Another movie on arranged marriage

Knock Knock, I'm Looking To Marry!
(click this link to watch it for free, movie will start after 30 seconds' ad)

It's the modern movie in arranged marriage. Everyone is educated; there's the technology, but it's just an illusion if we think that we've become 'modern'. I would say, only our conservativeness has become modernized. The movie is in english, but it's just the translation, nothing has changed.

The movie was entertaining if you like watching movies on arranged marriages. Mostly, girls never see the potential in the next man. We're always looking for the ideals. We see all the imperfections of the closed ones and reject it, and then we regret the whole life for getting married with the distant "the perfect one".

I don't understand why even the debate exists or people discuss whether arranged or love marriage is good. In this movie, a gal is looking for love marriage within arranged marriage.

Spoiler's warning: revealing the suspense, lol
why arranged marriage is no good:

She will never find out the boy she choose was drug addict before the marriage.

Father of the gal will less likely to be that much supportive.

Parents won't change their mind even after six months.

Boy won't be waiting for six months like that, and

the girl she saw at the door will be either his wife or gf as she initially thought.

where the victim gets the lashes

Saudi rape case

The sentence resulted from an incident in March 2006, when the woman, then aged 18 and engaged to be married, and an unrelated man, were abducted from a mall in Qatif, Saudi Arabia by a group of seven men. She was later raped.

In October, the men were convicted and sentenced to between two and nine years in prison for the assault. She was convicted of violating the kingdom's strict Islamic law by not having a male guardian with her at the mall.

The woman was originally sentenced in October 2006 to 90 lashes -- but when she appealed that sentence, the court more than doubled it to 200 lashes.

A court source told Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper, that the woman's sentence was increased after the woman spoke to the media about the case.

Under law in Saudi Arabia, women are subject to numerous restrictions, including a strict dress code, a prohibition on driving and a requirement that they get a man's permission to travel or have surgery . Women are also not allowed to testify in court unless it is about a private matter that was not observed by a man, and they are not allowed to vote.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/21/saudi.rape.victim/index.html

This is gonna really encourage the other rape victims to come out.

Teachings on Love

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Followings are the excerpts from the above book. I selected the following so that I can read it again and again to redirect myself into the right path.

The four immeasurable minds

1. Love (Maitri)
The first aspect of true love is maitri, the intention and capacity to offer joy and happiness. To develop that capacity, we have to practice looking and listening deeply so that we know what to do and what not to do to make others happy. If you offer your beloved something she does not need, that is not maitri. You have to see her real situation or what you offer might bring her unhappiness.

Without deep understanding, your love is not true love. You must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the one you love. We all need love. Love brings us joy and well-being. It is as natural as the air. We are loved by the air, we need fresh air to be happy and well. We are loved by trees. We need trees to be healthy. In order to be loved, we have to love, which means we have to understand. For our love to continue, we have to take the appropriate action or non-action to protect the air, the trees, and our beloved.

2. Compassion (Karuna)
The second aspect of true love is karuna, the intention and capacity to relieve and transform suffering and lighten sorrows.

To develop compassion in ourselves, we need to practice mindful breathing, deep listening, and deep looking. The Lotus Sutra describes Avalokiteshvara as the bodhisattva who practices "looking with the eyes of compassion and listening deeply to the cries of the world." Compassion contains deep concern. You know the other person is suffering, so you sit close to her. You look and listen deeply to her to be able to touch her pain. You are in deep communication, deep communion with her, and that alone brings some relief.

When I was a novice, I could not understand why, if the world is filled with suffering, the Buddha has such a beautiful smile. Why isn't he disturbed by all the suffering? Later I discovered that the Buddha has enough understanding, calm, and strength; that is why the suffering does not overwhelm him. He is able to smile to suffering because he knows how to take care of it and to help transform it. We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness, and strength so we can help transform the situation. The ocean of tears cannot drown us if karuna is there. That is why the Buddha's smile is possible.

3. Joy (Mudita)
The third element of true love is mudita, joy. True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love.

4. Equanimity (Upeksha)
The fouth element of true love is upeksha, which means equanimity, nonattachment, nondisrimination, evenmindedness, or letting go.



The Buddha observed, "The person who suffers most in this world is the person who have many wrong perceptions… And most of our perceptions are erroneous." We see a snake in the dark and we panic, but when our friend shines a light on it, we see that it is only a rope. We have to know which wrong perceptions cause us to suffer.

The practice of mindfulness is the practice of love. It is important to learn the art of mindful living before entering any new relationship, especially the journey of mutual discovery that takes place in a marriage. If you do not come to know yourselves well, practicing looking deeply in order to discover all the flowers and all the garbage that are in you-not just those of your own making but those you received from your ancestors and from society-your marriage will be difficult.

When you enter a relationship, you feel excitement, enthusiasm, and the willingness to explore. But you may not really understand yourself or the other person very well yet. Living together 24 hours a day, you see, hear, and experience many things you have not seen or imagined before. When you fell in love, you constructed a beautiful image that you projected onto your partner, and now you are a little shocked as your illusions disappear and you disocver the reality. Unless you know how to practice mindfulness together, looking deeply into yourself and your partner, you may find it difficult to sustain your love through this period.

If we practice the art of mindful living together, we can do this. We see that the other person, like us, has both flowers and garbage inside, and we accept this. Our practice is to water the flower in her, and not bring her more garbage. We avoid blaming and arguing. When we try to grow flowers, if the flowers do not grow well, we do not blame or argue with them. We blame ourselves for not taking care of them well. Our partner is a flower. If we take care of her well, she will grow beautifully. If we take care of her poorly, she will wither. To help a flower grow well, we must understand her nature. How much water does she need? How much sunshine? We look deeply into ourselves to see our true nature, and we look into the other person to see her nature.

To meditate is to look deeply into the nature of things, including our own nature and the nature of the person in front of us. When we see the true nature of that person, we discover his or her difficulties, aspirations, suffering, and anxieties. We can sit down, hold our partner's hand, look deeply at him, and say, "Darling, do I understand you enough? Do I water your seeds of suffering? Do I water your seeds of joy? Please tell me how I can love you better." If we say this from the bottom of our heart, he may begin to cry, and that is a good sign. It means the door of communication may be opening again.

True love includes the sense of responsibility, accepting the other person as he is, with all his strenghts and weaknesses. If we like only the best things in the person, that is not love. We have to accept his weaknesses and bring our patience, understanding, and energy to help him transform.

Before two people marry, they should practice mindfulness together, and after becoming husband and wife, they should continue to practice the Five Awarenesses as a manifestation of their practice of mindfulness:

We are aware that all generations of our ancestors and all future generations are present in us.
We are aware of the expectations that our ancestors, our children, and their children have of us.
We are aware that our joy, peace, freedom, and harmony are the joy, peace, freedom, and harmony of our ancestors, our children, and their children.
We are aware that understanding is the very foundation of love.
We are aware that blaming and arguing never help us and only create a wider gap between us, that only understanding, trust, and love can help us change and grow.

Everyone knows that blaming and arguing never help, but we forget, That is why we practice the fifth awareness. Conscious breathing helps us develop the ability to stop at that crucial moment, to keep ourselves from blaming and arguing.

All of us need to change for the better. When we marry, we make a promise to change ourselves and to help the other person change himself or herself so we can grow together, sharing the fruit and progress of practice. It is our responsibility to take care of each other. We are the gardener, the one who helps the flowers grow. If we understand, the flowers will grow beautifully.

Every time the other person does something well, something in the direction of change and growth, we should congratulate her or him to show our approval. This is important. We don't take things for granted. If the other person manifests some of her talent and capacity to love and create happiness, we must be aware of it and express our appreciation. This is the way to water the seeds of happiness. We should avoid saying destructive things like, "I don't know whether you can do this" or "I doubt that you can do this." Instead, we say, "This is difficult, darling, but I have faith that you can do it." This kind of talk makes the other person stronger. This is true with children, also. We have to strengthen the self-esteem of our children. We have to appreciate and congratulate every good thing they say and do in order to help our children grow. When we are married, we can love each other in a way that encourages change and growth for the better, all the time.

We have to learn the art of creating happiness. The problem is not one of being wrong or right, but one of being more or less skillful. Living together is an art. Even with a lot of good will, you can still make the other person very unhappy. Good will is not enough. We need to know the art of making the other person happy. Art is the essence of life. Try to be artful in your speech and action. The substance of art is mindfulness. When you are mindful, you are more artful. This is something I have learned from the practice.

Arranged Marriage: Stories

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Though the title of book is ‘arranged marriage: stories’, the book puts more empahasis on characters of the husband and wife, and not all the marriages in the stories had arranged marriages, and also not all the couples in the stories were married. In almost all of the stories, one of the spouses was raised or spent most of time in US while the other half was brought from India after marriage. The story is focused on marital relationships and it contains some of the sad realities of the traditional arranged marriages and conservative society. I'd say, the book is very educative, and would leave you feel learned after completing the book. I finished this book about 2-3 months ago, but was procrastinating to write a blog on it.
Spoiler's warning: If you plan to read the book and don't want to know what happens next before reading the book, the following post may not do good.

1. Bats: This is not uncommon in Indian or Nepali society. This story doesn’t involve the US life. It is a sad story of a drunk husband beating his wife, and the conservative society who doesn’t let the women live alone.
2. Clothes: Clothes started happily, but the end was very sad. Husband was very good and was one of the co-owner of the store at the gas station.
3. Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs: In this story, an Indian girl comes to US not on a dependent visa, but for the education, and comes to live with her aunt. She had only heard good things about the aunt and USA, and now she comes to learn about the sad realities. She had heard that they were having a good quality of life with large house and they had their own store. But now, she sees all the realities. They were living in a bad neighborhood and were even chased by kids, who used “N-words” to them when they went for a walk in a neighborhood. It explains that the life is not that easy in US as people think in back home.
4. Word Love: A couple of this story was not married. The woman was from India and a man from America were living together. Her mom was very conservative and didn’t have a clue that her daughter was living together with another woman without getting married. She was looking for her daughter to get married with another Indian man in a traditional way. I give all the blame to her mother in this story; she is a selfish woman and thinks more about herself and the society than her own daughter’s happiness. I know, you may disagree with me.
5. The Perfect Life: In this story, the couple were unmarried and were also not living together. The boyfriend was very understanding and wanted to get married and have children, but she never wanted the children until one day, which then changed her view and life.
6. The Maid Servant’s story: If I remember correctly, this is the longest story and it also doesn’t involved the life in US. I guess, a bollywood movie can be made on this story.
7. The Disappearance: A wife disappears suddenly from the home leaving her son. A husband never realized what he was doing until his wife left him. It’s another sad story though may not be uncommon in marriages.
8. The Doors: It is an excellent example how the simple incident or the simple thing can interfere so much in a marital relationship. This is the example, why the partners should work together and make an attempt to understand each other to make a marriage succeed. I enjoyed reading this story.
9. The Ultrasound: The title of the story explains all. This is another horrible story of a traditional Indian society. I feel sorry for the woman. I wonder when the people will start to change.
10. The Affair: This story talks about two couples that are of an opposite nature. In one couple, husband is modern, but the wife is conservative, and in another, wife is modern but the husband is conservative and not outgoing. Two couples had friendship with each other. One of the wife leaves her husband for “love”, and another leaves for identity.
11. Meeting Mrinal: In this story, the husband left the wife for the secretary. Unlike in some of other stories, the husband was not that bad though he left the wife. They also had a son and moreover she had a friend back in India, whom she had been competing with, and had to hide all the details when she came to visit her town.

Other reviews may be more helpful to you and I also saw the first story online.

There was a story of arranged marriage published on msn.com this morning, ‘I Married a Total Stranger’.

I also read a similar story titled ‘Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse Than Craigslist?', which you may find interesting too. A couple of sentence from this article:
My father saw my mother once before they got married. He loves to shock Americans by recounting how he lost sight of her at a bazaar the day after their wedding and lamented to himself that he would never find her again, as he’d forgotten what she looked like.

All of these stories are based on Indian experiences. Most of the marriages in Nepal are also arranged marriages, but I’ve not found any stories on Nepali experiences.