KIRAN ATMA: Ashramas

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Hinduism - What Is Varnashrama Dharma?

What Is Varnashrama Dharma?

In the dharma literature, varnashrama dharma is the ordering of dharma or religious duty based on the hierarchical social ordering of the four major social groups (varnas) and the four successive stages of life (ashramas).

According to this theory, all people would be able to discern their social status and appropriate function based on their social class and stage of life.

The interrelationship between these two sets of categories is often used to denote traditional Hindu society, in theory if not always in fact.

The term survives in modern times, but because the doctrine of the ashramas is now largely ignored, those who uphold varnashrama dharma are primarily defending the hierarchical social divisions commonly known as thecaste system.

What are the four fundamental varnas and what do they do?

The Varna system is a system of social stratification based on caste.

According to this system, there are four major groups:

Brahmins (priests, educators, and intellectuals),
Kshatriyas (warriors, monarchs, and administrators),
Vaishyas (agriculturalists, merchants, and farmers),
and Shudras (workers, labourers, artisans).

~Kiran Atma

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Hinduism - What Are Life Stages Or Ashramas?

There were four stages (ashramas) in the life of a twice-born man, that is, a man born into one of the three "twice-born" groups in Indian society—brahmin, kshatriya, or vaishya—who are eligible for the adolescent religious initiation known as the "second birth," as described in the dharma literature.

Immediately after this initiation, the young man would live as a celibate student (brahmacharin) in his guru's home, studying the Vedas.

The householder (grhastha) was the second stage, in which he would marry, establish a family, and participate in worldly activities.

As a forest-dwelling hermit (vanaprastha), he would gradually separate himself from worldly entanglements in the third stage.

The last level was as a complete renunciant (Sanyasi), who has given up all in the pursuit of religious truth.

These four phases represent an idealistic evolution and should not be interpreted as depicting real practice, since most men never go beyond the householder stage and have no desire to do so.

The conflict between two different kinds of religious life—that of the householder, who is grounded in the world, and that of the ascetic, who renounces the world—lies underneath this idealized process.

The latter ideal was developed by religious adepts known as shramanas and evolved into Buddhist and Jains monastic austerity, which was seen as a higher religious path to the householder's existence.

Both of these organizations were powerful—the Jains had a large role in southern Indian culture until the ninth century C.E.—and it is widely assumed that the four ashramas emerged as a method to appropriate and convert this ascetic tension.

The four-stage concept established a place and time for asceticism, but only as the last level, at the conclusion of one's life.

The obvious message was that one should only pursue religious truth after meeting one's societal and familial obligations.