When you get to the bottom of what the love between a married couple really is, it comes down to not giving up on one another.
Not giving up on each other requires forgiveness. No matter how much two people are in love, if they are right under each other’s noses every day from morning till night, they will begin to gradually discover flaws in each other. And if they both find fault with everything and argue over their compatibility and the like, they won’t be able to remain together for the rest of their lives.
When they marry a man and woman--who had been strangers to one another up to that point--form a union, so they cannot expect to know everything about each other from the very beginning.
Married life is about how to become one in heart and mind to help and support one another, and how to combine your mutual efforts and grow together as human beings.
Recently, there has been a rising number of men who want to get married but are unsuccessful. Men who feel dejected complain, “For women, marriage is a seller’s market, and we’re in an era when men have no choice but to indulge them.”
However, things like who must accommodate whom do not change with the times. When men and women accept each other’s respective characteristics and ways of thinking, it gives birth to an atmosphere of mutual forgiveness.
Nikkyo Niwano
From Kaisozuikan 9 (Kosei Publishing Co.), pp.78-79
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