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"I was there to meet the guru Sri
Nochur Venkataraman, known as Acharya (“Teacher”) to his disciples. Acharya is
a quiet, humble man dedicated to helping people attain enlightenment; he has no
interest in Western techies looking for fresh start-up ideas or burnouts trying
to escape the religious traditions they were raised in. Satisfied that I was
neither of those things, he agreed to talk with me.
"I told him my conundrum: Many people
of achievement suffer as they age, because they lose their abilities, gained
over many years of hard work. Is this suffering inescapable, like a cosmic joke
on the proud? Or is there a loophole somewhere—a way around the suffering?
"Acharya answered elliptically,
explaining an ancient Hindu teaching about the stages of life, or ashramas. The
first is Brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to
learning. The second is Grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates
wealth, and creates a family. In this second stage, the philosophers find one
of life’s most common traps: People become attached to earthly rewards—money,
power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime.
"The antidote to these worldly
temptations is Vanaprastha, the third ashrama, whose name comes from two
Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage, usually
starting around age 50, in which we purposefully focus less on professional
ambition, and become more and more devoted to spirituality, service, and
wisdom. This doesn’t mean that you need to stop working when you turn
50—something few people can afford to do—only that your life goals should
adjust.
"Vanaprastha is a time for
study and training for the last stage of life, Sannyasa, which should be
totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment. In times past, some Hindu men
would leave their family in old age, take holy vows, and spend the rest of
their life at the feet of masters, praying and studying. Even if sitting in a
cave at age 75 isn’t your ambition, the point should still be clear: As we age,
we should resist the conventional lures of success in order to focus on more
transcendentally important things.
"I told Acharya the story
about the man on the plane. He listened carefully, and thought for a minute.
“He failed to leave Grihastha,” he told me. “He was addicted to the rewards of
the world.” He explained that the man’s self-worth was probably still anchored
in the memories of professional successes many years earlier, his ongoing
recognition purely derivative of long-lost skills. Any glory today was a mere
shadow of past glories. Meanwhile, he’d completely skipped the spiritual
development of Vanaprastha, and was now missing out on the bliss of Sannyasa.
"There is a message in this for
those of us suffering from the Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation. Say
you are a hard-charging, type-A lawyer, executive, entrepreneur,
or—hypothetically, of course—president of a think tank. [see note below] From early adulthood to
middle age, your foot is on the gas, professionally. Living by your wits—by
your fluid intelligence—you seek the material rewards of success, you attain a
lot of them, and you are deeply attached to them. But the wisdom of Hindu
philosophy—and indeed the wisdom of many philosophical traditions—suggests that
you should be prepared to walk away from these rewards before you feel ready.
Even if you’re at the height of your professional prestige, you probably need
to scale back your career ambitions in order to scale up your metaphysical
ones."
~ Arthur C Brooks, "Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think: Here's how to make the most of it.", Atlantic Monthly, July 2019
You can read it
here.
nb: note: Not just the people who have such highly visible and lucrative successful careers. Happens to a high powered full time momma or tutor, a dedicated maintainer of a house or lifestyle, or a respected volunteer church or community leader as well.
