The Vānaprastha Adventure, Installment 4
Śrīla Prabhupāda mentions throughout his books the importance of the vānaprastha āśrama. Once we reach a mature age, the vānaprastha life becomes important —and in fact, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, essential.
Without a life of spiritual retirement, how is our social setup different from a materialistic one? Of course, we can have a family life that’s Kṛṣṇa conscious. But our social system is meant to be radically different from a system that tells us to just stay in the family circle till the end of our days. And of course we’re concerned not just with a social system but with our own individual life. We ourselves are personally meant to reach a stage where we move beyond the family circle.1
We’re meant for detachment
We’re meant for detachment. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu himself came to teach vairāgya–vidyā nija-bhakti-yoga—devotional service along with spiritual knowledge and detachment.2 So if we don’t develop spiritual knowledge or we don’t develop detachment, we don’t have the full picture. We may have nija-bhakti-yoga—devotional service. But devotional service deserves the support of spiritual knowledge and spiritual detachment. These are healthy. These are congenial. These are important for bhakti-yoga.
Ultimately, bhakti-yoga is independent. It doesn’t depend on anything else. We don’t have to have even vidyā, spiritual knowledge. Just love Kṛṣṇa. But if we’re practicing Kṛṣṇa consciousness, if we’re not yet blessed with spontaneous love of Kṛṣṇa, then knowledge will help us and be virtually essential, and vairāgya, detachment, will help us (and also be practically essential). So the vānaprastha āśrama is meant for vairāgya. Or, we can say, it’s the beginning of vairāgya.
“Detachment” means detachment from “ahaṁ mameti,”from thinking that I am my body, gross or subtle, and that the things and people related to this body are mine. It means detachment from wife, children, home, property, relatives, and wealth (gṛha-kṣetra-sutāpta-vittaiḥ). In particular, for a man, detachment means detachment from wife. The Bhāgavatam (5.5.8) refers to the relationship between man and woman, husband and wife, as being like a hard knot in the heart And as the Bhāgavatam says, sexual intercourse (a natural part of married life) tightens that knot and makes it stronger. The vānaprastha āśrama is meant to help us loosen that hard knot—and tighten our relationship with Kṛṣṇa. We see that Parīkṣit Mahārāja, at the end, puts aside his royal dress, gives up his wife, leaves aside his kingdom —everything—because now, in the few days left, he’s going to focus on his main purpose in life.3
We’re meant for attachment
For devotees, “detachment” also implies spiritual attachment. We’re not interested just in phalgu-vairāgya, dry renunciation. We’re interested in attachment to Kṛṣṇa. We don’t want to be like Māyāvādīs, detached but “dry like oil cakes without the oil.”4 We want to taste the full juice of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We want to be detached from the material world because we experience a better world (rasa-varjaṁ raso ’py asya paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate).5
And that’s why we have a vānaprastha āśrama. sannyāsa might or might not be in the picture. But we don’t want to jump to sannyāsa because we don’t want to abruptly and prematurely accept that role without the steadiness and substance to honor it. Before we think about sannyāsa, the vānaprastha āśrama provides a time for getting free from our material attachments, purifying our hearts, handing things over, offloading so much of what we think is ours, and increasing our attachment for Kṛṣṇa.
The vānaprastha āśrama allots enough time for doing that. So it’s not abrupt, not shocking, not a cause for turmoil. But it enables us to progress. We divest ourselves of our previous duties and unnecessary needs, we loosen the hard knot of family affection, and finally, at some point, we may even give up the connection between husband and wife.
If we want to accelerate, we can; we can make faster progress. But the vānaprastha āśrama helps us have a clear picture of where we’re going. Eventually our life in this body will end. Until that time comes we want to serve Kṛṣṇa, and at the end of life we want to remember Kṛṣṇa.
As part of the process of surrendering to Kṛṣṇa, we want to become increasingly dependent on Kṛṣṇa, confident that Kṛṣṇa will protect us and Kṛṣṇa will maintain us. A devotee is therefore meant to become anapekṣa, free from dependency on material arrangements.6 And this too is part of the vānaprastha āśrama. In family life we may think we can’t go here or there because “My whole setup is here.” And so we become stuck, like a silkworm trapped in its cocoon, helpless when the silk-maker comes to throw the cocoon in boiling water.7 The vānaprastha āśrama is meant to help us get free from our cocoons.
Letting go and handing things over
In family life we tend to become so attached to our homes, to our security and comforts, that we can’t conceive of a different life. “If I weren’t here, how would I live?” “If I weren’t working, what would I do?” Or we’re attached to a position in service in which we think, “What would I do if I weren’t a temple president” or “if I weren’t a BBT trustee” or “if I weren’t a GBC man”—or whatever the service might be.
Apart from holding us back, such a mentality holds others back as well. We think, “No one else can take my place.” We guard our turf. And we see young people as a threat: “If some young guy learns my job, what will happen to me?” Such fears come into the mind, sometimes almost subconsciously, and keep us stuck, and hold back the next generation, who can’t get a space because all the positions are filled by people who have passed their peak but won’t let go. That can happen in our workplace, or it can happen in our directly devotional work.
Older devotees who let go timely can provide young devotees wisdom and guidance. The young devotees can ask questions, and new ways of doing things can unfold. But if the old men hold on till the last minute, that opportunity is lost. The old men die, and new people take over without guidance from those who came before. Or else the younger people—especially the brightest young people—quickly figure out that the society of devotees has no place for them and go elsewhere.
An organization where the people with power all try to hold on to their power forever is a sick organization. Healthy organizations look forward to bringing people up and training them. And so, for example, when Śrīla Prabhupāda appointed GBC men to serve “for life,” this would help avoid elections and keep down politics, but it’s unlikely that what he intended was to make sure his GBC men would hold on to their posts till their dying day. A wise leader always looks toward replacing himself.
By timely handing over one’s service, one gives the right example. When the old people of today “do it right” the young people can later recall, “Yes, my dad was preaching all over the world,” or “My mom was totally into bhajana,” or “My temple president handed over the keys and went off to Vṛndāvana,” or whatever the case may be. And later, when the time comes, today’s young people will have that example to follow.
Getting free and getting ready to go
The ideal example, of course, was set by Śrīla Prabhupāda, and we can take it as our source of inspiration. We can think, “All right, I may not get on a ship with seventeen rupees, but I’ll do something.I’ll make a serious commitment.” In this way we can break free from the inertia of householder life.
Householder life can have a dull stagnancy about it. As the laws of physics say, “A body at rest tends to stay at rest.” So we wake up every day and do the same things. But the śāstras and the spiritual masters say, “No, in your old age don’t do the same things. See the signs. Now it’s time to change. Act with detachment and move towards being focused on the essential business of life.”
Often, especially in householder life, we think we can just stay as we are and everything will go on. And we forget that before death comes our real business is to get free from material entanglements and be ready to die, absorbed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Even in old age, we may think that our main duty is to see to family affairs. But the Bhāgavatam calls this a kind of insanity. The Bhāgavatam says, “Insurmountable, eternal time imperceptibly overcomes those who are insanely attached to family affairs and are always engrossed in their thought.”8
In the Bhāgavatam the saint Vidura advises his elder brother Dhṛtarāṣṭra, “Whoever is under the influence of supreme kāla [eternal time] must surrender his most dear life, and what to speak of other things, such as wealth, honor, children, land and home.” And so: “Despite your unwillingness to die and your desire to live even at the cost of honor and prestige, your miserly body will certainly dwindle and deteriorate like an old garment.”9
Śrīla Prabhupāda writes, “To stick to family life up to the end of one’s human life is the grossest type of degradation, and there is an absolute need for the Viduras to educate such Dhṛtarāṣṭras, even at the present moment.”10
Vidura’s instructions to Dhṛtarāṣṭra are worth reading in full, today more than ever.11 As Śrīla Prabhupāda writes, “Five thousand years ago there was one Dhṛtarāṣṭra, but at the present moment there are Dhṛtarāṣṭras in every home.”12 We are meant, of course, to be among the Viduras, not the Dhṛtarāṣṭras.
Notes:
1 Śrīla Prabhupāda does mention that brāhmaṇas accept all four āśramas, kṣatriyas only three (all but sannyāsa), vaiśyas only two (brahmacārī and gṛhastha), and śūdras only one (gṛhastha) (Lectures, October 21, 1974, and March 5, 1975). On these grounds, one might avoid the vānaprastha āśrama, pleading that one is a vaiśya or śūdra. But as we will find later in this book, Śrīla Prabhupāda expected his gṛhastha disciples to become vānaprasthas. And he himself, though he appeared in a vaiśya family, adopted the vānaprastha āśrama and finally accepted sannyāsa. Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura also says that the members of any varna may accept the vānaprastha āśrama (Caitanya-sikṣāmṛta, Chapter 2, Part 4).
2 The relevant verse, written by Sarvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya, is recorded by Śrī Kavi-karṇapūra in Caitanya-candrodaya-nāṭaka (6.74), as quoted in Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 6.254.
3Bhāgavatam 1.19.7.
4 Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 14.87.
5 Gītā 2.59.
6 Gītā 12.16
7 Bhāgavatam 7.6.13.
8 Bhāgavatam 1.13.17.
9 Bhāgavatam 1.13.20, 25.
10 Bhāgavatam 1.13.24, purport.
11 These instructions appear in Bhāgavatam, First Canto, chapter 13.
12 Bhāgavatam 1.13.24, purport.
This is part of a draft
This is an excerpt from a new book I have in the works—The Vānaprastha Adventure, a guide to retirement in spiritual life. While I’m working on it, I’ll be posting my draft here, in installments. I invite your comments, questions, and suggestions.
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