hot coals of anger still smoldering in my heart, but at least the anger was not raging and blazing so burning hot as when I had walked out toward the car.  I couldn't yet think of forgiving my husband, but I started to feel the desire to tolerate him reawakening in my heart.  I prayed to Lord Paramatma to help me understand my husband's nature and tolerate his annoying idiosyncrasies.  I prayed to Srimati Laksmi devi to help my husband and me to refrain from fault-finding and fighting.  I prayed to Srila Prabhupada to give me the strength to go on with my service.  I prayed to the Holy Name to please, please dissolve my false ego so that I could peacefully live with this soul whom He had kindly given me as a husband.  With these prayers in my heart, I resumed my duties.

Soon afterward, my husband apologized for speaking unkindly to me, and by that time, I had also cheered up.  Krsna had even helped me see my husband's point of view and to also recognize a mistake that I had made which had helped trigger my husband's sharp words.  I realized at that moment--and have realized many times afterward--that to stay committed to one's husband and to one's marriage is a powerfully purifying decision to make.  We not only get great blessings when we work through disagreements and misunderstandings with our husband, we get strength and vision that help us make it through marital struggles, relationship challenges and communication mishaps in the future.  And there will be challenges in the future.  I promise.  That's the nature of this material world of dualities.  Sometimes there's happiness, sometimes there's distress.  Recognizing this fact helps us cope with the dualities that exist in marriage.

To err is human, to forgive is divine 

In Bhagavad-gita, Krsna says that we must learn to control anger.  Whatever the cause of our anger, we must learn to control it.  One famous quote I just recently read again says, "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be married?"  Another way it is sometimes written is, "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?"

If we have the tendency to think that we're always right in every argument, that our point of view is the correct one and that our husband is in illusion, we must pray to give up the desire to always be right.  If we have the tendency to want our husbands to admit that we're right, we must pray for the desire to give that up, too.  We must pray for the desire to give up our false ego and the desire to have the last word.  We must pray for the ability to see and understand our husband's heart so that we can understand his personality and know what kinds of challenges he faces.  This is one key to becoming his ever-well-wisher.  We must pray for the desire to see his point of view, because to him, his point of view is just as valid as our own.

When we understand our husband, we can then always wish him well.  We must pray to desire to be what our husbands want and need us to be, because if they are peaceful and satisfied, they will be more inclined toward pursuing Krsna consciousness, and that's what we really want after all, right?  We will then be blessed with peace and satisfaction as well as personal advancement in Krsna consciousness.

Above all, we must be willing to forgive.  If we want to forgive, Krsna will help us to do so.  We must remember that our husbands are conditioned souls and that they are struggling to do what is best.  We all err.  We all make mistakes.  To err is human, to forgive is divine. 

Krsna minimizes a devotee's reactions

Whatever sufferings have come our way, we deserve them from the past.  There is a famous verse in this regard:

tat te 'nukampäm susamiksamäno
bhunjäna evätma-krtam vipäkam
hrd-väg-vapurbhir vidadhan namas te
jiveta yo mukti-pade sa däya-bhäk

"My dear Lord, one who constantly waits for Your causeless mercy to be bestowed upon him and who goes on suffering the reactions of his past misdeeds, offering You respectful obeisances from the core of his heart, is surely eligible for liberation, for it has become his rightful claim." (SB 10.14.8)  Not only do we deserve the sufferings that we are experiencing in this life, but we must also remember that because we're trying to be Krsna's surrendered servants, Krsna is kindly minimizing our sinful reactions!

We must pray to be able to transcend the modes of passion and ignorance, as these modes are the agents through which anger, resentment, revenge, indignation, jealousy, envy, hatred, apathy, complacency, hopelessness, laziness, and all other negative emotions are borne.  They are the catalysts that enable us to display our negative emotions for our husbands, our children and the whole world to see.

When the husband is angry

When it is our husband who displays anger and other negative emotions, what should we do?  How should we respond?  We can follow in the footsteps of Sukanya who was married to the famously angry Cyavana Muni and who neutralized his anger with her sweet words and humble service.  We can follow in the footsteps of Queen Draupadi.  Draupadi saw her powerful husbands as venomous serpents who could become excited at the least provocation.  She shared a little secret with Satyabhama in their famous conversation: a method for neutralizing hostility: "You should form friendships only with highborn and sinless females who are devoted to their lords and you should always avoid the association of wrathful women who are addicted to drink, who are gluttonous, thievish, wicked and fickle. Such behaviour is reputable and leads to prosperity.  Not only is it capable of neutralizing hostility, but it also leads to heaven." (Mahabharata, Vana Parva, 232)  Therefore, when our husband is angry, we can neutralize his feelings of hostility and wrath by sweet words, by humble service, by good behavior which we have learned from women who are devoted to their husbands, and by avoiding the undesirable association and behavior of wicked women who are wrathful themselves.

When your husband is calmed down and in a better mood, you can ask him, "Prabhu, none of us likes to be angry.  It is a very uncomfortable feeling.  When you are angry, I want to help you calm down.  Please advise me how to behave when you're angry.  I don't want to agitate you more or exacerbate annoying circumstances.  Please help me understand what kind of behavior on my part would help you calm your anger most effectively."  With this kind of humble, submissive question posed sincerely by his affectionate wife, a husband is likely to be willing to share with us what would help him calm down when he is angry.  Some husbands prefer that their wife remain quiet and allow him to get over his anger himself.  Other husbands prefer that their wives express sympathy and concern.  Yet others may even appreciate a different response.  Different husbands may prefer different responses from their wives.  As we get to know our husbands, we will come to learn of their preferences and how to calm their anger.

I know a lady whose husband never gets angry.  But she does!  She asked me how she should express her anger when her husband is at fault.  

If you must express your anger, do it in a little girl way.  Try this.  You can pooch out your lower lip just a little and fold your arms.  If tears want to come, let them come.  Men sometimes like to see women angry.  They think it's cute when their wife gets mad like a little girl.  Krsna described to Rukmini devi how He would have liked to see her show anger toward Him.  He told her that He had hoped that she would stare at Him with unblinking eyes and offer counter arguments.  Rukmini, however, was unable to be angry with her Lord, and missed the chance to please Him with her anger.  She instead pleased Him with her unalloyed love and admiration.

In "Talks Between Krsna and Rukmini" (KB) Krsna gave us one example of how a husband could be pleased by his wife's anger.  But don't take this as an excuse to "take it out on him."  Such a vengeful attitude will bring about the wrong response in your husband, and Krsna also will not like it.  If you have vengeance in your heart toward your husband, when the occasion arises that you become angry toward him, better to keep quiet and pray to Krsna to help you understand how best to deal with the situation. 

The onus is on us


Dear sisters, please try to refrain from fighting with your husbands.  Negative emotions like anger do no good to you or to anyone else.  We must give them up by replacing them with positive thoughts.  Start by practicing the healing method of overlooking your husband's faults.  Increase your chanting.  Hear the holy names with undivided attention.  Read Srila Prabhupada's books every day.  Even one sentence or one paragraph is better than no reading at all.  Do the forgiveness exercise.  Pray, pray, pray for your husband every day.  Pray to Srimati Laksmi devi to help you and your husband refrain from fighting.  Pray that she and Lord Narayana will be inspired to come live in your home and in your hearts.  Overcome fault-finding and anger.  It's the only way you, your husband, and your children can be happy.

If you must express your anger, do it in a little girl way.  Try this.  You can pooch out your lower lip just a little and fold your arms.  If tears want to come, let them come.  Men sometimes like to see women angry.  They think it's cute when their wife gets mad like a little girl.  Krsna described to Rukmini devi how He would have liked to see her show anger toward Him.  He told her that He had hoped that she would stare at Him with unblinking eyes and offer counter arguments.  Rukmini, however, was unable to be angry with her Lord, and missed the chance to please Him with her anger.  She instead pleased Him with her unalloyed love and admiration.

It is said that the wife/mother is the soul of her home, the soul of her family.  We women can make or break our marriages, our husbands, our families, our homes.  Whether we like it or not, the onus is on us.  If we take this seriously, the Goddess of Fortune Srimati Laksmi devi will surely come to live in our home, as she will be attracted by the peaceful, Krsna conscious atmosphere there.  And wherever Laksmi devi resides, Lord Narayana resides there as well.    

1 comment:

  1. This is simply wonderful, practical information that any Vaishnavi, or Vaishnava, can use. .

    ReplyDelete