Most world religions and philosophies make the cardinal error of supposing that what they see as the meaning of life should, by virtue of its importance, apply to everybody irrespective of age, circumstance, or position. So proud of these religions and philosophies of their insight into existence, they can’t help but accord them universal and dogmatic application.
But Hinduism is a great deal more supple and imaginative. Hinduism too has a sense of how a good life should be lived, but crucially the religion never assumes that the rules should apply across the board. Rather, Hinduism cuts up populations into segments and then differentiates right conduct according to four life stages, collectively called ashramas.
The first of these ashramas is termed brahmacharya and covers the period of life when one is a child and a student. Here, however serious life might be overall, one is allowed to play, to be tender, and to give free reign to the imagination, but one must also learn and obey.
Then more arduously comes another life stage, one when one becomes a grihaster or householder. This is the time for maximal involvement in practical matters. There might be little time for prayer or contemplation; it’s the moment for building up capital, for buying a house, developing a profession, and having a family of one’s own. This stage might last 20 years or more.
And eventually practical obligations do recede; children grow up and leave home, and it’s then time to become a vanaprasta or forest walker. That is someone who can increasingly surrender practical tasks and reorient themselves to the spiritual realm by going for walks, ideally and rather poetically, in mango forests.
Then lastly, when we’re truly done with business and when family life has ceased to make all but the most minor calls on us, we are to follow Hinduism’s allowed to enter the last stage of sanyasa where we renounce worldly goods, don a simple robe, and wander the world in search of ultimate sources of enlightenment, charity, and spiritual friendship.
We may not agree with every detail of the way Hinduism carves up a life, but we can admire the imaginative way in which the religion seeks to align its teachings with the particular demands of society, the body, and the family across time. It would be as absurd to entice an 18 year old to do yoga for six hours a day while contemplating the absolute as it would be to spend all one’s time in business meetings as a 70 year old.
There is a time for moxa - the striving to liberate oneself from the cycle of eternal life - and then there is a time for arthur when we must head to the office and sound serious during company presentations. Both are, in their respective contexts, equally legitimate and equally important.
Hinduism reminds us that there is no simplistic, unitary goal to life. We shouldn’t ask ourselves what the right way to live is, per se, as Hinduism knows it all depends on where on the journey of life we happen to be.