Gṛhastha Āśrama: The End of Selfishness
Gṛhastha Āśrama: The End of Selfishness
Once, many years ago, I heard one of my godbrothers, after his sannyāsa acceptance ceremony, commenting in an introspective way:
"Now I am a sannyāsī. Now I am in trouble—nobody will tell me when I am wrong anymore."
Indeed, in the seventies, in ISKCON, the acceptance of sannyāsa was not different from becoming a guru in terms of the worship and respect one received. Then, as one sannyāsī after another fell down, the attitude of devotees changed to a great degree, with most either joining the gṛhastha āśrama or becoming gṛhasthas after their brahmacārī training.
Today, with the majority of devotees living in the gṛhastha āśrama or some form of vānaprastha āśrama—or in some undefined "āśrama" 🙁 —some may be haunted by doubt as to whether their situation is truly facilitating the level of Kṛṣṇa consciousness they would like to cultivate.
The answer is simple: it does.
A truly practicing gṛhastha receives one great benefit—he cannot be selfish; he cannot remain private. Privacy is dangerous because the mind then finds plenty of opportunities to imagine what is inappropriate or even harmful. Kṛṣṇa consciousness is not just another imagination, a world of designations and names where one believes to be something one is not. It is the ultimate reality of being oneself, along with the often uncomfortable realisation of one’s remaining and occasionally prevailing material desires. Not many can take such a firm look into the mirror, seeing their conditioned state. Instead, they prefer to "dream" in "Kṛṣṇa consciousness." Many prefer to be hallucinated by all kinds of good ideas… in the wrong place.
As one of my godbrothers, who also eventually renounced his state of "detachment" and became a more honest "fallen sannyāsī," once said:
"We know where we came from (hell). We know where we should go (the spiritual world). But we don’t know where we are NOW."
He is still trying to find out to this day.
But knowing the goal—returning back home, back to Godhead—a devotee, especially a gṛhastha, is advised to be patient… and determined. The gṛhastha āśrama is a long-distance run.
As one of my more intelligent godbrothers, a sannyāsī himself, once commented when seeing a whole group of brahmacārīs getting married:
"Well, if they don’t take it as brahmacārīs, they will be purified in this way."
There was a time when the division between āśramas was more clearly evident. A brahmacārī received his dose of purification by preaching to the conditioned souls day and night, either through book distribution or public harināma. Meanwhile, a gṛhastha became intensely purified by the presence of his ever-surveilling wife… and, even more intensely, by the presence of his service-consuming children, day and night. In both āśramas, there was no room for selfish cultivation of material desires or pseudo-spiritual life in the form of some "bābājī-let’s-eat-and-sleep-in-the-Holy-Dhāma" lifestyle.
A real devotee knows that the meaning of life is to share. Shared happiness is more pleasant than the "happiness" of an imploding, introverted monologue. Kṛṣṇa Himself recommends in the Bhagavad Gītā the renunciation of the fruits of one’s work—preferably for Kṛṣṇa-conscious purposes—and even when that is not possible, renunciation of the fruits of one’s work in any way. Any form of material attachment will bind us to yet another birth and rebirth in this material world.
One may argue that the gṛhastha āśrama is a necessity for those who are still materially attached and desire to purify their attachments in a regulated way. That is true, but any sincerely practicing gṛhastha will soon realise that the entire process of walking the thorny path of gṛhastha life is aimed at detachment.
To taste the final bitterness of the gṛhastha āśrama—by seeing the "objects of natural affection," as Śrīla Prabhupāda defined family members, one by one leaving, whether in the form of grown-up children or an ageing and eventually dying spouse—is naturally inviting detachment. In the absence of detachment, only despair and frenzy prevail, and this is not a state of consciousness any sincere devotee wants to die in.
Of course, as one intelligent Irishman commented,
"There used to be platonic love. Now we have platonic marriages."
Such an impersonal and artificial state of coexistence cannot be defined as the real gṛhastha āśrama, which is often dominated by the "love and hate" tension that naturally arises when men and women become intimately connected. It is exactly this tension that leads to exhaustion and deep realisation about the futility of cultivating false hopes, thus increasing one’s Kṛṣṇa-conscious practice. Even the dull periods of plain family maintenance—like walking through a desert for some—have their value, as they help us realise how rare the opportunity is to truly absorb ourselves in thoughts of Kṛṣṇa.
Finding an oasis in a desert is a far more intense and pleasant experience than walking through a cooling forest.
Meanwhile, while cultivating the gṛhastha āśrama, our material desires are regulated by the spoken or unspoken desires of those we intimately associate with, as their desires block our own.
The benefits of the gṛhastha āśrama are many.
A real gṛhastha finds himself in a protected environment where attraction to another man or woman is instantly monitored by a chaste wife or husband.
As one experienced Hollywood (prostitute) actress once said,
"A woman can cheat thousands of men. But she cannot cheat a single woman."
A single brahmacārī or sannyāsī had better be truly situated in Kṛṣṇa consciousness—otherwise, he becomes a mere walking target for the desperate females appearing in such abundance in this Kali-yuga.
Finally, with the arrival of children, any last remaining plans for privacy are ruined. That’s good—and that’s what we are trained for. After all, in the spiritual world, there is no space for selfish, introverted "meditators."
As we read in the scriptures, the spiritual world is a place of constant exchanges of rasas, which find their perverted reflection in the material world. No wonder there is frustrating tension between men and women, occasionally leading to divorce. It is simply a reflection of the original rasa of tension in the spiritual world, where separation leads to an intensified reunion. (No, there is no divorce in the spiritual world.)
What is the supreme ecstasy of reunion in the spiritual world becomes the supreme frustration of divorce in the material world.
Thus, in the absence of selfishness and under the constant surveillance of a husband or wife, after just a few years, we find ourselves in a more purified state of mind. The initial "ecstasies" of union with the opposite sex turn into a plain routine and mutual assistance, both for our ageing bodies and our cultivation of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Ending one’s life in such a regulated lifestyle—dominated by the realisation of the futility of striving for heightened material enjoyment—is a suitable preparation for facing the final test: leaving this material body behind at the time of death.
As one man commented:
"My marriage started as a passionate adventure. It ended as a simple routine… and so did the marriages of all my friends as well."
One doesn’t have to be directly in Kṛṣṇa consciousness to come to this realisation—it is self-evident. However, in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, when husband and wife finally preach together in the mood of vānaprastha, enriched by the realisations they gathered as gṛhasthas, their example becomes rare and highly appreciated. Most conditioned souls go through the same purification process—even without knowing it. Without Kṛṣṇa consciousness, only bitterness and frustration await us. But with Kṛṣṇa consciousness, in the mood of mutual assistance, as regulated and satisfied vānaprasthas, we become an inspiration for others.
When all—the enthusiastically preaching brahmacārī, the inspired sannyāsī, and the satisfied vānaprastha—are supported by the honestly working gṛhasthas, united in the same effort to save the conditioned souls from rebirth… What a wonderful spiritual movement we could have!