From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

by Arthur C. Brooks

To break the attachment to these idols requires movement to a new stage of life, with a new set of skills—spiritual skills. The change can be painful, Acharya said, like becoming an adult for a second time. And it means letting go of things that defined us in the eyes of the world. In other words, we have to move beyond the worldly rewards to experience transition and find wisdom in a new ashrama—and so defeat the scourge of attachments. That ordinarily occurs, if we are diligent, around age fifty. And that new stage? It is called vanaprastha, which comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.”[1] This is the stage at which we purposively begin to pull back from our old personal and professional duties, becoming more and more devoted to spirituality and deep wisdom, crystallized intelligence, teaching, and faith. It does not mean the perfect life requires retiring at age fifty into a forest; rather, that one’s life goals must readjust. Vanaprastha is the metaphysical context of the second curve. But vanaprastha isn’t the last stop, Acharya told me. That would be sannyasa, the last spiritual stage that comes in old age. This is the stage totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment.