Hare Kṛṣṇa. On behalf of the couple and the management of this temple, I'd like to welcome everybody to this wedding ceremony that we are executing today on this very auspicious day of Śrī Balarāma Pūrṇimā. It's the appearance day of Lord Kṛṣṇa's first expansion, Lord Balarāma. Plus, it is a very interesting day astronomically as well. This day is very, very bad for any materialistic activity, but very, very good for any spiritual activity, getting married before Viṣṇu in the form of fire in a temple. So this ceremony is called vivāha-saṁskāra. Vivāha means wedding, and saṁskāra has a double meaning which is quite interesting. One meaning is psychological imprint, something that is imprinted in the mind, and the other one is a milestone in the life of a person. So in the Vedic tradition, there are different so-called saṁskāras which are important, starting even before birth. It is a saṁskāra called garbhādhāna-saṁskāra, starting even when one is begetting a child. In ISKCON, it's quite simple. It generally means that the husband and the wife, they get up in the morning and they chant 50 rounds of Hare Kṛṣṇa during the day to really elevate the consciousness and to attract a very special devoted soul to actively seek refuge in this family. So, even if not 50 rounds is practical—it takes more than six hours to do—as many as possible. And then it goes on, and then we have different saṁskāras for the newborn baby: to give the name, first time it takes the grains, etc. And then it goes all the way. Wedding is one, and then it goes to antyeṣṭi. Antya means the end. So that's the final rites for the dead body before the cremation. So the Vedic culture contains all different kinds of saṁskāras. And if we speak about the wedding, Kṛṣṇa has instituted the system of varṇāśrama, meaning that you have basically four different varṇas which are different for different people, and it comes from your personal qualities and the way you act in this world, the way you work. So we have a pyramid, and most of the people at the bottom of the pyramid, they are called śūdras, which means labor force, or in modern language, we may say employees. So that goes for most of us, that we assist and we serve an employer or a company or the government. And then a little higher up, you have the entrepreneurs, those who are their own company, they employ other people and are called the vaiśyas. And the task of the vaiśya is to provide opulence and wealth for the whole society. And above that, come those who work in the service of the government, meaning the police and the military, and people at the national hospitals and like that. They are also called the kṣatriyas, and the mission is to serve the public and to protect the citizens. And at the very top, you have the brāhmaṇas, which traditionally used to be renounced priests and lived a simple life. And we don't really have any brāhmaṇas, very few these days. Closest you get maybe some priests or some, I wouldn't even call them politicians, but they are supposed to be the leaders. But due to Kali-yuga, there is absence of real brāhmaṇas. So these are different, and different people. What everybody has to go through are the other four categories. These are the āśramas, the different stages starting with childhood as a student, when the boys and the girls, they go to school and they learn and they prepare for the adult life. And after some time, this is called brahmacarya. They leave school, and then they get married. Most people, they go through the second āśrama called the gṛhastha-āśrama. Gṛha means house, and gṛhastha has a strong spiritual connotation because building a good marriage is like building a protective shield or fortress against attacks from māyā and attacks from different distractions. Nowadays, we see boys and girls, they are running all over the place with different partners and there is no structure and there is trouble if somebody gets pregnant, there is no responsibility going on. So when you get married, you narrow down your focus on one person of the opposite gender that will help and assist you both ways to keep all material distractions out of marriage. You create a good home and maybe you get some children, and you create a solid structure where you can enjoy your degree of materialistic life, but in a very organized and civilized fashion following the dharma of marriage and gṛhastha-āśrama. So, that is the more practical side of it. You learn in gṛhastha-āśrama to be a good servant because you have to serve the family. Both the husband and the wife serve the family; husband serves the wife and the wife serves the husband, and both serve their children if they get. And in this way, you learn how to be of service and you learn how to practically express your love and attachment to other objects than yourself, which is a good step in the right direction. In the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa describes people who are very materialistic, the way they look at the world is, as He says:
īśvaro ’ham ahaṁ bhogī siddho ’haṁ balavān sukhī
He thinks that "I am the enjoyer, I am the Lord, and everything is meant for my upliftment." This is actually called āsuric by Kṛṣṇa, a demonic quality. But if you live in a good quality, in a good family, you don't expect to be served and that everybody should cater to your needs. You know that you have to ship in effort, money, time to make the family work. And this is good because once you learn how to serve properly, it's very easy to transfer that service propensity to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. And you can do that already in your marriage because although you may see a male form or a female form as your husband or your wife, at least theoretically, that inside the heart of this form is also the Supersoul, which is non-different from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. So there is a vision you have, that you both see your external material form, but you can also always remember that this person is actually a devotee of Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa is sitting next to him or her, witnessing all activities and giving facilities like this. So you learn. There's a famous verse about who we really are from the Caitanya-caritāmṛta:
jīvera svarūpa haya kṛṣṇera nitya-dāsa
So the nitya-dāsa means you're a servant. And if you're not a servant of Kṛṣṇa, you are the servant of your society, or of your employer, or of your family members, or whatever. But then when you put Kṛṣṇa in front of it, He's very happy if you can run a proper marriage where both are chaste and both are in service attitude. And now, finally, I'm not going to speak so much about the other āśramas, they come after marriage. That is the vānaprastha and then sannyāsa, maybe. But gṛhastha is the most common, I would say, in society today. So there's a secret to this universal law, and I will tell it to you today. In the fourth chapter of the Ādi-līlā of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī is speaking about Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa. And Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa is the topmost personification of the exchange of love between male and female. They go out of the way to please one another. And that verse says:
prīti-viṣayānande tāṅra āśrayānande
which means: your happiness rests in the pleasure of the beloved object. So instead of thinking "What can my wife do for me? What can my husband do for me?", you should think "What can I do for my wife? What can I do for my husband?" because there is no shortcut to happiness. The secret is that the more you care for the other, the more you endeavor for the pleasure of the other, the more happy you become. You see the point? So if you run a marriage according to that principle, that you both almost compete who can I please the other most, put it simply, you can bring home presents and chocolate and roses and beautiful dresses, and sing beautiful songs and this is the stereotype, and you can decorate the beautiful home and you can cook very nicely, and you can give massage and whatever, or subtler things. The more you do that to please the other, the more happy you become. And the more the marriage becomes a very, very pleasant place to be in. So your personal happiness rests within the happiness of the object of your love. This is something to remember as we sit here today. This is the formula for a successful marriage. Unfortunately, in Kali-yuga, we think, "This lady, she doesn't please me anymore, I kick her out and then I go and chase after somebody else, maybe she can give me pleasure," or, "He doesn't make enough money, I wanted to buy this, I go and find some other husband, I kick him out." So this is the guaranteed formula for a disastrous marriage. So for good and the bad, express your love, and you have one other person to show affection, to be attached to, and if you know how to develop proper attachment, it's easy to transfer that propensity and become attached to Kṛṣṇa. And if both of you are attached to Kṛṣṇa, marriage is very, very successful. So this is just a few words I wanted to say today.