Question

explain each stage of the ashrams in detail​

Answer 1

Answer:

Ashrama in Hinduism is one of four age-based life stages discussed in Indian texts of the ancient and medieval eras. The four ashramas are: Brahmacharya (student), Grihastha (householder), Vanaprastha (retired) and Sannyasa (renunciate). The Ashrama system is one facet of the Dharma concept in Hinduism.

Explanation:

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Answer 2

Brahmacharya Ashram:

It is a specific period of education for all young persons before they can grow independent to work for life. At home, a child gets education in how to eat, walk, talk, dress, meet other people, and behave in their presence. In some castes and communities, a child also learns how to plough land, make shoes, do pottery work, ironsmith’s work, goldsmith’s work, carpentry work, and so on. But he does not get education in reading and writing or skilled and professional training.

He gets this education from teachers (gurus). During this period of education, he has to follow some ideals and live in a specific environ­ment. In the ancient past, schools were boarding schools where a child was admitted at the age of 8-12 years, after following certain ceremonies and imparted knowledge, skills and crafts, general and physical education, and training in logic.

Garhasthya Ashram:

This period of life covers an active period of ef­fective membership of society and covers 25 years of life after the first 25 years of education. This is householder’s life, a married life. The ideal marriage was considered one which was performed for moksha or final liberation and intellectual companionship through the performance of household duties, including upbringing of children and offering reverence (shradha) to ancestors.

Thus, by developing virtues of purity of heart, fi­delity, chastity and mutual love, marriage is raised from being merely a biological association. Indian culture considers marriage not merely as an association but as absolute oneness. The marriage ceremony binds a man and a woman into a single complete being of which one half is the man and the other half is the woman.

Vanaprastha Ashram:

After the responsibilities to children are over, the parents are expected to take to social welfare work, so that they do not remain entrapped in moha (attachment). The idea is not to retire to forests and live in a place away from human habitation but to live in vil­lages, away from thickly populated cities. Thus, the idea of third stage is to develop a new level of interest and action and not merely a retirement into a particular place.

The idea also is that people in far off places (vil­lages) will get an opportunity to consult for their problems those who have spent their best years in that field. Even kings and rulers visited re­tired people for similar purposes. Thus, vanaprastha people were superior guides on social problems. The retirement of the old people (after 50 years of age, which is not a fixed age but is an average age which permits variations) also gives an opportunity to the youth to make experiments and contribute to the variety and richness of life

Sanyasa Ashram:

Sanyasa is the final stage in life’s growth. It differs from the vanaprastha stage in two respects—in the development of interests and in the development of motivation. While the dominant interest in grahasthya stage is the family, in vanaprastha stage it is human society as a whole, in sanyasa stage, the interest is the Universe with its universal con­sciousness. Interest in the universal consciousness is identification with total existence in its deepest being.

As regards motivation in grahasthya stage, the individual is motivated to seek the interest of members of fam­ily, while in the vanaprastha stage, he is motivated to work for the interest of a particular group or community or human society. In both cases, if interests are achieved, the grahasthi and the vanaprastha feel happy and experience pleasure; if not, they feel unhappy and experience pain. When motivation is related to an end, success or failure in them leads to pleasure or pain respectively.

Such actions are called interested actions, i.e., actions inspired by fruit of action. Contrary to these, action in sanyasa is disinterested action. Let us take the example of speaking truth. A person may speak truth when it pays him, another person may do so even if he has to lose by it. One does it (speaks truth) viewing it as a duty or a com­mand that comes from conscience without the calculation of gains or losses, or even at the cost of his life

Varnas: Four-fold Order of Society:

Varna order is different from the caste system. While the latter is believed to be the greatest blot on Indian culture, since it has divided the society into conflicting camps, perpetrated harsh sufferings on a large section of the Indian people, and has made social justice difficult, or has proved socially monstrous, politically suicidal, morally obnoxious and economically disastrous, the former is the division of people into groups on the basis of aptitudes and abilities and vocations.