Indian Culture Thoughts and Practices class today.

Sometimes I attend a class in college that really touches me intensely and makes me feel a lot of emotions. That is what happened in my Indian Culture Thoughts and Practices class today.

In ancient Indian Sanatanadharma, we had the four stages of life under the purview of Varnashrama under which the third stage of life was the Vanaprastha. Vanaprastha is the stage where one's skin starts wrinkling, you become grandparents, you are expected to move away from worldly matters and embark on a spiritual journey and connect with nature to attain moksha.

What really appealed to me about Vanaprastha is when my professor correlated it to the contemporary world and how it still holds so much relevance. You grow up, your parents grow up spending a majority of their lives helping you grow up and once they realize that you are old enough to handle all responsibilities, they withdraw and try to live their lives together again. They become closer as a couple and more interdependent on each other, they withdraw from the struggles of life and try to lead a more peaceful and calmer life but shouldn't be confused with going senile as this is not the end of life but a stage of attaining serenity and wisdom after a turbulent life, they want to do things that they've not done together in life before like travel and experience new things together. It is a journey of higher discovery that a couple takes together after a rather demanding and taxing grihasthashrama.

This is so true because I actually see it happening with my own parents. They are not only my parents but grandparents as well. They're leading a much more peaceful life together now and travelling around everywhere like never before and it makes me extremely happy to see them doing these things together as a couple. Indian culture has always been so profound, it's amazing!