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When I turned fifty, I had my highest salary ever, I worked less than ever, I still had a nice relationship with my wife (in Kali Yuga unbelievably), and I was a respected member of both karmi society and ISKCON. I was a rajadvipa – king of my island. I built two guest houses along with the house I lived in, and Bhakti Vikasa Swami, my Guru Maharaja, used to joke, “From householder you became houses holder.”
 
My move to the vanaprastha ashram was therefore no escape from material life, and it had an even greater impact on the devotees who surrounded me because they knew that I had no significant problems in my married life. Since only a few devotees knew what I was going to do, most were stunned after my departure. Some devotees commented that my leaving showed the right path for others to follow, and many are still in wonder, quietly and carefully observing what will come out of it. Others, who I weren’t familiar with, simply assumed that I was escaping from household life. The authority of the temple I moved to admitted, “When I heard you were coming, I thought you probably had problems in your family life.”
 
But that was far from the truth. Sundari Devi Dasi, my wife, fully supported my idea when I told her about it a year ago. Bhakti Vikasa Swami has been emphasizing the vanaprastha ashram for the last few years because now my generation is close to their 50s. (Of course, this is not his idea, he just “underlined” for us what is written in Prabhupada’s books – the daiva-varnashrama given directly by Lord Krishna). Maharaja once said that if your wife is a pure devotee, then she will take your hand and drag you to the doorstep, saying, “Please go, leave home, take complete shelter of Krsna, and preach to the society.” But if she is not at that level, you should be aware that it is better for her, for society in general, and for you to leave such a home, take complete shelter of Krsna, and preach to the society. So Sundari happily gave her consent, although she naturally harbored some apprehension. I asked for the blessings of my 16 and 18-year-old sons, who also supported me. Since the eldest got his driver’s license and can partially take over my role, he agreed to give me six months off to go to India. After that he will leave the nest, and I will be needed by the family for another year – the period when the youngest one finishes school.
 
After that I got permission from my Guru Maharaja and two senior friends and godbrothers. I applied for admission to the temple in Bhopal, India, where I didn’t know anyone! I knew that they were mostly my godbrothers and that they had a strong brahmacari ashram of more than 30 brahmacaris. I heard they had 100 surrounding congregation members, and that they were about to build a new temple. But other than that, I didn’t have much more information. Still, I was happy when I got the go-ahead from the temple and was ready for my vanaprastha adventure.
 
Why would someone withdraw from a situation in which they are completely satisfied? Why would a person move out of their comfort zone and go into an uncertain field where they don’t know anyone? After all, one of my friends, Gokula Candra Prabhu, is the temple president at the big temple in Salem, India, and he invited me there, but I politely asked for his blessing to go to Bhopal. Every time I was in Salem, the devotees treated me as the greatest guest, as if I were a king. Of course, that’s their role. But my role is that I needed to escape from the comfort I have been in for the last 30 years. I wanted to escape from the role of one who, on the pretense of yukta-vairagya, offers abundant food to Krsna, fully aware of what comes next. Why would anyone want to move out of their cozy home into uncharted territory? Only a crazy person can do it, or maybe someone crazy about Krsna. I was neither; just an ordinary devotee reading Prabhupada’s books with faith.
 
Vanaprastha life was in my mind even 15 years ago when my wife wanted a fourth child. We were in our mid-30s. The university ate up our youth, the mandatory military service in Croatia took another year, and then we built our house and decided to have children. The first son left his body immediately after birth. After that we had two more sons, and then she wanted a daughter. I complied and we tried for about a year. I said, “Okay, let’s try three more times and that’s it – we have to accept it as Krsna’s will.” Even then I thought, “If I had a fourth child at 37, when would I accept vanaprastha? Of course, it is not that I had perfect control over my life. Despite thorough planning, things can go wrong for any grhastha if he is not careful enough; he can suddenly slip up anytime and miss his eagerly awaited vanaprastha ashram. But Krsna mercifully gave me an opportunity when I turned 50, and I took it. Everything went well and smoothly.
 
I told my wife well in advance that I wanted to go to India for six months and she gave her blessing. When her devotee friend, also in her 50s, asked her why, she replied with a counter question: “How would I feel if I had not given my consent, and then my husband suddenly leaves his body in this mrtyu-loka with an unfulfilled desire?” Of course, this does not mean that she did not hide a stick in her heart. It said, “I can’t wait for you to leave the house” or “I’m sick of you”, and I knew there would come a time when she would use it once or twice. Women are gentle, but when they argue they can say unexpected things in their emotions. But as an experienced grhastha, I expected those rare occasions. I would not fire back, but instead patiently and humbly waited with folded hands for it to stop. But her anger was only brief; deep in her heart she gave me full support the whole time. She also had trepidation in her heart: “My husband, like Christopher Columbus, is going across the unknown sea. Will it work? Alone – without me.”
 
And it’s not that I was without anxiety. I felt like I was waiting to walk into the dentist’s office – one knows it has to be done for the sake of sreya, but there will still be some pain along the way. How will I adjust to a temple life I have never been a part of? What service would I do there? Will I be useful to the community at all? And even some silly fears like will I know how to wash my clothes?
 
Yes, it is true – although I have been trying to be a devotee for the past 25 years, I have never lived in a temple. And I have never washed my dhoti and kurta, as I confessed to Guru Maharaja! This can be confirmed by my wife, who was my two-legged washing machine. It’s not that I was exploiting her, that I was a dominant man who treated her as his slave. I too toiled in our grhastha ashram doing all kinds of services, from chimney sweeping to wood chopping. But we divided our family duties between us and each had our own tasks.
 
Although I did sweat during these activities, I am used to it. But how will I tolerate the different climate, sleeping on the floor, or the all-pervading chili in the prasadam? But I told myself: come what may, I will never complain. After all, I am not going there with the expectation of getting a golden (hiranya) bed (kasipu), but expecting to perform some austerities.
 
“You will last 2 months in Bhopal, and then you run away to Gokula’s lap!” joked Baladeva Vidyabushana Prabhu, my friend. I answered, “I would rather die on the battlefield!”
 
And I also liked to joke. Once I was with Sivananda Sena Prabhu, a childless grhastha in his fifties who had been considering the vanaprastha ashram but had not yet taken a decisive step in that direction. Beside us was my elder son Narottama who was lazily and lackadaisically participating in an energetic kirtan in his seaweed style – slightly moving his head, but not his legs at all. After looking sternly at my son to no avail, I turned to Sivananda Sena Prabhu and commented, “You know, when one has children, it’s easier to take vanaprastha!”
 
So the time has come for my inner battle that was before me – athato brahma jijnasa – time for a simpler life and separation from the grhastha idea.
 
As I mentioned earlier, there was some fear and mixed feelings. I thought, if I could do a one-year compulsory military service for the benefit of the government, then now I can do it voluntarily for the benefit of all (I will benefit, my family too, guru and Parampara will be pleased, ISKCON members would see that it is not so terrible, and I will finally serve society). It’s not like I was running towards vanaprastha completely relaxed with a big smile on my face. But I have some life experience and I know that such feelings are normal before any adventure. I admitted to my best friend Divya Prabandha Prabhu that there are some “rasa sandhi” – mixed feelings. I told him, “You know Divya, at the airport my wife will see me off and naturally a tear will slide down my cheek. But once I get on the plane, I’ll have a big smile on my face!”
 
I thought about how Prabhupada was brave and came to the West in his 70s. His health was fragile, he was penniless, he was without the support of his family, and he didn’t move to a well-established temple but went to a land where nobody knew Krsna. On the other hand, I am not at all brave, I am in my 50s and still in decent health, I have respectable amount of money in my pocket, I have the support of my family, and I am moving to a well-established temple where the temple president is happy to welcome me. As I waited for my journey to begin, my gratitude towards Prabhupada grew. I came to appreciate Ramananda Gopal Prabhu’s pujari service at Simhacalam in Germany more after he pushed me into it. Before, it looked easy from the outside, but once you get into it, you start to appreciate those who have dedicated their lives to this cause. Now, as I prepare to leave, I understand that it is not so easy.
 
I am aware that the process of detachment has just begun, and that it does not mean that a grhastha who is attached at 49 is completely detached when he turns 50. It’s not that a raw potato becomes soft and cooked after one minute of boiling. This is a process and things move slowly and gradually. And vanaprastha does not mean that it is necessary to immediately leave the company of one’s wife. No, this is a process. He does not leave his wife but his sexual life (if he failed to do so before it was advisable). It’s not that I left my family life out of the blue – with this step I just announced that the process of our separation has just begun. We have devoted most of our time in the last 25 years to ourselves. Yes, we socialized in a Krsna conscious way. We have had many wonderful bhajans, kirtans, festivals, lectures, and preaching activities. We spent a lot of time preaching to each other. But now is the time to preach to the wider community. If the wife wants, she can follow the husband and they can preach together for more than 10 years. But not to each other in the comfort of their own home! And after that Krsna will again show what is the natural path for both of them after 60.
 
To my surprise, even my boss did not accept that I quit. When my boss heard that I was coming back after six months, she said that work would be waiting for me and that I could take vacation for this year and next year together. If you get sick in the meantime, you could take some sick leave, she added. Is this a real vanaprastha, I wondered, earning even when I’m away? Yoga-ksemam vahamy aham. Then why am I still in fear when Krsna shows me at every step that He takes care of all my needs?
 
I finally hopped on a plane and reached the temple in Bhopal.
 
Leaving home was unthinkable when I was 25, but it was the same situation as when Sukanthi Mataji, Sundari’s best friend, was thinking about how she would one day be able to separate herself from her daughter. Now Sukanthi Mataji is eagerly waiting for her daughter to get married and start building her own nest. It is as natural now in my 50s to begin the process of separation. This is how Krsna advises that life should look like. As it was natural for me to enter the grhastha ashram 30 years ago, it is also natural that I should step in this direction. And when we follow the path given by Krsna, He rewards accordingly – ye yatha mam prapadyante. As I came to Bhopal, an inner feeling of deep happiness arose in my heart. The whole community here gives me full support and they are happy that I came to them.
 
Of course, that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t initially confused like every neophyte devotee who surrenders to Krishna and comes to live in the temple as a full-time devotee. The next day I went to wash my dhoti and kurta for the first time in my life, but I didn’t put enough washing powder in the bucket. Realizing this in the bathroom, I was too lazy to go back to the room and get more powder, so I saw someone’s nice brownish shampoo. “This will do too,” I thought. As I poured some into the bucket I spotted the label on the shampoo – amla tel. Proud to have learned to read Devanagari, I quickly realized – this is not shampoo but oil! What a mess; why do they keep this oil in the bathroom? I quickly understood that too after I couldn’t untie my sikha for days – somehow it never happened at my house even though I never used any oil for this purpose. Krishna’s arrangements are unpredictable. As I spent the next half hour in the bathroom trying to fix my mistake, I was not frustrated, but satisfied. And immediately after that episode, I sat in the dining room and carefully honored prasadam.
 
In the end, I called my wife for the first time since I arrived and we had a long conversation. “I’m finally living a life where I pay for my mistakes!” I told her, and she smiled because she knew it was my style of introducing some interesting story. I told her about the episode where I learned two new words in Hindi, “amla tel”, and she gave me tips about washing the white dhoti and kurta. I told her how extra careful I was while taking prasadam, so that my dhoti would not get dirty. And we both laughed heartily because after all I was the one who previously convinced her that it is normal to stain a dhoti while eating. But now I didn’t get any stains, and I was careful while eating like never before. Again, it’s not like I was taking advantage of my wife – I wasn’t watching TV while she was doing chores. I prepared the wood for this winter, paid a devotee to clean the chimney, and prepared well for my absence from home. But as far as taking prasadam is concerned, there must have been some negligence or selfishness on my part. Dvija Nayaka Prabhu, my brahmacari friend, could hardly identify with this example since he has been careful not to spoil his dhoti since time immemorial. My wife also told me that she realized what a nuisance it was to put wood in the stove every now and then. She enumerated some more of my duties and said that she began to appreciate my services more, which she had not been so aware of before.
 
It was only after a few days that we realized that our boys were solving their quarrels on their own; they became aware that there was no longer a father to mediate between them. And to be honest, at 50, I’m tired being the policeman or judge, investigating who started the fight first and who went over the edge first.
 
After 4 to 5 days, I made a short funny video “Jump on the vanaprastha train” to show my friends in Europe that there is no need to worry about anything. And immediately they, along with my wife, recognized my style and understood, “This is our old Murari – completely relaxed and prone to jokes.” And they laughed together with those who were quiet at first. There is no room for stiffness or fear – ye yatha me prapadyante – Krsna reciprocates accordingly. My wife told me how proud she is of me for serving the community of Bhopal, and after everything I finally grew up. It is natural for a woman to be happy because her husband will not be hanging on her shoulders forever. Someone grows up at 18, someone at 50 years, and someone never does. So if you missed the first train at 18, jump on this one in your 50s and join me now!
 
In Bhopal I decided to keep a low-key profile lest they will treat me like a raja. But I quickly realized that here the common devotee gets more respect than the president of the temple, or even the president of an entire yatra in the West. Surprisingly, the devotees here do not fight each other. Of course, I am aware that not every temple is like that and that in some temples I would be alone and left on my own, but Krsna mercifully arranged for me to come to this temple. Both my wife and I immediately realized that this step was good for me, for her, for our children, and for the devotee community, because someone has to take the first step. And in the end it was good for the society in general.
 
I was ashamed when the devotees offered me the arati lamp first in the temple, but for them it was quite normal and natural – I am the oldest here and was initiated before them. But in my heart I felt like a neophyte devotee. After all, everyone here had dedicated their whole life as a brahmacari while I was sitting on two chairs at the same time. They all know how to perform arati (I took a conch with both hands!), tie a shika, or wash a dhoti. Some of them have been living in the temple for more than 10 years, but I have been living in it for just a few months. However, I could not keep a low-key profile for long and soon I was treated with too much respect. I’m happy though, because I sleep on the floor with five roommates, take simple prasadam, and when it’s cold in the early hours of the morning I tolerate the situation by waiting for the sun (in the meantime, one can only warm oneself with incense!).
 
Now I’ve been here for almost four months and I’ve been left with the same impression from the beginning – the devotees respect each other and have the utmost respect for authority. I wondered, why don’t we have that in the West? They are just starting to build a multi-million dollar temple, and I have no doubt that they will succeed if they maintain such a beautiful mentality and atmosphere in the temple.
 
Although at first I held back and refused to give lectures, I kept telling stories about Prabhupada to my roommates. They asked me again and again if I could give a lecture, so I surrendered. The second and third lectures quickly followed. On Sundays they have several separate programs – for students, children and people in general – and each one is attended by more than 100 people. So I jumped on that train and Lord Krsna quickly provided me with innumerable opportunities.
 
Of course, I am inevitably questioned in the West and in the East as to why a vanaprastha ashram is necessary if your family is Krsna conscious. Rupa Goswami told us in his Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu: “In the process of surrendering to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, there are six items, and two of them are to accept whatever is favorable to devotional service and to reject whatever is unfavorable to devotional service.” Why is your wife who is devoted to you and the Lord not favorable company in devotional service? Of course, my wife is good company – but not for me, because over time I developed an attachment to her. This attachment is mixed with the bodily concept of life and should be gradually discarded.
 
Another concern is how I will manage my medical expenses if something suddenly happens and I am forced to go to the hospital. Maybe this is a valid question for someone who would take vanaprastha in the USA and doesn’t have health insurance, but it’s out of the question in India. I have some savings and I went to India with some. Nevertheless, medical care here is relatively cheap. In fact, my asthma reactivated and I went to the hospital in Bhopal. I paid $8 to the pulmonologist and $8 for several medications.
 
I immediately understood – it will be difficult not to come to Bhopal again. Acyuta Krsna Prabhu, the temple president, took me to his room; Abhirama prabhu, the best cook and dancer in the temple, and taught me how to make ginger tea and capatis (now you can guess – the kitchen was my wife’s department); and Bhima Prabhu was a fantastic kirtan leader. Priyavrata Prabhu, my roommate, taught me how to wear certain parts of Vaisnava clothing (the men will know what I’m talking about!). Taruna Krsna Prabhu and Marici Prabhu, apart from being my Hindi teachers, enjoyed the stories of Prabhupada, along with Priyavrata Prabhu. How can I forget them?
 
After a few months I will be back at work and be with my family again, but my eyes will be on Bhopal. When I come back and my wife sees my enthusiasm for vanaprastha life, I can only guess what her decision will be. Next time we will book two tickets!
 
Your servant, Murari Gupta Dasa
 
(marijanbilic@inet.hr)

Source: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=112574