Gruhastha is a Lawful Good god worshiped mostly in Vudra. He is almost unheard of in Avistan. I think this is terrible. Because the teachings of Gruhastha are, I think, ones people desperately need.
I discovered the existence of Gruhastha almost by accident. After a long time of thinking I was alone, and that no one truly understands, even if they are both good and wise.
Why didn’t I know before? Why didn’t anyone else knew? After that, I went on a small quest to find any information on all (non-Evil) deities and demigods that exist. Because what if there is someone else, just as important?
Maybe I will read out the list of them at the end, just so that people know.

My opinions on Gruhastha and his teachings aren’t the standard, orthodox opinions of his church. Partially because there is no organized church of Gruhastha in Avistan, partially because the things I do know about the church in Vudra I disagree with. But I will try, as is the way of those responsible with truth, to separate my personal opinions from truth closer to the universal.

Gruhastha is described to have been a nephew of Irori, a mortal who ascended to godhood by his own effort, and is widely known in the Inner Sea. Gruhastha is said to achieve true, enlightened wisdom, and write about it in his book; which was so perfect that divinity grew in it, and he became the book itself, ascending to godhood.
I have no idea what it means to merge with a book, or how a book can be so perfect divinity is created within it, and so can’t judge whether it is true. Though it is almost certainly not literally true, as most things concerning the true nature of divinity.
I also do not think Gruhastha was Irori’s nephew. It isn’t mentioned in the book, Azvadeva Pujila. Irori himself is mentioned in it, it is implied that Gruhastha met him, and learned some things from him. I don’t have direct evidence that he wasn’t Irori’s nephew. But it seems like the kind of detail other people came up with later, as a simplified explanation to create order in their understanding of the world. Of course if people did similar things in the same time period, there must be a direct connection between them, most probably familial, because that’s the kind of connection that is easiest for the masses to understand. And they couldn’t be brothers, or father and son, because that would contradict what is known. But a nephew is the closest connection that seems plausible.
I deeply doubt that the potential for ascension, or even enlightenment more generally, runs in the family.
It is not actually important whether Irori was Gruhastha’s uncle, it doesn’t change anything. It is just one of the things I want to be absolutely accurate about.

[The speaker explicitly doesn't use divine pronouns at any point in the broadcast. Which may be connected to his (though the gender isn't very obvious either) weird accent.]

Gruhastha is a deity whose areas of concern are very specific and narrow. Maybe that is related to him being a small deity, limited in how much he can act in the world. Or maybe not. Even those who study divine nature aren’t sure about such things.
Gruhastha’s areas of concern are said to be Peace, Understanding, Truth, and “the collective pursuit of Enlightenment”. I think all those terms are correct, though many disagree about the exact meaning and interpretation of those terms.



Truth and Understanding are nearly the same thing in that context, though still have some differences.

Understanding isn’t just knowledge. Or intelligence. Or education.
You can know a lot, and still not have Understanding. You can know how to solve riddles, and still not have Understanding. You can known all the secrets of magic, bending great forces to your will, and still not have Understanding.
My brother, who was very knowledgeable, decided at some point to memorize the names of all known countries in the world, and their capital cities, and their flags and symbols, if any. He succeeded! Depending on your definition of “all known countries in the world”, of course. This makes him knowledgeable, educated. More than me, my memory isn’t good enough for such things. And he was also smart, able to solve problems, understand complicated processes. Learned wizardry (though wasn’t very strong, last I heard from him). But he still didn’t have Understanding.
There are facts you can know about the world. Information. If you know a lot of information, can recall it at the right moment, can make conclusions based on it, this is knowledge. But after knowledge, there is insight, and wisdom. The ability to understand why you have that knowledge, what it means for you to have it, what it says about other knowledge you have, and other people who have it, or don’t. Wisdom changes the way you act because of the knowledge you have. For the better, hopefully. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been wisdom, though that is a semantic argument.
And there is much to be argued about how much knowledge Is required for wisdom, and can a person be wise without knowing anything. Those aren’t relevant to the topic. Both wisdom and knowledge are good, and are things Gruhastha teaches to aspire to, though wisdom is much more important in my opinion.

Truth is the other side of the same coin as Understanding. Truth doesn’t mean just honesty, as many gods, and approaches of honor not connected to gods, teach to be honest and not lie. Truth here is inseparable from Understanding. In the simple sense, information should be true, as false information isn’t useful. But in a deeper sense, the teachings of Gruhastha focus on study of truth itself: the nature of truth, what it means for a thing to be true rather than false, how to define truth, and how to judge whether a thing you know is true or not. [1]
And when talking to others, Truth means not just to “not tell lies”, but to, first, say things that are accurate reflections of what you know, and second, say things that will help the people you are talking to achieve Understanding. Though that is much harder, as the minds of others are hard to comprehend, and the consequences of our actions are hard to predict.
And my exact rules for telling the truth are highly unusual, though I have trouble saying if they are less strict or more strict than is usual for Gruhasthans.

[1] Unfortunately, Taldane doesn’t have the word “epistemology”. Though Vudrani might.

Many people use the word Enlightenment. What does it truly mean?
Well, no one really knows. But there are directions to look at, some of which I consider more accurate than others.
One description, of the thing that Gruhastha himself achieved, is “a universal understanding of the world, each creature’s place within it, and how each person might best contribute to the completion and transcendence of the whole.“
And I agree with that. To be enlightened is to have a very deep understanding of the world. Of yourself, of other people. Have that understanding so deep, it changes everything about you. It makes you a better person. A person who is both happier, and makes the people around you happier (what “happier” means here is a huge separate topic). One saying is “enlightenment is knowledge guided by wisdom and tempered by empathy”.
I also think there is no single threshold that separates enlightened people from “normal” people. You understand more and more, you become closer and closer to enlightenment. To think yourself perfect is a mistake, a sign of imperfection. As is judging others for not being perfect.

And here it is important to see the differences between the philosophy of Gruhastha, and the philosophy of Irori.
Irori is a very simple god, or at least the god of a very simple instinct. To become better, at whatever it is you do, and strive towards perfection. This instinct is universal. Most people have it, though not at a strong enough level to dedicate their lives to it. That is not the entirety of The Way, but it is the beginning, for everyone.
And Irori is Neutral on the moral axis. This principle applies regardless of your intentions or morals, regardless of what you want to be better at it, or what you will use your skill for.
The Way of Gruhastha is similar. It has the same focus on learning to become better, on always walking The Way towards perfection. But is far narrower. Gruhastha will not help you become better at sword fighting, or painting, or cooking, or singing. “Becoming better” means becoming a wiser person who makes better decisions, better understands and controls their emotions, acts better towards their friends (and enemies).
Better at being a Good and Lawful kind of person. Which is also a skill, requiring both training and knowledge, people just rarely see it that way.

Here I must note that I myself, to the best of my knowledge, am Neutral Good, and not Lawful, despite being the cleric of a Lawful Good god.
I consider Goodness to just be much more important and meaningful than Lawfulness. Law is also useful, an important thing to aspire to, but as there are points where it comes to conflict with Goodness, I choose Good each time without hesitation. Despite the fact that my desire to reach to reach Heaven is much stronger than the one for Nirvana.
Maybe in a better world it wouldn’t be so, and being both Good and Lawful was easier.
Or maybe I am just not good enough at that skill, and don’t have enough strength of spirit to succeed at the goals I have. Don’t know.
(Gruhastha himself built his divine realm in the Neutral Good Nirvana, and not Lawful Good Heaven. One explanation I saw is that it is because Gruhastha can do much more for people in Nirvana, as it is much more open, easier to get to, both because being Neutral and not Lawful is easier, and because Nirvana wants to house all souls which want it, and Heaven only chooses the ones that fit the most. Another is that Heaven already knows most of the things Gruhastha wants to teach, so his impact there is lesser.)

And the other difference is that the Way of Irori is always very personal. Individuals walk it, not societies, at best you can have a society in which many individuals walk it, individually.
The Way of Gruhastha is the collective pursuit of Enlightenment. Everyone should become wiser, more insightful, more Good and hopefully more Lawful. Even if only by a small amount. For some purposes, the total amount, like the height of the sea, is much more important than the existence of enlightened individuals. A society that is a little more honest, where people understand each other a little better, is a vast improvement. And that would allow it to continue becoming even better.
Irori views obstacles as individual challenges, but Gruhastha considers them something that must be addressed for the greater good of society as a whole, and by the whole society, through rules and agreements. Because most of problems with society, and many problems of physical nature, cannot be solved by a single person, however exceptional they are.

I can imagine a collection of Irorans, each following their Way, in a manner that isn’t any better for the world. Maybe because they just don’t care. Maybe because, despite having a great courage and strength of spirit, and knowledge of ancient mysteries, and mastery over their bodies, some of them would still be vengeful, and petty. And hear the end of a conversation implying their beloved has cheated on them, and dedicate themselves to a quest of revenge. Or, if they are less aggressive, to seclude themselves on the highest mountain for 10 years, to meditate on their grief, or something. Where it could have been just a misunderstanding.
Some people would reply “this wouldn’t happen, people who truly are far on The Way are above such mistakes or concerns”…but that is not certain. That is the problem with The Way being individual. Different people will have different goals and consider different things important, and so the result would not necessarily be good. Though of course, I do think it is better for people to follow Irori’s way than not any such Way at all. Both because it is good for people to be free and make choices, and because it is better for society, on average, to have stronger more skilled people.

I am not saying that everyone should be forced to do the same thing. That is of course also a mistake. A mistake I committed before in my life. And one I think Lawful societies are often prone to. People are different. They want different things, they need different things, and they have different capabilities. And yet, I think it is good to have one main goal everyone should aspire to (as long as the goal itself is good, of course), even if people would work towards it differently, and some would achieve  it less well, or achieve only some parts of it and not others.
As far as I know, in Vudra, the faiths of Irori and Gruhastha are in a state of what is called “Symbiosis”. They work together at the things they are good at.
In Avistan, where Gruhastha is unknown, I think many Good Irorans should just…switch to Gruhastha. Or add him to their worship, at least. Especially Iroran paladins, who I know exist. Some of them even have an explicit goal of “brining enlightenment to others”. And in the technical sense, there are Neutral Good people who can’t be chosen by Irori, but can be by Gruhastha, even if the fraction of clerics is very small among worshippers, and you can worship Gruhastha even if you are Chaotic Evil. Chaotic Evil people arguably need him the most!
Now, that ia of course not true of all Good Irorans. Gruhastha is, as I said, very narrow. People who want to spread Iroran teachings not connected to wisdom and enlightenment should keep doing so. Like the one paladin of Irori I met who taught villagers to better fight monsters. If you are listening, Calor, you are great, keep your work!
And I am not sure if some hypothetical world where Gruhastha was known in Avistan, but not Irori, would be better than the one we live in. Not possible in the first place, I assume. But more options, and more information, are always better. So consider it.
(I expect many would be surprised that my manner of explaining which things I consider good often comes in comparison to things I consider worse. I do not have a good way to do it differently; do not consider it a mistake; and will continue doing so.
The thing Gruhastha’s and Irori’s teachings fully agree on is the strive towards perfection, and to striving towards perfection means to be well aware of which things aren’t perfect, and in what way they are flawed. You shouldn’t hate them, or loathe, or blame, for their imperfection. Just recognize “this is not good enough, we should be able to do better”. You wouldn’t reach perfection, but at least by striving towards it you will find something better, instead of just striving toward repeating the flawed things that already exist.)

I do not think Irori and Gruhastha themselves disagree on this. They probably just focus on different equally important goals. But their teachings are still different. To quote Azvadeva Pujila – “all great teachers agree with each other, but all of their students disagree with each other”.
And if you have an equal choice between the two teachings, I think Gruhastha’s is just better, in most cases. Though most people do not have an equal choice. And of course, this is my opinion, and to be wise is to understand I can be wrong. Assuming people can even be right about what is and isn't better, which is a complicated question.

Irori and overcoming challenges brings me to another god I want to compare Gruhastha to – Nethys.
I interacted a lot with Nethysians, especially when I was younger. Nethys is a god of knowledge, his followers write books and maintain libraries. That is so great!
But as I learned more, I realized that Nethys’ approach to knowledge is wrong, in a way I couldn’t easily explain before I discovered Gruhastha.
Nethys is a god of knowledge, curiosity, and discovery. But he is not a god of doing good things with them.
It is explicitly known that in a sense, Nethys is a god who is both Good and Evil simultaneously. Nethys is the god of the power that knowledge gives you, and that power can be used equally to help or to harm.
(As far as I understand, Nethys isn’t uniquely a god of magic. He is a god of "knowledge learning which gives you power over the world". Magic is just the most common and most direct example of such knowledge.)
Now, curiosity and discovery are good things to have. But they are not enough in of themselves. Being curious doesn’t guarantee that you will find the truth, doesn’t guarantee that you will care about the truth rather than finding an easier false solution that satisfies you, doesn’t guarantee that the thing you were curious about is an important thing to understand in the first place. Curiosity is a selfish impulse. Not that I disapprove in principle. People should be curious, they shouldn’t be limited from it. But a god of curiosity is still not a good enough god.
Nethys is a god of discovery, and, as far I understand, wants and encourages people to discover things. But he doesn’t, as far as I understand, care about what they do with the discovery. It is pleasing to Nethys for some wizard living in seclusion to discover some great spell that could make life better for everyone, even if the wizard doesn’t tell about it to anybody, and then dies after 6 months in an experiment gone wrong.
Gruhastha is not a god of knowledge itself, like Nethys. But he is a god of learning. And a god of sharing, spreading around, and preserving the knowledge that already exists. Which is a manifestation of his focus on collective enlightenment, and some people call it “education”, though it is a term I don’t like in that context.

Worshipers of Nethys often talk about knowledge and discovery being deserved or undeserved. That magic is in some sense a reward from Nethys for those who prove their superiority by their dedication and intelligence. They often refuse ideas intended to make learning whatever it is they learn easier, consider challenges to make the knowledge acquired to make the result itself better. I heard, though cannot confirm, that there is a spell, granted by Nethys to his priests, that allow the priests to temporarily give some of their magical power to other people, but they consider it a blasphemy to use on those who do not already have some magical abilities and thus “deserve” the magic. (It exactly fits my thoughts on why the approach is wrong, but my source on that specific fact is very unreliable, and I consider believing a thing only because it proves my grudges right to be a failing.)
The faith of Irori has a similar phenomenon, as I mentioned before. Overcoming challenges is often seen as an inherently desirable action, regardless of the challenge’s reasons for existence, or consequences. And before being taught something, people often need to prove they are smart or brave, to show they deserve the lesson.
As a Gruhasthan, I dislike this. “Deserving” is not a useful concept. It is just better for things to be better rather than worse, it is better for everyone to be wiser, and know more. Learning wisdom is hard enough already, so why make it even harder? And knowledge and wisdom often, if not always, make you smarter and braver.
It is possible in some cases that a person wants to learn something, but teaching them this thing wouldn’t improve the world, or maybe even harm it. Because they would misunderstand in unproductive ways. Or they are Evil and would use it for Evil. Or this knowledge will somehow harm them and they would regret trying to learn.
But such cases are extremely rare. The right lesson from those cases is “be cautious, think about the consequences of your actions”, and not “some people do not deserve to learn or have their life improve”. Teaching everyone and improving all lives is Gruhastha’s mission.

Many worshipers of Nethys have a ritual of obedience. The ritual is to write on a parchment parts of an arcane formula, and descriptions of what it is supposed to do, but not a full formula. In such a way that It could, if a suitable person reads it, inspire them to research it and complete the formula.
The ritual obedience of Gruhastha is to spend an hour doing one of the following things: teach someone to be better at further learning and acquiring knowledge (often it takes the form of teaching people to read, but teaching them about the nature of truth also works); Learn yourself, from a teacher, something you don’t know, preferably something that makes you better at finding even more knowledge and understanding in the future;
Or – my favorite choice because I am not good at actually interacting with people – write something educational. Something that will make people better. Have some information or insight other people don’t have, and you do, and say “here, now I will teach you this”. And then donate what you wrote to a place where people will learn from it, like a school or library.
It has the same basic idea, create something that makes the world has more knowledge. But Gruhastha’s tradition is more, well, Lawful and Good. It is more direct, more predictable, and more concerned with helping people.
It is about the spread of information. Answers being easy to find when you seek them. Which is not itself enlightenment, but it’s much easier for people to achieve even a little of it, when information is lighter and is spread more easily.
Like, for example, with the radio! That I am talking through right now. An invention that makes it easier to spread information across the world, to make the words of one teacher heard by hundreds! I am sure Gruhastha is delighted. Even if it is not at all certain that he himself inspired it’s creation. I am quite sure though that the invention, or at least the spread of radio, happened with the blessing of Seramaydiel, the Neutral Good lesser deity of sound and communication. Sending your words to a distance is the one thing she would favor the most! Though it does pose the question, why don’t the radio stations send music to people? Seems like the first thing she would cause. And even without divine intentions, music sent from afar is more…obvious than information on the weather, as a thing as use for radio people come up with. You could send it in letters, and you can’t ever send music in them. Weird.
 
[The radio does play music. Emmet Sophian is just not the kind of person who would notice, despite valuing information and understanding.]
 
I am not sure this broadcast I am doing would count as Obedience for Gruhastha. It is good, sharing wisdom and understanding, just like a normal lesson.
But the information is not preserved, cannot be gained by those who come later. Those who listen to the lesson can forget. And maybe nobody is listening to my broadcast right now! I wouldn’t know, you don’t have any way to respond to me.
If you do listen, I ask you, and hope deeply you will listen, to write down what I am saying, if it it will not take too much effort for you. And then put it in a place where many people can see it. This is the way to preserve the lesson, even if it is not the best lesson it can be. And is an example of how improving the world through sharing understanding is a collective pursuit, so the hope-
Ahhh! I am such an idiot! I should have asked people to write down my words, the “sermon”, at the beginning, I wasted so much of it that people didn’t write down, making that request almost useless.
Well, that’s life. As I said previously, I am not good at choosing what words should I say, and at what order, to express the truth inside my mind, even if the truth is valuable. I can only say anything I think of, and hope the result will be better than not doing it.

Where was i? Yes, sharing and preserving information.
There is a thought here, that resulted from trying to conceptualize what Gruhastha’s domains mean to me.
And I came up with a metaphor, or a fable, rather.
Came up with it several years ago, now the radio is a thing I can point to easily, which demonstrates better some parts of the metaphor. But I still believe the metaphor is useful.

There are many things I am not horrified by at all, unlike most people. Like rape. Or the idea that my (or anyone else's) soul will be destroyed.
And there are things like Hell that horrify me as they do most people.
And there are many very small, insignificant things that horrify me more than anyone else, though I learned with time to overcome it (because how I feel about a concept or event is not at all related to how trully good or bad that event or concept is).
For example, I am horrified that people are able to be hurt not only physically, but by words and the opinions of others.
Another thing that horrifies me, the one relevant to the sermon, is…
Imagine you want to know something important. And you have no idea how to find it. you don’t know if anyone has the answer. But there is an answer. Someone knows it. or, even better for the metaphor, it’s written in a book.
The book is not hidden, or secret. There are no traps or monster protecting it. It is just laying there, somewhere. And even if you know it exists, you will never find it. Because you have no idea where to look. Maybe it is on the other side of the world. Maybe it’s in the same city where you live! (Let’s suppose that you do live in a city, if you don’t). Some guy has it. And it’s not the book is useless, he needs it to, it helps him. But you also need it. You can find the answer and return it to him, no problem, everyone wins here. If you could only find the book. You can’t. Because you don’t know that you need to find the guy. And he doesn’t know that you are looking for him. Even if actually meeting him would be very easy. If only you knew you had to meet at all.
Now, suppose a miracle happened. You discovered, by sheer accident, how to find the guy. You met him. He gave you the book to read. You found your answer. You are not disappointed. This was exactly the answer you wanted, it will make your entire life better from now on. You close the book…and realize. Oh no. There are other people, who, just like you, need the answer. Without it, their lives wouldn’t be complete. And they have no idea that they need to find you. And you don’t have idea who they are. And so they will never find the answer. Not because the information is hidden. Not because some evil is spreading ignorance and lies. Not because there is a mountain or sea in the way. There is just no way to know, and no way to know what you need to know.
And a similar thing happens if it’s not pure knowledge but, say, a cure for your disease. Or two people who would love each other, complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, if they ever met, but they never will because they do not have a reason to.
Now, compared to war, famine, plagues, unjust rule, this is nothing. Let alone fiends tormenting souls. This is not a real problem. And yet, thinking about this scenario…it is just opposed to my very being. Not the only thing in the world that is opposed to my being, but one of the few.
I do not know if that is something Gruhastha himself feels. And it is certainly not something you have to feel to understand Gruhastha. But I think it is one of the things that makes me close to Gruhastha in spirit, and made him choose me.


Some say Gruhastha is the god of books. He isn’t a god of books. But books are his main tool, and are sacred to him. Because books preserve information, to be shared later.
They are not unique in this. Monuments, and paintings, preserve information, though less well. Minds could be said to be “tools that preserve information”.
And minds are better than books, in that a mind can contain wisdom, and not just knowledge that wisdom can be learned from. A mind can be asked a question, and think about how to respond to it, and a book can’t.
But books are always available and inexhaustibly patient. Books can’t be tired, or drunk, or forget things. Though books could be burnt, or wet, or otherwise made impossible to read. And books can’t choose to lie. But the things written in them can be lies. Though even then the lie is consistent, and a book wouldn’t tell different lies to different people.
I heard legends of magical gemstones in which you can record a thought you had. And then other people who have the gemstone can feel your thoughts in their mind. I have no idea if those legends are true. And if they aren’t, whether it’s possible for someone, somewhere, to use great magic and create such an object. But if it is possible, than those gemstones would be a sacred tool in Gruhastha’s work as much as books are. Maybe even more! Because they would transmit insight, if not wisdom, more directly between person to person, better than words can.
And, well, radio is a good thing, a step in the right direction. It is easy to imagine that someone could create a device that, instead of allowing you to speak at great distance, and anyone to hear your words, to write at great distance, and anyone to read your words. That would be amazing. That would be a tool of Gruhastha better than all the world’s books ever written. That would be…the best thing I can imagine.
That is a failure of imagination, though. Things could always be better, in hundreds of ways.

Now, I must note that Gruhastha himself is not a god of invention. Which is somewhat disappointing. Invention, as I just said, and we all see know, is an extremely important thing. If I decided how the world worked, I would decide that Gruhastha is a god of invention too, in addition to everything else.
But he isn’t. in some sense, it is for the same reason he is not a god of knowledge or magic. He focuses on other things.
Gruhastha is not a god of the knowledge that gives you power to change the world. He is only the god of learning the wisdom to understand in which ways the world needs to be changed, and how the power should be applied.
And wisdom is learned. It is sometimes discovered in a sense of finding the book in your town that has the answers you need. But I think it is almost never invented. There isn’t new wisdom that didn’t exist before. The realizations you have about the world are ones thousands of others already had before you. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have realizations! You should, because you do not have the wisdom of those who lived thousands of years ago.
Theoretically, if all wisdom that ever existed was preserved…well, there is a sense in which it is probably preserved in Abadar’s First Vault, if the legends are true. But only actual works, what people wrote. A lot of wisdom is only said out loud instead of written down, in even more of it existed only as a thought that was never spoken. And even if all of it was written down, having all those books (and the time and ability to read them) doesn’t mean you have all the wisdom of those who wrote them. Just as hearing a person speak is not enough to have the same thoughts they had that lead to saying the words.
But, let’s leave all that. Suppose that it is possible. To collect all the shards of truth that anyone ever had in history.
No one person, mortal or otherwise, had perfect wisdom. Not even Gruhastha (though it is very possible saying that counts as heresy. But I don’t care, and see that as one of the reasons to be Neutral Good instead of Lawful). Now, I think that taking the 100 wisest, most enlightened people and combining all their wisdom together is enough. But it may not be. So everyone who ever lived, all the insights and knowledge they had, combined together. Only mortals, even, that would be enough. I still think the resulting wisdom would be perfect and complete. A person with that wisdom will still need to think of new ways to apply that wisdom in new circumstances. May need to learn specific knowledge about elements of reality, knowledge in the Nethysian sense. But they would not – I believe, and may be wrong – need to invent or discover any new wisdom, because their wisdom is already perfect. And Gruhastha guides us towards wisdom, and that is the reason he is not a god of invention.
Which means that it is still very good that Nethys exists. Though I would have preferred that the relative importance and power of the two were switched, it would be better for the world. Or, you know, if Aroden survived, as Aroden was a god of invention, one that benefits society more than the Nethysian kind. Not even counting all the other obvious implications and consequences of Aroden not dying.
But, well, “so many things would be better if Aroden didn’t die” is…not a new or clever insight, as everyone knows.

And the last interest of Gruhastha, peace. What “peace” means here?
Not just “not being at war”.
It’s tranquility and serenity as a desirable state of the world we need to strive for, or at least create a limited amount of in our lives.

It is the inner peace a person should have. Not be in turmoil, understand your emotions enough to avoid them harming you.
Now, I, personally, believe that the right and natural thing to strive for is to feel as few negative emotions as possible. And I view the ability to experience suffering as a failing (one I am guilty of myself! Though certainly less than I did before).
But I do not know if that approach is right, or even possible, for everyone else. And they still can and should find enlightenment anyway. So that is probably not a necessary part of enlightenment, just an option.
And a state of inner peace probably means less extreme things, even in the same direction.
(I also conceptualize overcoming both reasoning errors and uncontrolled negative emotions as “overcoming the weaknesses of mortal nature”. Which some tell me sounds suspiciously similar to some Asmodean theology. “It sounds similar to something Evil” is not a reasonable argument that a thing is bad or wrong. But the term might also be technically inaccurate, in that creatures that aren’t mortal have many of the same weaknesses and failings. Demons, for example. Demons often have even more of them than mortals.)

And Peace is also about your relation to other people.
To be peaceful means not to intend to harm others, not hate them or seek hollow revenge. But it is also much deeper than that.
In this context, a comparison that feels natural to me is the teaching of the church of Sarenrae.
Sarenrae is a goddess of healing and redemption. The things her teachings are focused on are caring for people and forgiving them. Because everyone can be good, if given the chance. And because…I’ll frame it in my more Gruhasthan way because I can’t do it otherwise: you only have your perspective on life, and so you perceive and feel things differently, but if you could see life through the eyes of the other person, feel what they felt, then even if they harmed you, you would still care about them and maybe forgive them.
This is not exactly how the teachings of Gruhastha approach things. Or at least, I specifically am not a person who can personally care about people and forgive them, or feel their pain, and so I focus on the parts of Gruhasthan teachings that don’t require this.
This part, that is similar to Sarenrae’s but is different, and in my opinion better, is thus: people are imperfect. They don’t always do the right thing. That includes you. Most people who you would encounter in your life, who caused harm, didn’t do it for incomprehensible or monstrous reasons. They did everything for reasons that seemed right to them, just like you do. Maybe they were selfish. But you are probably selfish too, sometimes. They may have been careless and didn’t think about the consequences of their actions. But do you think in great detail about every step you make? Or they were limited by circumstances, and thought they had no other choice. Are you sure you wouldn’t think the same, in their place? Or they believed, and still believe, they were doing the obviously right thing. How often do you doubt the things you believe to be obviously true? Maybe they fought for their country, not thinking “but what if my country is the bad, and I shouldn’t fight for it?”, because almost no one does.
Their bad actions were probably still bad. They could have done better if they were wiser, kinder, and more thoughtful. As everyone should try to become.
They made mistakes. But those mistakes were not unique. They viewed those mistakes the same way you view yours. Even if there was a difference of scale, the nature of their mistakes was almost certainly the same as the nature of the mistakes you commit, in your life. Or, if it wasn’t, you certainly both committed mistakes from the same list, let’s say.
Because all mistakes committed by everyone, even on other continents and maybe on other planes, come from the same list. And so if you want to be better, you should study that list of mistakes and how to avoid them. Regardless of who you are and what you want. Because, while the path is different for everyone, the general shape of the path, I believe, is exactly the same, or leads to the same destination, if you go far enough. Whether you are Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil, the truth you need to discover would be the same, the things that will make you more enlightened will be enlightening in the same general way.
When you look at, for example, a murderer, If you are enlightened, you do need compassion or love to, when looking, to not think “oh gods, a murderer, how could he do that?!” or “despicable, I hate him!”, but Understand. Understand the reasons for his actions, understand what mistakes lead him to those actions, and how to avoid those mistakes, for you and for everyone else. To recognize and comprehend the mistakes of others and the harm they have done, exactly by the same standards you evaluate your own actions. As long as you are imperfect, do not expect perfection from others(that is just pointless), and do not judge them for being imperfect themselves (while still clearly knowing that being more perfect is better, and it is what they should strive towards), as that would be hypocritical, don’t you think? And not judging others for imperfection even when you are perfect is one of traits required to become perfect in the first place. According to the Gruhasthan rather than Iroran conception of perfection, at least.

Now, is “peace” of that kind inherently connected to truth? Is being peaceful more “true” than being passionate, scared, or angry? Is not being peaceful a mistake?
Yes and no.
Many things are mistakes. In the sense that they are actions caused by not knowing all relevant facts, not being familiar with relevant phenomena, having direct and obvious errors of reasoning, not having enough self-control to do the action you want to do. At least obvious to people like me who studied reasoning and its possible errors.
I think a person who did not do those things would be more peaceful, and take less actions that are Evil or unwise. Not all of them, but some.
Because…selfishness isn’t a mistake. Just a choice. Anger and fear are not mistakes. But hatred and hostility are. Envy, paranoia. They are mistakes. Something that a wise person doesn’t do, because it harms them and doesn’t help anything. Not all wise people are Good, not all unwise people are Evil, but people who are more wise are less Evil.

This framing itself is not absolute truth, though. It focuses on my previous point about negative emotions being bad, even if only some. It is also, In a sense, part of the problem.
I made mistakes in my life, I saw through them, became wiser, found Gruhstha, and started helping others overcome those problems.
But then I realized it was still a mistake. I wasn’t wise enough to realize that those kinds of problems are just a small part of all problems. And thinking that what you know, and are good at, is the most important, not thinking about anything else, is also one of the problems. Thinking you achieved true Understanding is one of the things preventing true Understanding. There are many ways to be wise, not one true way. There are many shards of truth you can see without seeing the others.
And there are countess mistakes. Countless barriers In the way of true understanding of even one person, let alone the whole world.

And now, after finishing explaining Gruhastha’s domains, while constantly being sidetracked to explain other issues and my thoughts on them, I will just explain other issues and my thoughts on them, and how all of it relates to Gruhastha. And try to keep them connected to each other, and in the right order, though I can’t guarantee that. If Freedom was here she would ask me insightful guiding questions, from a position that does not already understand me, and therefore knows which things I need to explain further. But alas, this is not the case.

I had a conversation with a cleric of…either Iomedae or Sarenrae, not sure. I argued about philosophy with a lot of people. Anyway, one phrase was something like “the forces of Good are genuinely Good, and not corrupt. They are good at achieving their plans. But there is so much suffering in the world, they are tired and confused, and can’t solve everything”.
And that is…mostly just correct, but only mostly. Because I disagree with the phrasing, specifically the word ”confused”, as I understood its intention.

You can be confused and not know what to do in the sense that you lack information. That you are not sure how the specific thing you want to affect works. And you might, as I said previously, not know where to find that information.
But a much more common situation is that people are so confused that they do not know not just what to do lacking information, and not just how to find out, but would not understand the information even if they find it, would not make the right conclusions from the information about what is the right thing to do, would not know what it even means for something to be the right or wrong thing to do.
And people who are that confused…are not a force for good. They may be Good, and possibly great people even if not Good. And they might be brave, and honest, and competent, and nice, and smart, and strong. But they are not a force for good, in that you cannot look at them and say “I am sure that the thing they are doing will make the world better”. It might, but it might not.
You might be a useful tool for the forces of good, without being part of them yourself. but you are just as likely, if not more, to end up a tool of the forces of evil.
Because if you do not deeply understand why harm exists, and what causes harm, nothing stops you from causing it, no matter how good your intentions are. You can end up doing something good, or something bad. It is not truly random, but it is much closer to being random than what most people think.

There is a fable in Azvadeva Pujila about the soldier who burned.
Which, like all the fables, can have different meanings, but the one that seems to me most plausible is that it is about this topic, basically. That just wanting good things is not enough. Even if you are brave enough to walk into fire, and it is good to be the kind of person who could do it, there is no point in doing if it does not make the world better. The soldier burned for nothing. Because he was Good, but confused.
(There is the complication that in the most known attempt at Taldane translation, there are lines implying that the soldier’s goal was violent conquest, making him look not Good in the slightest. While in the original, the same line said “he wanted to make everyone happy”. What the Abyss was the translator thinking?!)
The other possible interpretation of the story, less relevant, but very close to my heart, was that it is a story about good people who really could be a force for good, if they had the lucky opportunity, but never had it, and this capability was left unrecognized. To which I say, “when Gruhastha was writing the Azvadeva Pujila, there was no church of Iomedae yet. Now there is, thank the gods! Including them both”. Even if Iomedae and the church do not fully solve that problem.

I do plan, at a point in my life where I think I have done everything I can, go to their church and say “give me the most useful way to die you know of”. Though unfortunately, I expect the most useful thing I could do even then is to keep doing things while alive. Pity. 

Speaking about Iomedae.

There are many individual priests of Iomedae in the world. But Lastwall is a country whose culture is fully Iomedan, from start to finish. And was built by Iomedae herself.
I am not sure I ever talked to anyone from Lastwall. But I talked a lot with people about Lastwall, including some who were to Lastwall itself.
My conclusion, which, of course can be wrong, is thus.
The culture of Lastwall is very good. The people in it are often Lawful and Good, and deeply virtuous. But they also often lack insight into the differences between people, and the breadth of mind and understanding of mortal nature to know which of the actions they take will result in harm, so the actions often result in harm no matter how virtuous they are.
They would probably respond with something like “that might be true, but if it is, then only because we dedicate our time and effort not to studying the differences between people, but to fighting all the horrors of the world, that would cause much more direct harm”. And I can’t argue with that.

Though I do suspect that some part of the problem I decided was present in Lastwall is specifically caused by Lawful culture. Now, I do think that being Lawful, as a person, is good. But a society that is full of Lawful people and is shaped in such a way to produce Lawful people will have some very important and predictable failures (and I think some things I noticed about Osirians follow the same pattern). Still better than a Chaotic society, of course. Though it is a complicated philosophical question whether “a Chaotic society” can meaningfully exist at all. (A society I consider the best is of primarily Neutral Good people, that must still include people of all other non-Evil alignments.)

There are many possible meanings and connotations to Law. Some I find pointless but harmless, some I find beautiful and essential, some I find harmful and even repulsive.

This is related to another disagreement I have with the usual worship of Gruhastha – respecting traditions. I agree that different things are good for different people, and everyone has their own path towards enlightenment, and it is not only permissible, but essential, for different communities to have different laws and norms. This is incredibly important.
At the same time, I deeply dislike that the simplified explanation of this very important concept is “respecting others' traditions”. It is true that you should never treat the traditions of others, which are new and unfamiliar to you, differently than your own. Which is the main lesson implied by “never disrespect the traditions of others”. But you can, in a sense, equally disrespect your own traditions and those of others.

Culture is important. And it is usually built of traditions. But the traditions themselves are not important. “We should do this, just because it’s what we did before” is a wrong principle, a failure of logic. You should not oppose traditions just on principle. You usually should not strongly oppose them even if you have a reason to, because it is bad to break things without knowing the purpose for their existence. But you should not respect traditions just because they are traditions. You should never treat them as sacred. Treating traditions as sacred is one of the things I dislike most about Lawful societies.
(Laws that are not traditions are at least written, they are explicit, you can ask about their purpose, and there are sometimes procedures for changing them. The whole debate about what laws count as just I will not repeat, wiser people than me already did.)
You should not oppose traditions, as I said. Unless they are just obviously Evil, but then you don’t need me to clarify it, this is obvious. What you should do is to view traditions objectively, realize why they exist, what is good about them, and what is bad. Give honest answers to those who ask you. And never support or strengthen traditions, when they disappear or change, unless you are certain they are essential. Because the change is good, more often than not. Of course, if the new thing that came after the tradition was discarded is also bad, you should oppose the new bad thing, just as you did the bad old things.

One of the small deities I found in my search was Svarozic, a Lawful Good Empyreal Lord. Svarozic’s area of concern is positive changes to the world, specifically “refinement”. To look at the world, and ask yourself “what existing things can I change to make it better?”. One of the main ones being the redesign of obsolete traditions. Though of course, only if you are sure that a tradition is obsolete and only causes harm, and your new vision would be better.
So it is possible to be Lawful Good and still view traditions in a skeptical light instead of something sacred. And people should do it.

Parenthood is also one of Svarozic’s areas of concern. As being a good parent is a positive change of the world, taking the form of refinement; it lies in helping your children become better than they were before; and requires balance between teaching your child all the things you consider important, molding them towards the picture of what you consider perfection, and letting them become something different, something new, something that is good despite you not being used to it or expecting it. At least, that is how I interpret it. I did not find much information on Svarozic. 

Of course, when I talk here about the problem of Lawfulness – well, Good ideology is also prone to a similar mistake. Being convinced that a thing is just “the right thing to do” without having any understanding why it is right. Though at least in such cases, you can appeal to the personal feelings of the person, or to arguments about what is good, to change their mind, because the source of their conviction is external rather than internal.

And Evil and Chaos, and Neutral, often do not care about what is right thing at all. Well, I actually saw a surprising amount of philosophical arguments trying to prove while the best way to live is to be Lawful Evil. The argumentation was of course completely nonsensical. But, unfortunately, was not that much more nonsensical than some argumentations about why you should be Good.

(That is not a complete theory of what alignment is, and I am not the person to explain it. Go read books. Or ask Pharasmins, that’s their job.)

There is the question of how I relate to Gruhastha.
I certainly do not worship Gruhastha. 
I do not know if maybe I worship truth, or understanding. But I am certainly closer to worshiping those concepts than I am to worshiping Gruhastha himself. Gruhastha is just someone who found truth and understanding before I did, and just like me works to spread them, he is just much better at it.
 
I do not find much point in worship, or fully understand what it is. And even normal interpersonal respect. I just remember important facts. Gruhastha did great things, essential for the world. This is an important fact, that I remember. Some people also did good things, and I remember those facts.
I do sometimes have a feeling of looking at a person and thinking “oh, this person is truly good. Their words are accurate. I want to hear everything they say, and learn it, and spread to others. Because They Are Right”. Not that it means they are never wrong, and I should not be critical of them. But they are at least usually right, and learning from them will be learning by positive example, instead of by negative examples, which is usual for me.
I do not know if it is respect, or love, or admiration, or anything like that. I just see it as recognizing important facts, and being happy to have found a way to improve the world. Maybe “unique strong approval” is the right term here.
In the two or three times in my life that I had such impressions of mortals, I later came to be disappointed. Not that they were not good, but they were still wrong far more often than I first thought.
With gods, I was slightly disappointed in that manner about Irori and Nethys. I am not disappointed by Gruhastha, or the narrow sense in which I approve of Iomedae, and several other lesser goods I pray to.
I do not expect to become disappointed with them. But cannot say for sure, of course, that it is not possible to happen.
 
I do trust Gruhastha. And I serve him. Because I do not see a problem with service to someone you trust. I do the work I believe Gruhastha expects of me. Because it is mostly the same work I expect of myself. But I will never let Gruhastha, or anyone else, take from me the responsibility of deciding what is right. That is the one thing In my life that is most important. Not even a god of truth and wisdom could convince me to abandon that responsibility. And I will leave his service if he requires of me something I have a reasonable confidence is not right. Though I do not expect it to happen.

Now, I do not truly know how Gruhastha wants me to relate to him, or how he relates to me or any other worshipers.
Though he probably believes everyone to be equal, and walk fundamentally the same path that he does.

This relates to a general problem with all my words here.
Anything I say is still not very…definitive, let’s say. Those are my opinions, and it is a little hard to distinguish between my personal opinions and what Gruhastha really believes or wants, because it is very hard to know what Gruhastha believes or wants. By the standards of once-mortal gods, at least.
I read the Azvadeva Pujila. It is relatively easy to get, as far as Vudrani books go. Easy to import from Jalmeray, compared to actually going there to talk with clerics of Gruhastha, or them visiting you. Partially because Azvadeva Pujila is not just the holy book of Gruhastha, describing his teaching. It is the Vudrani holy book, describing everything important about the gods. It probably was not always the case, but became true pretty soon after the book was written and Gruhastha ascended.
Now, making your life’s work describing the history of a huge nation, and all the gods acting on it, is a good thing. Great for the mission of spreading true and accurate information about important topics among people. (It is, ironically, one of the main sources on Irori’s life and history.) But not very informative about Gruhastha’s beliefs. And isn’t very useful for people who do not interact with Vudra, for whom most of the history and the gods are not relevant.

There is the other part, the fables. The fables are also very good. But also not very good in the way I would want them to be good, for my purposes. 
The fables are interesting to read. They introduce a great amount of ideas, philosophical situations, and terms to describe them, that I find useful for a true understanding of the world. And all the fables do contain lessons. It’s just very ambiguous, and open to interpretation, what those lessons actually are.
There are a lot of things in the fables that philosophers can sit in a room and debate for decades, not arriving to any clear answer, and even if they did arrive it wouldn’t change anything. It is not true wisdom. Or, at least, it is not Good wisdom, one that improves the world.
If that is what you are doing, you might as well join one of those True Neutral cults that worship what they consider the creator and/or essence of the universe, distinct from Pharasma, and the act of worship is either in doing some nonsensical things the purpose or meaning of which cannot be explained, or doing literally nothing, to not upset the fragile universal balance.
(Yes, I did have some contact with such cults, in my research on all philosophies to see which one is right. This is what I saw of them, though I cannot be sure that I did not misunderstand something important.)

Truth is complicated. Sometimes, the only correct answer is “I don’t know”. Sometimes the only correct answer is “sorry, I can’t tell you”. Sometimes the only correct answer is “it is one of those 5 things, and we have no way to distinguish which one”.
But when you can make truth clear and unambiguous, you should. That is essential to teaching. As I said with the comparison to Irori and Nethys, finding wisdom is already hard enough, and you should never make it harder. When someone asks you “tell me what is true, what is right to do”, answering ”I don’t know, you should discover it yourself” is very rarely the best answer.
To quote, “Just as the ignorant can be guided toward enlightenment, so too can they be misguided toward ruin.”

Deep thinking is good, certainly better than not doing it. But not every time you think, theorize, make conclusions, your thoughts, theories, and conclusions will be right.
The essence of truth is that it usually, if not always, separates true things from false things. If there is a way to tell whether you are wrong or right, it is important to do so, unless there is a very good reason not to, and there rarely is. As I said previously about seeing flaws as essential in the path towards perfection.
To be Good you must know the difference between things that are right and things that are wrong. (Though of course you should not be angry at wrong things, should not punish people for them, just help them overcome that wrongness.)
There is one fable in Azvadeva Pujila, about the empress who lives in a swamp. Which I understood to be just about that. That while tolerance and acceptance are important, you should not take them too far, and it is foolish and destructive to be so nonjudgmental that you refuse to admit wrong things are wrong. 
But I do not know if that is a correct interpretation of the fable. Other people made different conclusions based on it. Because the fables are ambiguous. Which is exactly my whole point here.

I do recommend reading the fables. They are good. It will improve your life. I think that if you will read them seriously, and try to understand them instead of dismissing, they will improve your life, somewhat, no matter who you are, and what you do. They are universal. But they will only somewhat help everyone, to reach different conclusions in their different lives, instead of significantly help anyone, in a manner that is clear and visible.
Azvadeva Pujila is Gruhastha’s holy book, but it is not enough to understand Gruhastha, and not enough to start the way toward enlightenment. It will help you if you already are on that way, by giving you references, and questions to think about, and concepts that make it easier to discuss enlightenment with others. But by itself, it is not nearly enough, at all. It is a collection of true insights, but it does not offer a guide way to connect those insights together, to create wisdom.
(It also has some songs, that say things similar to what I say, and may inspire you to seek enlightenment, even if they will not help achieving it. I do understand the originals enough to truly appreciate them, but hope that someone will create a translation which does them justice.)

I wish someone else wrote the book that Gruhastha did not. A book that describes in detail, and more importantly precision, what enlightenment is. How to achieve it. What all the specific lessons of Azvadeva Pujila are. This book, in many ways, will be an even better, more perfect book than the perfection that supposedly made Gruhastha divine. It still would not be truly perfect. Not, probably, fully true. You will still need to exercise judgment while reading it, and not believe everything it says unless you yourself can prove it. But it would be so good for it to exist.
Do I intend, or want, or hope to write that book? No. Because I do not hope for fully impossible things.

I said a lot today, about understanding, and enlightenment, and the mistakes people make, and how to avoid them. I told you those things are important, and a little on why they are important. But what those mistakes actually are, how to avoid them, how to find understanding? I cannot tell you.
I am not, in the slightest, a good teacher. I do believe myself to have a great Understanding. To have made great progress in my path toward enlightenment. I do believe with all my heart that this enlightenment must be shared with others. And I can’t do it.
Most of the lessons I learned are either those which I learned without noticing, or noticed but not remembered being a person who did not already know them; or lessons that seem like they apply only to me, and would not be true or useful for any other person in the world. And some lessons I do remember and understand, and apply to others…but experience shows that when I try to explain them to people, to share my wisdom, even the people who do understand me and what I want to teach them do not learn anything important, do not change their way, do not become better. And in the rare cases they do, they seem to understand not exactly what I told them, but things that are extremely simple, do not require true wisdom to understand, and could have been explained by almost anyone else.

I do not know how to change that, or if it possible. I still keep writing any of the lessons I can phrase, as is my Obedience. And I do tell people about Gruhastha, and about the essence of his teachings, as far as I understand it, even if I cannot explain any of the details.
I hope people will still be driven by my words. To become better, wiser, understand the world better, to better act in it. some of you may be chosen by Gruhastha, as you find within yourself devotion to those ideals. Or chosen by a different deity. Or not chosen at all. After all, morality, reason, truth and enlightenment are exactly the same, whether you are chosen by a god or not. I believe that they would have been exactly the same if gods never existed in the first place! Well, mostly. And it is a very complicated topic, which I am not capable of discussing accurately.

The true enemy of Gruhstha is not Norgorber, or Geryon, though both are terrible evils opposing his goals (and many smaller Evil deities I did not research because I have no reason to). The enemy of Gruhastha Is the simple common mistakes of everyday life, common misunderstandings, small tragedies and tiny harms.

(I had the thought on one point, to take all those things, make a list of them. And than start describing them as a deity, or a demon lord more probably. The entity that is responsible for making people confused, and angry for reasons that do not make sense, promotes ignorance, and obfuscates the truth, and prevents people from understanding each other, etc. The enemy of Gruhastha in a divine rather than mundane sense. The random sound-combination I came with was…Molkur, I think?
But it is not, in hindsight, a good idea. It is itself an obfuscation of the truth, that causes misunderstandings. All those small harms that I call “enemy of Gruhastha” are too different from each other. I can’t just take all things that I think are important, and then decide that the lack of those things is by itself one single thing. And all those things…the whole point is that they are not an external thing, some divine interference. Well, I am sure Geryon and Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon are directly responsible for some of them. But it would happen even if they are not, as a direct result of mortal nature (though see my previous caveats about mortal nature). And it is not useful, I think, to conceptualize mistakes that all people make, that they need to grow beyond, simultaneously recognize the harm in and forgive themselves for making to fix…as an external enemy that needs fighting. In fact, “perceiving as direct malicious intention things that happened because of accidental chaos, predictable imperfections and honest mistakes” is itself one of those small evils that Enlightenment is needed to overcome.)

All those small harms are, indeed, small. But they accumulate. They reinforce each other. Aggression and violence make you more aggressive and violent in the future. Lies and misunderstandings that undermine truth make people less willing to believe in truth and seek it. Trust is harder to build than to break. Wisdom is harder to learn…well, you cannot really lose wisdom once you truly learn it. But becoming a wise person is much harder than an unwise person. Though I do believe everyone has the chance to become wise.

You do not need to be Gruhasthan to be wise. Many people in the world are wise. Many learned some shards of the truth. Well, everyone knows some very small basic shards, even if they grew in the woods and never spoke to anyone, not even knowing how to talk.
Being Gruhasthan means that becoming wiser, collecting those shards of truth, is your main mission. That when you see anything, you think “what can I learn from it, to make my understanding of the world more accurate, closer to perfection?”. That you try to collect and organize all the shards you found into one full and consistent picture. And then share this picture with everyone else who wants to see it.
Even if there was no Gruhastha, that work would be the same. And the work – the work that we barely even began, even with Gruhastha and all his church in Vudra, even with millions of books, even with radio, the work that we can’t even start to imagine the completion of – is essential. Without the work being completed, the world could never be truly good.

There are many things in the world that make life better, and the lack of which makes worse. But many…I don’t really know how to say this right. Things that are not important? They certainly are important. Things that would end up working anyway? Maybe they wouldn’t.
But…most of the problems with the world are obvious. Maybe not to everyone, but to everyone who is minimally wise and minimally Good.
Many problems are problems because there is no one powerful and Good enough to fix them. And if suddenly somebody very Good and powerful fell on us from the sky, would be solved.
They are simple. Not the solution, that may be complicated. But understanding what the problem itself is, that is simple.
And some of them are not. By which I obviously mean the lack of Enlightenment, the tragic misunderstandings of life, the things Gruhastha opposes.

There are many things that if you ask people, they will tell you make life perfect. But if you think deeply, they are obviously not enough.
Some of the things people will respond this are stupid and misguided. Some are genuinely and obviously good things. But not enough.
“What if we were richer!”
Out of the richest countries in the world, two are Geb and Cheliax. Being rich is not enough to make life good.
“If people were more Good or more Lawful!”
Being Lawful is obviously not enough to make life truly good, as Osirion proves. Osirion may become better in the future. But anything can theoretically become better in future. There are no guarantees it would be good enough.
A Good society is also not enough. In the personal sense, being Good by itself does not make you happy. Enlightenment does (which can technically be achieved while Neutral, even in the Gruhasthan approach. Though probably not Evil). You need to be Good to help others and prevent harm to others. And that is also not enough because Good people do still harm each other all the time. (For this phrase to be fully accurate we need to distinguish Good as divine quality of the soul from Good as a belief system, but that is a whole separate topic).

Even if Aroden’s golden age came, Gruhastha’s work would still be essential. Truly good things will never happen without it. Even when everyone is rich, even when everyone is both kind and law-abiding, and skilled, there would still be suffering born of misunderstanding, of miscommunication, of lack of wisdom and insight, of not understanding others and their perspective.
I am not good at reasoning about such topics, but I am sure even in the afterlives, in Axis and Heaven and Nirvana, there are still problems of exactly the same kind. There is not enough insight and true understanding of how the world and people in it work.
Even if they defeated the Evil afterlives, existence would not be truly good without Gruhastha. Or rather, without his values, without his work and effort. My work and effort. Our work and effort, all of us.

And we are not in good afterlives. And not in Aroden’s golden age.
The argument could be made that “we don’t have time for true-understanding, the worldwound would destroy our life in 30-40 years”. And that is true. But also, if all people were wiser, if they truly understood, if they avoided all the small pointless mistakes, we would solve it. We would coordinate better. Fight less between ourselves. Be less Evil and possibly Chaotic. Learn more and build more. Survive all the simple material catastrophes that plague us.

...and you do not have to know everything, to truly be enlightened, to be Gruhasthan.
You just need to think about your actions, and whether they make the world better. To look at the things you are doing, and ask yourself “why am I doing this? Does this help me? Is there something better I could be doing instead?”. Look at other people, and try to understand how they are different from you, what is different in their beliefs in actions. And learn from them if something they are doing is better. To never lie, that is a pretty obvious thing. But also, think about how people can misunderstand you, and work to prevent that. You are not directly responsible for misunderstanding of your words, as you are for your lies, but the damage can be just as great. And after the simple step of “not directly lying”, you should be responsible with the knowledge you are sharing. When telling things to people, you should distinguish between things you are sure about, things that may be true but you are unsure about, and things that you heard but do not have any evidence are true. It is best in theory to never consider yourself fully sure about anything, because you can always turn out to be wrong. That is what I do. But I do not recommend everyone to live that way.
To remember that people always make mistakes. You should work to prevent them, in yourself and others. But you can’t expect to fully succeed.
And remember. Not lying is easy. Finding the truth is harder. Even good honest people around you are often wrong. You should trust them, but not believe them fully on the nature of truth. Truth can only be achieved together, by you learning from their mistakes, and them learning from yours. Me you don’t even trust, and I could be completely wrong about anything! Though probably not about everything at once.

Ok, how much time do I have left? Not much.
Well then, instead of trying to recount all the lesser gods the existence of which I know about, I will only talk about the handful of the ones that I consider important to the vision I share with Gruhastha.

Svarozic, Lawful Good, who I already mentioned, changing parts of the world to be newer and better.


Zohls, Lawful Good, and Eritrice, Neutral Good.
Both are deities of truth, and finding it. But Zohls deals with the individual search for truth, finding clues, making conclusions, investigating crimes. While Eritrice is focused on truth found through conversation and arguments, presenting what you know in a coherent and simple way, convincing people in the truth when they do not yet believe it. Exactly the kind of thing I am terrible at, but must do regardless.
I do not have much more to say about them because it seems obvious to me that finding truth is important, grand, essential, possibly the more important thing there is. And I do not know how to explain more to people who don’t see it than I said already.

Otolmens, Lawful Neutral. A divine form of some…weird Axis creature I do not fully understand.
Otolmens is a deity of consistency. Mostly in relation to mathematics, but not only. There are types of mathematics, especially in proofs I think, where you have a list of lines. And each line results from the previous line. There is a path you need to take through them, and the path only works if each line is perfect. If any number in the many lines you wrote Is even slightly wrong, everything was futile, and truth cannot be found.
This is what Otolmens in responsible for. Checking all the parts to be consistent with each other. Though how that works for Otolmens rather than mortals is not a question I comprehend.
Mathematicians might pray to Otolmens, for all lines and numbers to be consistent.
Architects might pray to Otolmens, to ensure their plans are right, because if anything was wrong, the walls will collapse.
I do not know if merchants and bankers – responsible for large sums of money, from many sources, that need to count it, and remember where the money came from, and how much of it should be given to whom – pray to Otolmens. But it feels to me as the same kind of process.
I pray to Otolmens, each time I make plans, or important decisions. For my mind to be consistent. To not have missed anything important, because I cannot allow myself, cannot afford, to have missed anything, and all details should be accounted for. In a sense, Gruhastha represents to me the attempt to have more wise thoughts, and Otolmens represents to me the attempt to have less foolish thoughts.

Korada, Neutral Good Empyreal Lord of foresight, forgiveness, and peace. I already explained about peace and forgiveness, about understanding that many problems in life you cause to yourself, and then people often fail and need to be given a chance to do better, atone for their crimes, fix their mistakes. And foresight is what allows you to be a wise person, who predicts the results of actions, and avoids doing things that cause harm to themselves or someone else. Which is usually not that hard, and does not actually require predicting any specific events.
One group that worships him is the Lighthouse Keepers. They have a tradition of training their ability to predict future events, often through strategic games, and forbid divination magic, as it provides external answers, preventing you from learning to find them yourself.
I find them to be a little too focused on those games and the process of finding answers than the answers themselves, too much into abstract mysticism and not concrete morality. But the direction is the right one. And other people can worship the same deity differently.
They also study martial arts, but ones only used for defense, and focused on defeating enemies without causing any lasting harm, which is great.

A divine entity I must mention, but also, get this, do not at all recommend worshiping.
Winlas, Lawful Good. He is the keeper of the Great Library of Harmonious Scripture, at the fourth level of Heaven. Dedicated to archiving knowledge about the laws, cultures and beliefs of societies across the entire multiverse.
Seems like exactly the kind of thing I would support, and love deeply, right?

But I do not support Winlas’ goals and the purpose of this library. Because Winlas is a deity of Ceremonies, Sacredness, and Religiousness. Things I find (though others of course will disagree) pointless and potentially harmful. The kind of Lawful Goodness that is Lawful just for the sake of Lawfulness itself, and Good by way of finding virtues in things that do not improve life at all.
Religiousness is not a useful thing. Gods are important. It does not mean you have to worship them. My understanding of the divine, as I said previously, includes deep belief in ideals, but not what most people would call “devotion” or “worship”. It is important for people to understand what things are important, to feel it deeply. But I think that this understanding is important, not the superficial goal of sacredness or religiousness. 
Having a church dedicated to religiousness…well, when I phrase it that way it is inherently recursive, like if I tried to tell you a story about nothing but me telling you the story. But what I meant is, there is a sense in which it misses the point. It is like a king who wants the people of the kingdom to love him, and so starts a ministry of “love to the king”, who teaches people the standard words they have to say to show the king their love. Which is not mandatory, it is a Good (hypothetical) country. But it is expected of the people. And I do not think it makes the people love the king more. Arguably the opposite. Instead, the king could have done a lot of things to cause the people to actually love him more.
This is what I think about religiousness when seen as a goal. Also language is very ambiguous, and people often use word like “pious” to mean both “respects/love gods” and “very Good”.

I talked before about disliking traditions, but traditions are just ways of doing things. The things done can be good. And while doing things because they are traditional without considering why they are needed is bad, many traditions are good and should be kept.
There are cases where performing a ritual exactly each time is important, because the ritual is the only thing that remained from some actually essential procedure that was forgotten. Like what, supposedly if you believe the rumors, happened with the beer ritual, at the...the island where dolphins are worshiped, I forgot the name.
But such cases are extremely rare, and while you should not be rude or aggressive about it, not putting effort into respecting rituals is in expectations better for you in life, or at least for society, than not doing it.
Because devotion to rituals, to things being respected, to piety rather than actual kindness…well, I still cannot say it is always bad. If people need it in their life, it is good for them to have it. Just like it is good for people to have beautiful art in life. Or an even better example, celebrations, special days. There is even a Good demigod of celebrations. Two, I think. Not sure.
But people like that, the kind who are aligned with Winlas (cannot talk about Winlas himself, of course, I never met him), the attitude they represent…it is not the attitude of people who are just happy to see and create a beautiful thing, or celebrate a special day because it makes their life better, or because it will make life better for others. They consider it a sacred duty. One that exists outside of them. I do believe in external duties, that exist outside of you, and you should fulfill regardless of liking. But the amount of those duties is very small. Beauty is not one of them. Behaving in a way you are expected, performing the role given to you by society, is not like that, unless the role or behavior itself is something essential. And not because “it is How Things Should Be, and so doing so is good, and letting things be different is bad, inherently”. This is, again, the form of Lawful beliefs that I hate.
You can have that approach, and even be a worshipper and actual cleric of Winlas, without causing harm to the world. But doing so is extremely hard, and also requires to first understand what kind of harm a blind dedication to ceremonies and religiousness can cause, which people who are dedicated to those rarely see.

This is my personal obsession, though. I do not expect the Gruhasthan church, or Gruhastha himself, to share it, and you do not need to agree with me to learn anything else I said.
It is also a very spoiled, “trouble in paradise” thing to complain about. Having so much Lawful Goodness, as to be annoyed with people who are the wrong kind of Lawful Good instead of my right kind of Lawful Good. When I say things like “hate” I just mean approaches and philosophies I fundamentally disagree with and oppose. Not that I actually experience a feeling of animosity towards them. If I felt hatred towards Lawful Good people, or even non-Evil people generally, it means I should step back and reevaluate everything, as it may point to a serious mistake, and to my path towards enlightenment being even farther from the end than I thought.
Except Picoperi, Chaotic Good demigod of pranks and surprises. And all his worshipers. Also – the…Chaotic Neutral entity, associated with glowing objects, whose name I will not say, if he exists – and all similar Chaotic Neutral entities that I don’t know about. Fuck those guys in particular. Jokes? Great thing, life would be worse without them. Pranks and sudden surprises? Should not exist.