Vanaprastha

(“forest-dweller”) According to the
dharma literature, the vanaprastha was
the third of the idealized stages of life
(ashrama) for a twice-born man, that is,
a man born into the brahmin, kshatriya, or vaishya communities, who had
undergone the adolescent religious initiation known as the “second birth.”
According to this idealized pattern, after
engaging in religious learning as a celibate student (brahmacharin), the first
stage; marrying and raising a family as a
householder (grhastha), the second
stage; a man should, in the third, gradually disengage himself from the world by
giving up his attachments and withdrawing to a more secluded place. The
renunciation in this third stage of life is
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Vanamalin
Varanasi ghats with pilgrims bathing in the Ganges.
less severe than the last stage, the
Sanyasi—the texts are very clear that he
should remain with his wife and that he
should continue to perform the prescribed daily domestic sacrifices.
Although in contemporary times it is
fairly common for older people to live a
more retired life, bequeathing the bulk
of the family affairs to their children, few
people live by the strict prescriptions for
the vanaprastha. The prescription for
this third stage of life is generally considered to be a reaction to the growth of
asceticism in the centuries before the
turn of the common era, particularly the
monastic asceticism of the Buddhists
and Jains, which they claimed was religiously superior to the life of a householder. The vanaprastha is a transitional
stage that paves the way for an ascetic
life, but it is set in one’s old age and thus
allows for the fulfilling of one’s duties to
family and society.