1
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Venerable Thero, when I tried to bring a Lord Buddha's little statue to my room in Japan, my wife opposed to it crazily, and she suggested to divorce and worship Lord Buddha.

2
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She's a Soka Gakkai member.

3
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Ah, the problems with marriage, no?

4
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That's not really a question now, is it?

5
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I guess the question is what to do.

6
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You know, I'm not really for marriage and for these reasons.

7
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If there's some need to be married, then I would just say put up with it.

8
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But...

9
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Otherwise, divorce, become a monk.

10
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If you really are keen on doing the right, engaging in good things, engaging in what is of real benefit.

11
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So that's the advice that we give.

12
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Now the question is how far you can go towards putting that sort of thing into effect.

13
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It's not the case that you're probably not in a position to ordain.

14
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You just want to do some practice and probably you love your wife and are very much attached to her.

15
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But that's the reality of living in the world.

16
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It's doubly so in terms of being married.

17
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This is the difficulty that we face.

18
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Because you're not married to your wife because the reason you're married to your wife is not because of your religious views, obviously.

19
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So you have to therefore balance which is more important, your religious views or your attraction to your wife.

20
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And if they're both important, then you've got a conflict that you have to resolve.

21
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You have to juggle two conflicting... conflicting aspects of your life.

22
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Now, there are ways to ameliorate it.

23
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I mean, obviously, what you want is a...

24
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A way to keep them both, which is not impossible.

25
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It's so much simpler to just give it up and go your own way, right?

26
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Once you find out that you're not so compatible as you thought.

27
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But it depends.

28
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The real key question here that has to be answered through test is whether your wife has the potential to come to understand the truth.

29
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as we understand it as Buddhists.

30
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So as Buddhists, we understand certain things to be the truth.

31
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Is your wife capable of understanding those things and therefore letting go and actually appreciating the Buddha?

32
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Okay, that's actually just one question.

33
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Let's deal with that one first.

34
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So an important thing to do is to begin to

35
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to help her to understand concepts like letting go and concepts like purity and enlightenment and so on.

36
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To help her to see things in the same way as you see them.

37
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And if she has good qualities of mind, then she will come around.

38
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But the other thing is,

39
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As I thought about this, you're talking about a Buddha image, which is not really intrinsically important to your Buddhist practice.

40
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You can do away with the Buddha statue, or you can put it in a place and just stop worshipping it, not do Buddha puja or offering it food or so on.

41
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There's no reason for you to do those things.

42
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There's no intrinsic duty for you to do those things.

43
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So if it's causing conflict, then just put the Buddha statue away and keep practicing.

44
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Yeah, so it's not really even a sign that she's on the wrong path.

45
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She may even be trying to warn you away from silabataparamasa.

46
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which is clinging to rituals.

47
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So if you give food to the Buddha every day and you think that that's the most important thing and so on, or it's intrinsically important, then you may be missing something that she's trying to teach you.

48
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But from the sounds of it, it's just people clinging to dogmas and opposing other people's beliefs and so on, and that's difficult to deal with.

49
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This is why it's very important to...

50
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Don't just be blind.

51
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They say love is blind.

52
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Love looks not with its eyes but with its mind.

53
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And therefore is winged cupid painted blind.

54
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Nor hath love's mind of any reason taste.

55
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Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.

56
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Something like that.

57
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We rush into things, not based on love, actually, based on attachment.

58
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And that's a problem.

59
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If you're going to get married, you should be very, very sure that you're compatible, that you're both going to be helping each other, supporting each other in your practice.

60
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It may be that she is.

61
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It may be that she's actually helping you to teach you something, to help you to open up.

62
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But from the sounds of it, it's probably not.

63
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And it's probably something that you'll have to help her to let go and to see the beauty of the Buddha and the greatness of the Buddha.

64
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I don't really know what Soka Gakkai is.

65
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I forgot.

66
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I think that's the ones that they do, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and want to manifest things and so on.

67
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So yeah, in that case you'd have to help her give up materialism and thinking about the future and so on.

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Help her to understand what is true Buddhism, what the Buddha truly taught.