I have a new book in the works—The Vanaprastha 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.
Scope
Let me lay out here some of the limits I’ve set for myself in this book.
First, because it focuses on the vānaprastha āśrama it doesn’t have much to say about the problems, anomalies, and challenges of the other āśramas, except as these relate to vānaprastha life. Do I see things wrong in how sannyāsīs live? Sure. Could sānnyāsīs live by higher standards? Sure. Are some things grossly wrong? Definitely. But that’s all for another book. Similarly, we could look more closely at the brahmacārī āśrama. But again: another book.
Now, in this book I for the most part discuss the vānaprastha āśrama the way we usually find it in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books—as the next step for a person in householder life. This context, I think, is still the most relevant today. I recognize that for some devotees this context may not fit. And I may sometimes say something about other paths to the vānaprastha āśrama or about other ways in which older devotees might live. But I don’t try to cover all the possibilities, not even all the most likely ones. So if you find that your own circumstances lie somewhere outside those I speak of, my apologies. I hope you may nonetheless find in this book points relevant to your own life.
In this book you’ll also find hardly anything that looks like a managerial proposal: “ISKCON should do this” or “ISKCON should do that.” I focus, rather, on what individual devotees can do to advance in their own spiritual lives. If some ideas in this book inform or inspire spiritual managers, so much the better. May Kṛṣṇa bless their endeavors. But my focus, again, is on the individual devotee.
Now, though this book is meant to be of value both for men and for women, you’ll find that it speaks most directly to men. Śrīla Prabhupāda and the tradition he follows, while validating the spiritual equality of both Vaiṣṇavas and Vaiṣṇavīs, see men and women as having distinctly different social roles, particularly within the context of the four āśramas. Who is it that is expected to move from brahmacārī life to gṛhastha life and then on to vānaprastha and sannyāsa? It is men. And for women there is a different set of roles, divided into three: that of daughter, wife, and mother. That is, as Śrīla Prabhupāda so often says, in childhood a woman should be protected by her father, in youth by her husband, and in old age by her sons.[1]
The adventure of vānaprastha life is for both men and women, but in different ways. When a man becomes a vānaprastha and leaves home, his wife takes part in his choice, either by staying with him to serve him or by staying back to serve without him present. For that matter, older Vaiṣṇavīs may go on to make great contributions in their own right. They may go beyond ordinary conventions. They may exceed the service of many men. By the grace of the spiritual master and Kṛṣṇa, all of this is possible.
Whether we choose to call a woman in retired life a vānaprastha or a vānaprasthinī or something else is a matter of words. What matters more is the underlying understanding—finally, the understanding that beyond all designations every one of us is an eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa.
That said, I come back to my point that men and women, differently embodied, differ in how they think, feel, and live and differ in their social roles and duties. And in this book, though including women, I speak especially to men. Women as well deserve books written especially for them, and I hope that such books, from worthy authors, will in time appear, providing further insights and guidance for the Vaiṣṇavī side of the vānaprastha adventure.
Moving on to one last topic: In today’s world, our social realities differ. We’re not living in a traditional varṇāśrama society. And as devotees of Kṛṣṇa today move through life they may follow courses far from what tradition might expect. But our tradition is what I start with.
Let me qualify that. I won’t say much about actual life in the forest or the rules and rituals of bygone eras. Rather, my starting place for tradition is what Śrīla Prabhupāda taught. How we apply his teachings may differ according to our circumstances. We may need to adjust. But let us follow the tradition as best we can and at least know what we’re adjusting, so that the wisdom of the past may guide and inspire our future.
[1] He says this, for example, in the first paragraph of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, chapter 50.
You must be logged in to post a comment.