The Vānaprastha Adventure, Installment 13
In our later years we may naturally feel less and less satisfied in family life. Our married life is no longer full of youthful joy. Our job may seem a slog. Family duties may feel burdensome, our days and nights humdrum, the husband-and-wife relationship stale (or worse). I may be overtaken by the feeling that I’m not going anywhere and my life is empty. Or there may be family tension or turmoil or disasters.
Past fifty (and even before), all this is natural.
The Vedic culture takes account of this and provides a way forward. Instead of trying to “get over it” and find a better route to contentment and enjoyment, we should welcome such troubles as incentives for detachment, as an opportunity to reassess our life and move on.
This is not the time to look for a new partner and sign up for another round of trouble. This is not the time for divorce and remarriage. Take the troubles as a blessing, thank Kṛṣṇa, give up, and move on.
Cāṇakya Paṇḍita advises that if our life at home is unhappy we might as well go to the forest:
mātā yasya gṛhe nāsti
bhāryā cāpriya-vādinī
araṇyaṁ tena gantavyaṁ
yathāraṇyaṁ tathā gṛham
“If a person has neither a mother nor a pleasing wife at home, he should leave home and go to the forest, because for him there is no difference between forest and home.”
Kṛṣṇa’s arrangements
When Nārada Muni was a young boy, his last attachment was to his mother—and she was bitten by a snake and died. Rather than sob and weep, the boy took her death as a blessing from the Lord—“Now I can travel and follow the directions I received from the sages”—and he became Nārada Muni.1 So if our family life turns bitter or disastrous—if my partner dies or leaves me or throws me out of the house or my son becomes a rogue—we can take it as a blessing. “All right, getting free from householder life is what I was supposed to be doing anyway, and I wasn’t, so now Kṛṣṇa has made it happen. How wonderful! Let me take advantage of Kṛṣṇa’s arrangement.”
As Śrīla Prabhupāda writes in a purport to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (9.4.65), “Sometimes a pure devotee may have a habit or attraction for wife, children and home but at the same time want to serve the Supreme Lord to the best of his ability. For such a devotee, the Lord makes a special arrangement to take away the objects of his false attachment and thus free him from attachment to wife, home, children, friends and so on. This is special mercy bestowed upon the devotee to bring him back home, back to Godhead.”
Examples of detachment
In another place Śrīla Prabhupāda writes, “Sometimes the Lord arranges an unfortunate wife for His devotee so that gradually, due to family circumstances, the devotee becomes detached from his wife and home and makes progress in devotional life.”2
After King Aṅga (the husband of one such unfortunate wife) found his son Vena vicious and incorrigible, the king eventually thought: “A bad son is better than a good son because a good son creates an attachment for home whereas a bad son does not. A bad son creates a hellish home from which an intelligent man naturally becomes very easily detached.”3
Śrīla Prabhupāda comments: “According to Prahlāda Mahārāja, the material home is compared to a blind well. If a man falls down into a blind well, it is very difficult to get out of it and begin life again. Prahlāda Mahārāja has advised that one give up this blind well of home life as soon as possible and go to the forest to take shelter of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. According to Vedic civilization, this giving up of home by vānaprastha and sannyāsa is compulsory. But people are so attached to their homes that even up to the point of death they do not like to retire from home life. King Aṅga, therefore, thinking in terms of detachment, accepted his bad son as a good impetus for detachment from home life. He therefore considered his bad son his friend since he was helping him become detached from his home. Ultimately one has to learn how to detach oneself from attachment to material life; therefore, if a bad son, by his bad behavior, helps a householder to go away from home, it is a boon.”4
We may remember, also, that when Vidura was insulted by his nephew Duryodhana, Vidura saw the insult as an opportunity to leave home.
Loss and cheating
Another kind of family unhappiness is death. When Caitanya Mahāprabhu, in his youth, lost his wife Laksmi Devī, at the request of his mother he married again. But a man who loses his wife in his later years may see the loss as Kṛṣṇa’s arrangement to free him from family life. Similarly, a woman who loses her husband can see the loss as a sign from Kṛṣṇa that the time has come for her to become more seriously absorbed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Śrīla Prabhupāda mentions, I seem to recall, that in the stock market whether the stocks go up or the stocks go down the smart trader does well. When the stocks go up the trader sells and profits, and when stocks go down the trader buys cheap.5 So whichever way Kṛṣṇa moves things, the devotee who is serious can take what comes as a blessing from Kṛṣṇa.
The more seriously we try to advance, the more Kṛṣṇa guides us—“Now you should do this. Now attend to that.” Or he arranges circumstances—an insult, an invitation, or whatever it may be. Kṛṣṇa helps externally, and he helps from within the heart.
Even if unhappy in family life, we should never cheat on our wife. Illicit relationships will not help us. But cheating does have its proper place. When Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Gāndhārī left home, they didn’t tell anyone, not even Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s intimate secretary Sañjaya. Sañjaya therefore felt that those great souls had cheated him.6 Śrīla Prabhupāda comments, “That great souls cheat others may be astonishing to know, but it is a fact that great souls cheat others for a great cause.” He gives various examples and then says, “To satisfy the Lord, anything is good, for it is in relation with the Absolute Truth. We also had the same opportunity to cheat the family members and leave home to engage in the service of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Such cheating was necessary for a great cause, and there is no loss for any party in such transcendental fraud.”7
Notes:
1 Bhāgavatam 1.6.9‒10.
2 Bhāgavatam 4.13.39, purport.
3 Bhāgavatam 4.13.46.
4 Bhāgavatam 4.13.46, purport.
5 See Prabhupāda letter to Satsvarūpa, June 25, 1970.
6 Bhāgavatam 1.13.37.
7 Bhāgavatam 1.13.37, 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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.