Varuna: The Love That Knows When to Say No

There is a kind of love that does not require another person to be perfect before we can accept them. It can recognize faults, differences, mistakes, and weaknesses without immediately withdrawing affection. Yet this kind of love does not ask us to tolerate everything. In fact, one of its greatest lessons is learning that acceptance and permission are not the same thing.

In Vedic astrology, this principle is represented by Varuna, one of the twelve Adityas and the influence associated with the Sun’s journey through tropical Gemini. Varuna is an ancient Vedic deity connected with the vast sky, the cosmic waters, truth, and the unseen laws that hold life together. His name carries the sense of surrounding or encompassing, which beautifully describes his particular expression of love: a love spacious enough to include the whole person, not only the parts we find agreeable.

This sounds simple until we try to live it. We often confuse loving someone with approving of their behavior, staying in a relationship, giving another chance, or continuing to make ourselves available. Varuna teaches something different. We can understand why someone behaves as they do and still decide that their behavior is not healthy for us. We can forgive someone without inviting them back into our lives. We can accept another person as they are without making it our responsibility to change them.

One of Varuna’s companions, the Gandharva Huhu, makes this lesson especially practical. Huhu represents the instinctive response of “No, not this.” It is the ability to recognize what does not belong in our lives and withdraw our energy from it. This may seem contradictory to Varuna’s all-encompassing love, but the two principles actually depend upon each other. When we don’t need to hate something to reject it, our choices become much clearer.

This is also where Varuna becomes deeply relevant to relationships. Many of us have learned to override our own responses because we do not want to disappoint someone, cause conflict, appear selfish, or risk losing love. Over time, we can become so accustomed to accommodating other people that we stop noticing what our own inner response is telling us. A healthy “no” protects our ability to love because it prevents love from becoming resentment, obligation, or exhaustion.

Varuna also asks us to extend this acceptance toward ourselves. We spend enormous amounts of energy comparing ourselves with ideas of who we should be: how successful we should be, what we should look like, what we should have accomplished, or how differently we should have handled the past. Another of Varuna’s companions, Sahajanya, points us back toward what is natural. There is tremendous strength in becoming comfortable with who we actually are rather than continually trying to become someone we believe will be more acceptable.

The practical lesson of Varuna is surprisingly straightforward. Notice what you are allowing into your life simply because you believe love requires you to accept it. Then ask yourself whether you can release the judgment without surrendering the boundary.

You do not have to hate something to say no to it.

You do not have to reject a person in order to choose differently.

And you do not have to become someone else in order to be worthy of love.

Varuna reminds us that perhaps the greatest capacity for love develops when acceptance becomes large enough to include both compassion for others and respect for ourselves.