In this Weekly Wisdom, Gurudev sheds some light on the four stages of life and the most important values to teach to disrespectful children.
In response to a question about how the ancient rishis saw life, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar shared the following:
The ancient rishis divided life into four parts:
- The first 25 years of your life you focus on studies and acquiring knowledge. So, a student has to toil and work hard, and shouldn’t run after pleasure. This is the rule. One who goes after pleasure, he can’t get knowledge. And if you want to get knowledge, you have to work hard. You can’t go on pleasure trips.
- From 25 to 50 they said, is the time for pleasure. Enjoy your life. Take on responsibility, family, children, the household, and all that for the next 25 years.
- From 50 to 75, they emphasized social life. You’ve done enough to enjoy your life, your children, your family. You’ve acquired enough. Now, you should share it with the world. Extended family. By 50, you have acquired and enjoyed all that you want. If you haven’t done it by 50, you’re not going to. It’s not going to happen. So from 50 to 75, you do social work, social service.
Share your knowledge with everybody. You’re not thinking, ‘mine, my life, my family,’ but ours, our world, our society, our people.
- From 75 to 100 is the time for renunciation. Be a recluse. Renounce everything. All that you have to do is just go deep within. Meditate and keep moving. And then, you transfer wisdom to others.
It isn’t necessary that everyone goes through all four stages. Some can jump from one to four. Some can go from one to three and skip two. But mostly, people get stuck in number two and don’t move any further. Until the end, at 90 years old, they’re still stuck in that little world with no evolution behind them.
So these are the four stages of life.
Challenges in stage two - Children
Today, many people ask me what to do about their children. “They’re not listening to us,” they say. Many have children abusing their parents. Children at five or ten years old blame their parents and abuse them. They scream, shout, and behave funny. They’re like punks, or violent children.
The parents ask me what to do. How do you educate a ten or a five year old in developing values?
They don’t listen to anybody. They live in their own world. As children we were told, “First respect your mother.”
Don’t just love mother, but respect mother and father, and then the teacher. Did you know that 40% of the teachers in Europe are depressed? Because the children at school don’t obey them, but scream and scold.
Teachers can’t scold them back because the parents would say, “You’ve traumatized my children.”
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