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ASHRAMAS
A well-organized human life must have four distinct phases called ASHRAMAS
Brahmacharya: The first phase is devoted to study, and extends from the age of 8 years to sometimes 25 years. It is a period of learning and obedience where you learn your homework (dharmas)
Grihasthya: The second phase is devoted to the founding of a home and the experience of fatherhood (up to fifty). It is a period of activity and enrichment where we discover prosperity (artha) and pleasure (kama)
Vânaprastha: (one who goes into the forest) The third stage of life is marked by the birth of small children, and is devoted to religion, far from active life, in the practice of meditation and asceticism (tapas), thus preparing for Sannyasa. It is a period of progressive detachment where one transmits his goods and his know-how to his children (from 50 to 74 years old)
Sannyasa: (complete abandonment, renunciation)
The fourth stage is a total renouncement of social life, and even of identity. It is an anticipated death, in silence (mauna), in the exclusive search of MOKSHA.
This period is a preparation for physical death, but not only, because human life not being considered as the best that can happen, we seek above all to lighten the weight of the samskaras (impressions, traces, memories) attached to the experience of individual life (jivatman) and the ultimate cause of its continuity.
The ultimate goal of a well understood life is therefore MOKSHA, (liberation) or MUKTA, a state which no longer produces additional karma, and which escapes the grip of SAMSARA. One who has reached moksha is called a jivanmukti, a living freed person.
There is a direct route which avoids brahmacharya, grihastya and vanaprastha, that of the sadhus who enter prematurely into sannyasa. They are found all over India where they wander in a single saffron robe and beg for food. The entry into the sannyasa is generally consecrated by a guru and takes the name of sannyasa diksha.
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