Thinking about health

The Vānaprastha Adventure, Installment 12

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Along with old age (and birth and death), during retirement we can expect to undergo disease. This is unavoidable. It comes with the body. If we have “disease karma,” disease will come, no matter what. That said, as with financial planning there are sensible things we can do.

First, of course, we can try our best to live a healthy way of life. As mentioned in the Bhagavad-gītā (6.17), we can reduce our risk of bodily troubles by living in a regulated way—eating not too little and not too much, sleeping as much as we need but not more. In general, a simple, natural, devotional way of life, tuned to the mode of goodness, will help us.

But a regulated life won’t save us from car accidents, for example, and even in the countryside we can stumble over a rock and break a leg or get hit by a falling tree branch. Nowhere is safe. And especially in old age we can expect more problems with health.

Of course, ultimately Kṛṣṇa will protect us, and no one else can. Nonetheless, just as we may want to carry an umbrella when clouds threaten rain, we may want to take prudent material measures for dealing with risks to health.¹ In particular, we may want to have some form of health insurance. This can’t ensure health, of course, but it may help us deal with expenses, which in old age can be formidable.

In some countries, health care for citizens is free. Other countries require that everyone subscribe to some sort of health-insurance plan. In other countries such plans are an option. I won’t prescribe what you should do, but you can look into your options, know what they are, and include health care in your plans for retirement from family life.

Knowledge, prudence, and depending on Kṛṣṇa

Sometimes just knowledge and prudence are enough. Some years ago at a festival in Simhachalam, Germany, a pujārī gave several devotees remnants of Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva’s tilaka (a paste of turmeric, kuṅkuma, and camphor), and because it had been rolled into balls, the devotees thought it was edible. It wasn’t, and the devotees came down with food poisoning and wound up in hospital, one in critical condition. They all survived, but they later each got hit with hospital bills for five hundred to a thousand euros or more. If you live in the European Union, a devotee doctor from Croatia told me, before you travel you can get a free international health-insurance card just for the asking, and in such an emergency your home state will pay the bill. None of those devotees, however, had asked for the card. And so they had to pay bills from which knowledge and prudence could have saved them.²

So, again, one would be prudent to take health care into account while planning for retirement from family life. This includes looking into what health-care coverage you might have when you travel to another country or live there.

The sages of the past, of course, didn’t worry about what health-care coverage they might have in the forest. And Śrīla Prabhupāda didn’t take health care into account before he boarded the Jaladuta. The ultimate health-care plan is to depend on Kṛṣṇa.

But reaching that level of confidence may be a gradual project. So one thought might be: While planning take precautions, and in the event be bold.

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Notes:

1 See Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.16.10, purport.

2 By knowing what the balls were, of course, the devotees would have avoided the whole problem, but the point here is knowing enough about health care. My thanks to the doctor, Murāri Gupta Dāsa (a vānaprastha), for telling me this story and urging me to mention health insurance in this book. My thanks also to Rāmānanda Gopāla Dāsa, Lord Nrsimhadeva’s chief pujārī, for details of the incident.

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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.