The contemporary Vedic Ashram system of Atma Yoga / The Loft includes a relatively new samskara, engagement. “Classical” Vedic culture doesn’t have it, but people today benefit from a period where they get to taste “committment without entitlement”. It’s a formal position of regulated engagement to ease them into the full grhasta situation. Basically you’re married, but you don’t get to disappear off into your own scene.

I had the great honour and pleasure to address the 80 or so members of the community at Atma Yoga during the ceremony. For me it was a great privilege to be able to serve my dear god brother Vrajadhama in this way.

Engagement Address

This is Vrajadhama, and Bhakticandrika devi dasi from Peru. I’ve known Vrajadhama for now, let’s see, 17 years I think - something like that. No, 15 years. 15 years, and we’ve been through a lot together. We came to this Hare Krishna movement, this Vaisnava tradition together, and then we went and we spent some time in Peru, spent three years there, and while we were there Vraj met Bhakticandrika. It was obviously fate’s divine arrangement for them to connect in that way, because being such a small guy, Vraj probably wouldn’t be able to find someone his size anywhere else.

(laughter)

Yeah, so it was perfect. Everything worked out perfectly.

So today we are observing the engagement, their engagement ceremony. Now, according to the “classical”, in quotes, Vedic tradition there is no engagement ceremony, because there is actually no engagement. People are either married or not married. You see, the ancient Vedic culture is very strict about the mixing of the sexes. In Yoga one of the preliminary practices is brahmacarya, which means basically “celibacy” - and it means conserving the energies, and so they have a very strict way of social interaction where they don’t have that. Today we don’t really have that culture so much in our society, but we try to follow the Vedic tradition, the Vedic way of life, because it promotes elevation of consciousness. Now, there is no engagement ceremony in that ancient tradition, so we are basically making one up ourselves.

Because you see the Vedic tradition - it’s not a stereotypical culture that belongs to a particular time and place. It’s actually a living thing. Just like within our bodies there is the living energy, and when the living energy is gone from the body, the body just falls to the ground. It’s inert - it’s lost its life. But while that living energy is there, the body changes. Once I was a small boy, like our young friend here, now I’m a young man, and I’ll go through different changes. The body has changed so much, but I’m still the same person - still me - experiencing that. So there’s something within me that’s vital, that’s living, and the outer thing changes. So it is with the Vedic tradition. The outer appearance of the tradition changes, but the inner thing remains the same always.

And the inner thing, the inner substance of the Vedic tradition, it is the platform of absolute transcendental reality - that’s the spiritual platform. You know, the part of us that doesn’t change during our life, that’s our spiritual aspect, our spiritual identity. The physical part of us - that goes through changes. So the idea of the Vedic culture is to help people to connect to that identity, to that aspect of our identity. And that thing never changes - that absolute platform, which is known as Brahman in Sanskrit, that doesn’t change. That is eternal and unchanging - immutable. But society does change, so therefore the Vedic tradition changes along with that. You know, it tracks along with that, to keep connecting the people with the absolute platform. So as time goes on the Vedic tradition changes, so now we are introducing the idea of the engagement ceremony.

So why do we have this engagement ceremony? Why are they doing this? What are they doing?

They’re making a public commitment. They’re not just making a public commitment to each other, they’re making a public commitment to all of us. Because life is not just about “me”, and life is not just about “you”. Life is about all of us, and we all, because we’re all interrelated, we all have a duty to each other, and especially in family life. Family is the basis of human society.Community, human community needs continuity, it needs stability.

So when you enter into this kind of relationship, it’s not just about “what do I want to get out of this? What do I want?” It’s actually about “what can I do for others?” It’s not even about “what can I do for this other person?” It’s about “what can we do together? What can we together do for everyone else?” Now if we begin to live from that platform, instead of thinking “What can everyone do for me? What can I do for myself?” If we begin to live from the platform of “What can I do for others?” then the whole relationship becomes different. Instead of “What can I get out of this other person?” it becomes “what can we together do for others?”, and that makes for such a difference in the relationship.

So the commitment is not simply the two of them to each other, but it’s a commitment to all of us. It’s a commitment to contributing to stability and continuity. Community needs stability, and it needs continuity. We need to create a stable community, a stable society, so that people can have a stable situation in which they can pursue spiritual realization. You know when you’re so disturbed and there are so many disturbances, and you don’t know what’s happening from one day to the next, and your future is so uncertain - it’s very difficult to concentrate on anything higher than just getting through the day. But if we can have a stable situation underlying us for our practice, then we can apply ourselves to that practice, and we can make advancement, we can make progress.

So the duty of those who come together in this way is to provide that stability, and making this public commitment in this way to all of us also helps them with their commitment to each other, because they can realize as they go through it that “it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone, and the public commitment that we’ve made.”

It’s called the “Edison method”. Thomas Edison was a famous inventor, and what he would often do is call a press conference, and he would announce a wonderful new product that was coming out. Then after making that announcement in the press conference he would go into his lab and invent it.

So by making a public commitment like this, it helps to achieve your goals, and to be committed to your goals.

There is another aspect to it, as well.

The other day I was reading Madison magazine. I don’t know if anyone here reads Madison magazine? I don’t - generally I don’t read Madison magazine, but this particular Madison magazine - I was waiting - OK, wait a minute, let me tell you how it happened.

I was waiting for the bus down in Adelaide St, and this particular Madison magazine, the cover jumped out at me, and it’s not because it had a picture of Angelina Jolie on the cover. She’s on the cover of practically every magazine this month - or at least the ones that Jennifer Aniston isn’t on. So what it was, actually, that jumped out at me was a headline that said: “Married versus Living Together: Who’s happiest?”

These are the kinds of things that I like to think about, and I was particularly intrigued to know - what did they have to say about that? I didn’t really want to saunter up to the stand and pick up the magazine in case someone coming from the class saw me reading it. So I waited until we were in Stafford, at Woolworths, where I was sure we wouldn’t run into anyone - but actually we did, we ran into Lou. Anyway, the Supersoul goes with us wherever we go - we can’t escape it.

Anyway, I picked up that magazine and I just flicked through the article, and one thing jumped out at it me, and it said: “Statistically it’s proven that people who don’t live together before they get married, have longer marriages.” That’s what it said. And then they gave their interpretation, or a little bit of their commentary on that. They said: “This is because people who don’t live together before they get married, these days especially, they often don’t do so because of cultural or religious reasons, and those same cultural or religious reasons often preclude divorce as an option.”

I think there is some validity in that, but at the same time I think that is a little bit of a disempowering view to take of it. I think a more positive and empowering view of that can be understood from a principle that we find in the science of Yoga, and that is something that Krishna explains about the yogi in the second chapter of Bhagavad-gita, where He says: “sama sukha-dukham dhiram”

In this particular verse He says:

yam hi na vyatayanyete
purusa purusarsabha
samo-dukha-sukham dhiram
so’mrta vaya kalpate

That the yogi, he is “samo-sukha-duhkam dhiram” - he is equanimous. He is the same - sama means “same” - dukha-sukham - dukha means misery and sukha means happiness. He is the same in both misery and happiness. This is this universal principle. This is something that doesn’t change. The rituals might change, the society might change, but let me tell you this - this is something that doesn’t change. This is an eternal principle: If you cannot regulate attachment, you will not be able to regulate aversion - and these two things are the two sides of the same coin. Attachment and Aversion. The two functions of the mind. If you watch what your mind does as you go around - your mind is always saying: “I like that. I don’t like that. I like it. I don’t like it.” Things that you like, the mind says: “Go. Go. Get it. Get it.” The things that you don’t like the mind says: “Get away. Get away. Give it up.”

“Sankalpa Vikalpa” it is called. So the yogi has to learn to control the impulse towards attachment or engagement. Our society today glorifies the uncontrollable whirlwind romance, you know, it’s kind of like: “I was just swept off my feet. I just couldn’t help myself. I just had to get up on the couch and jump up and down. I was madly in love.” That’s kind of celebrated - you know?

But there is another saying: “Easy come, easy go”. If he can’t control his mind on the way in, he’s not going to be able to control his mind on the way out - and wherever there is attachment or attraction there will always be aversion, that will always come. That is the nature of this world. Whenever there is some attraction, some desire, some attachment - there will always come a time where there will be aversion, there will be repulsion. So if we can’t regulate ourselves and control ourselves when the attachment comes, then we certainly won’t be able to control ourselves when the aversion comes. If we can’t control ourselves when kama, or lust, comes, then we won’t be able to control ourselves when krodha, or anger, comes.

So I think that persons who, for whatever reason - because of their own realization, their own control, their own understanding, or even by social tradition - if they can control, if they can learn to control on the outset - then when the difficult times come, and the mind starts pushing them to come apart, they will also find it a lot easier to control that. And then if they also have the understanding that “it’s not just about us and what we think and what we feel”, but “we have a duty to all these people around us, to the whole society, to the whole community” then that commitment that they are making now to all of us, that commitment will push them together. It will help to hold them together. So by doing it in this way they get the support of the whole community, behind them, to help them in their endeavour, together, to serve - to serve the community.

So that is something about the concept behind this engagement ceremony that we are doing tonight. As I said there is no formal ritualistic ceremony for this in the ancient Vedic tradition, so we are creating one as we go, because the Vedic culture is always relevant to our situation.

So it is very simple what we have planned for tonight. We have the garlands for them? And there are some flowers for puspanjali? So we have some flowers - and we are going to hand these flowers around. Last night we were hearing something about the demigods showering flowers? It is very auspicious.

So they are going to exchange garlands, and there is also a ring, which is a sign of commitment in the West.

Anything that is done beginning with the syllable OM is said to be permanent and binding, so we will chant the Guru Pranam mantra, then you can exchange the garlands and give the ring, and we’ll all throw the flowers.

Hari!
Om ajnana timirandhasya
jnananjana salakaya
caksur un militam yena
tasmai sri gurave namah

Esa puspanjali!