The Ashramas of Life

Anish — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:50:07 +0000

It is noted that in almost every religion, there are ceremonies that celebrate rites of passage throughout a person’s life. In Judaism, there is the bar/bat mitzvah. In many sects of Christianity, the confirmation is held to declare that the individual is a participating member of the church. In Hinduism, for young individuals around the age of 13, a thread ceremony, known as an Upanayanam, is held to initiate the individual into his Brahmacharya stage — the part of his life where the individual lives as a student.

Interestingly enough, the Upanishads have essentially set 4 stages or ‘ashramas’ of life as a Hindu that we all tend to follow, to an extent. After the Brahmacharya stage, at around the age of 25, the individual will enter the Grihasta stage of life, which is also known as the householder stage. It is here where the individual will marry, build a family and work toward his career. The third and fourth stages of life, known as the Vanaprastha stage and the Sanyaasa stage, require the individual to renounce and retire from social and professional life and be totally devoted to God. The last two ashramas mark the end of life, where the individual will either become one with God or be reborn into the cycle.

I feel that it’s rather interesting how the ancient sages had set these rules with such accuracy that these ashramas can be followed even today to an extent.

A general question to all: do other religions also have set sections of life in which an individual must follow a certain way of life?

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The Ashramas of Life