Vivekananda Mailing List-1/11/03

[Guest guest]

Chastity is the first virtue in man or woman, and the man who, however

he may have strayed away, cannot be brought to the right path by a

gentle and loving and chaste wife is indeed very rare. The world is not

yet as bad as that. We hear much about brutal husbands all over the

world and about the impurity of men, but is it not true that there are

quite as many brutal and impure women as men? If all women were as good

and pure as their own constant assertions would lead one to believe, I

am perfectly satisfied that there would not be one impure man in the

world. What brutality is there which purity and chastity cannot

conquer? A good, chaste wife, who thinks of every other man except her

own husband as her child and has the attitude of a mother towards all

men, will grow so great in the power of her purity that there cannot be

a single man, however brutal, who will not breathe an atmosphere of

holiness in her presence. Similarly, every husband must look upon all

women, except his own wife, in the light of his own mother or daughter

or sister. That man, again, who wants to be a teacher of religion must

look upon every woman as his mother, and always behave towards her as

such.