The Journey Within

The Sanatana Dharma lays out four stages of life — Brahmacharya, Grihasthashram, Vanaprastha, and Sanyasa. Study, household life, withdrawal, and renunciation. If you examine three of these stages closely, you'll notice something striking: they all demand strict discipline and abstention. Only one stage — Grihasthashram — permits indulgence. And not reckless indulgence, but something far more demanding: controlled indulgence. This distinction is worth sitting with. Those unfamiliar with the depth of Sanatana Dharma sometimes dismiss it as excessively rigid, a tradition that asks too much and gives too little. But this criticism dissolves the moment we understand one essential truth — there is no one else who expects anything from us. No cosmic auditor is tallying our failures. Every guideline, every discipline, every expectation exists for one purpose alone: our own purification, our own awakening. The tradition does not impose. It illuminates. So why does it allow — even pres...