16 June 2012

KKSblog.com - A plan to get out of entanglement

KKSblog.com - A plan to get out of entanglement

A plan to get out of entanglement

Posted: 15 Jun 2012 03:52 PM PDT

(HH Kadamba Kanana Swami, Leicester, England, 4th June 2012) Lecture: CC Madhya-lila 7.21

I think that when you hear something about vanaprastha, it's like intense, because it sounds like an attack on your life! It sounds like at age fifty they pull the rug under from under you; they just go up to the corner and pull! So it may create that impression, but it's not exactly like that. Being very practical by nature, I'm going to ask a practical question, we are not going to argue with the scriptures and say:

'No vanaprastha! Down with vanaprastha! Against vanaprastha!'

There is no need to be arguing with the scripture, because in the long run you are going to lose. You cannot argue with the scripture and expect to win. It's like that – they always win! So what to do? In the long run you sort of realise:

'Anyway the scriptures were right.'

Our objective is not to kind of argue with the scripture, since our question is all right but how are we going to do it? How do you do such a thing? So I was suggesting to others, that we are going to dress in tree bark! Don't ask me how you can dress in tree bark, I never did it, but anyway it's a sunny day, we'll go out there and we'll go after a tree! How do you get the bark off the tree in one piece? So I guess most likely we are going to get lots of little pieces, so I imagine our outfits are something like many little pieces sewn together with a hole in the middle.

I remember the very first social development conference in Iskcon, which was very interesting because they had all the ashrams to speak about their life. As I remember there was a gṛhastha who said:

'I'm tired of being considered second class citizen.' This was in the days when there were more brahmacaris than gṛhastha. 'Everyone is looking upon me like I'm fallen.'

Then his wife spoke and she said:

'Do you know what it's like to chant outside the temple room? You always have to go out with the kids when the Swamis come.'

So like that they were all speaking about their experiences. Then the brahmacari came and he said:

'I feel unprotected, since every time I say that I want to be a brahmacari, then someone will say, the statistics are against you.'

So like that it was a very entertaining morning then we finally got a vanaprastha and he was saying:

'You know I have an identity crises. Yes, I have an identity crises, I don't exist!'

And that exactly sort of sums it up. So where is the role model? How do you do it? And what does it mean anyway? So there are different shades of grey. There are different approaches to the subject matter. One is there are some principles, and then there is a shape that we must give to.

Basically gṛhastha means that we work for this life. You know you are young, and you just got married. Your parents helped a bit and that helped a lot actually. But still you are living in this miserable little flat and you can't wait to get out of there, since it's not a place to raise a family, so roll up your sleeves, life is getting serious. No more time to play around, now okay we got to build something up. So it goes on and finally with a loan we move into a bigger place and have two kids and you are so happy and you have a big garden with a veranda, and now life is jus perfect, and just what you always wanted it to be. Meanwhile you are looking at it all and thinking:

'How do I deal with it?'

So this is the middle of life – the gṛhastha life, work hard…

Imagine you would make a plan, 'I'm getting out of work at fifty!' Maybe get an extra flat and rent it out. Some plan but I don't know what because everybody makes money in their own way. A plan to get out early, but of course the needs have to go down, so that is the first. Therefore vanaprastha means that – a plan to get out of entanglement early; a plan to get out of the rat race; a plan to get out of ' I need to have, I must buy,' expanding, expanding, expanding. No it's about simplifying, because retirement means that and that's what retirement is about. So early retirement and fill up that time that is gained with spiritual life. So that's the principle.

So it doesn't sound so bad, and it doesn't sound so threatening:

'Oh my God vanaprastha!'

It doesn't sound like the end of the world – oh no! The hot potato is the question – should husband and wife separate? Therefore the answer is that it is not that they have to. There is no injunction that at age fifty the husband and wife should separate, because in some cases they can't wait till they're fifty. I know some cases where it's the wife who wants to take vanaprastha – okay you are on your own now. It's time to move out. Your fifty, and that's it. So sometimes it's very natural. Honeymoon days are long gone…

So just organise life in a way where one can get out at the age of fifty and take up devotional service, which is very nice. So vanaprastha is actually something good. Now the question is: How to give that shape in our life? Well it's an experiment. There are different ideas of how to do that, but first of all we are starting to think about it a little late. When you start to think about it when you are getting older, then it's a bit late, because then you haven't arranged life according to that plan, then it makes it more difficult! Therefore vanaprastha is not something you think about when you are fifty, it's something you think about when you are twenty-five. It's something that's part of the culture and in that way it works very nicely…

So let us think about what we can do to spiritualise our life, and we see the first instruction of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu was at first to do it from home – from home first build up the spiritual strength and then we may go on a pilgrimage to holy places or do what some do, which is to makes a vow to stay in a holy place, but that can be done as husband and wife or alone.

So there are many different solutions but it would actually be very good for our eternal benefit, for the last moment in our life, when we have to than we are prepared and we spend time getting attached to Krishna and serving Krishna! Because if it's ninety-six and ninety-two – skin and skin, bone and bone, and hand in hand. Isn't it beautiful, a love that never ends, but at that stage it can end at any moment? What are we to do at ninety-six and ninety-two? And it's a miracle that the old cranky vehicles are still moving!

So therefore, possibly so it would be advantageous to get a little bit out of that romance mood and just say, now you are going for Krishna! And that's the idea. So vanaprastha is an internal adjustment, it is a change of heart which has to take place and it'd better take place before the time of death, and not at the time of death, because if you have to do it very quick in the last minutes as you're going from this world and everyone is crying at your bed and saying:

'Oh please don't leave us!'

And if you go like that then I don't know if it's going to be the spiritual world. After all that's really what it's all about, going back to Godhead! So in the light of all of that, it's actually a very good thing and I hope that I have taken it to a level where we can see that it's actually something nice and we just have to figure it out as to how to make that internal adjustment? How to increase the spirituality in our life? But that is the principle which needs to be applied and it makes sense if you think about it…

Whatever detachment we have to practise in life in varnashrama, is the detachment that is there to help us prepare for the ultimate detachment. Some preparation is needed to deal with the ultimate detachment, since we are not going to really deal with it at the end of life in a proper way – it's hard. So it's for that reason that people feel that:

'Vanaprastha, I'm thinking about it and I must do something about it!'


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