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Great postings! Thanks Spangled, you prompted research and reading about "aghori."

Random quick thoughts ...

A good topic that can be painful and sublime. Marriage can be as good an indicator of spiritual state as anything else, but it's just an indicator to be viewed from the context of the culture. It can be viewed a lot of ways and the marriages of others are subject to the projection of cultural judgements. In a Western cultures where romantic love, life partners, soul mates have been established as a sort of cultural ideal, how are cultures with multiple wives viewed? Can the values and judgements of a soul-mate mindset be projected onto polygamous culture?

Marriage is more than a bond between two. It is a social contract, approved by the culture in which it occurs, for the benefit of the culture. In the West, where happiness is often the primary consideration, the strictures defining the contract are more loose. In situations where parents must approve of the marriage, the parents are often the arbitrators of what defines happiness, all things considered, and in theory the parents have the capacity to consider more things.

Lots of types of marriages. Social partners, business partners, emotional dependence, emotional independence, money, trophy wife, trophy husband, a confident, an adversary, a trusted partner, daddy/little girl, momma/little boy, master/servant, mistress/slave, Cinderella/Prince Charming, on and on. In past cultures and even now, wives are bought (husbands too), both literally and symbolically, even though there are relationship dynamics of attraction and marriage duties, before and after the purchase.

I met a fellow the other day. His last name was hyphenated, and not exactly the same as his mother's last name. Turned out he and his wife had combined their names to make a new name, a married name that they shared. I mentioned this to one of my daughters, and she knew someone who had done the same. I mentioned it to my wife and she perked right up, I think she wanted to do it too.

I read an anecdote about Sri Nisargadatta. His wife passed on. After an appropriate amount of time some people began trying to hook him up with women, figuring he may want to marry again. Once he caught on, he said ... why would I ever want to get married again? He said that once his wife died, he became free. Sounds callous from the soul mate viewpoint. When Sri Nisargadatta's adult daughter died, he did not shed tears.

How about arranged marriages? I know people who have been married for a long time, and they began as strangers in marriage. One must consider the culture. Very intelligent, sensitive people have the capacity to marry one another as strangers, and to continue on with living once one of them passes on. Sometimes they move to the West and get divorced, too. I was once seated on a place plane next to a young woman and she ended up telling me about her parents. They were strangers when they married in Vietnam, then they moved to the United States, had children, started a business, raised the kids to adulthood, then divorced. The woman told me there was no acrimony, the parents just had never loved one another, and I guess she meant loved one another in either the Western sense of romantic infatuation, or the concept of soul mate.

I've noticed an Indian couple walking home from the nearby market, carrying their plastic bags of food. Often the man walks ahead of the woman by about twenty feet. She follows along. They are old but not as old as Iyengar. When they cross the street, where the likelihood of mishaps increases, they cross side-by-side. I think that's a cultural thing, younger generations would be less likely to walk this way. I've also seen an old Chinese couple out walking and they are very old, walking slowly, and again the man was walking about twenty feet ahead, the woman walking behind, mirroring his pace and even his stride.

Hi Gideon, and all,

In his commentary on the Yoga Sutras, Osho discusses this topic in terms of time. Regarding grief, suffering, and liberation from, you may find it interesting.

In Vol. 9, Chapter 7, he says:

"Time goes very, very fast when you are happy. When you are unhappy -- somebody has died, somebody you loved, death has happened -- then time goes very, very, very slowly.
Just the other night Meera came. Her husband died a few months before. She had come to see me after the death, and I had told her don't be worried, the wound will heal. It will take a little time, almost three months. But those three months were just an average because it will depend on the person. Now she came last night again and she said, "Now five months have passed and the pain is still there. Of course it is less, but it is still there, it has not gone; and you had said that within three months it will go." I know. Sometimes it will take one year, sometimes it will take six months, sometimes it may not even take three months, three days will do. It is not chronological; it is psychological. It depends on you, on the relationship, what type of relationship existed between you and your husband.
And I know the relationship was not good. That's why the wound will heal and it will take a long time. This will look paradoxical, but this is how it is. If you have loved a man and he dies, you will feel sad, but you will recover -- soon. There will be no wound. You loved the man; nothing is incomplete. But between Meera and her husband the relationship was not good; for years they were almost separate. She wanted to love but could not love. She wanted to be with him but could not be. Now the husband is gone, and all her hope to be with him is gone with him. She hankered, she desired, she wanted, and it couldn't happen. Now the man is gone; now there is no possibility. Now her aloneness is sealed, now there is no way to love this man. He was alive, she could not love, there were problems between them; now the man is gone, so there is no possibility. Now this wound is going to heal very slowly -- very, very slowly. And even when it is healed there will remain a certain sadness around it forever.
Anything incomplete is very difficult to drop. Complete things ripen and fall on their own accord. When a fruit is ripe it falls. Of course the tree feels for a few seconds something is missing, and then it forgets. Finished, because ripe fruits have to fall. Everybody has to die. You loved while the man was alive -- and you loved tremendously and totally. You are almost fulfilled; you cannot ask for more. As it was, it was already too much. You are grateful that God gave you that much time. He could have taken the man a little earlier, but he gave you enough time, and you loved and you loved. In love even a single moment becomes eternity. You are so happy time stops. A small life becomes very, very intimate. But that has not happened, so I can understand Meera's misery.
But she has to face it and understand it. It is not only a question of the death of the husband. That is not such a big problem. Husbands die, wives die; that is not a big problem, that is natural. The problem is that love could not happen. It remained a dream, a desire, and now it is going to remain unfulfilled. You cannot find that man again, so that chapter cannot be completed. This incompletion will function as a wound. That's why it has taken a longer time. It will take a little longer still.
Psychological time is your inner time; and we live in the chronological time altogether, the Greenwich time -- it is not personal. Psychological time is personal, and each has his own. If you are happy, your sense of time slows down. If you are unhappy time lengthens. If you are deep in meditation time stops. In fact in the East we have been measuring states of mind through time. If time stops completely, then the state is of bliss. If time slows down very much, then the state of misery."

The only Iyengar I know is Light On Yoga, and that's more of a reference book.

But when I saw this video, when he says, "Did you observe the beauty of that sound ..." well, what a cocky old dude. Couldn't help but like him from that. I laugh every time I see it.

Here's the link to Osho's commentary on the yoga sutras. I think they are excellent.