section_path: Institutions/Asrama
section_name: Asrama
paragraph_text: Asrama
  
  Traditionally the life of a Hindu is divided into four Āśramas (phases or life stages; another meaning includes monastery). The four ashramas are: Brahmacharya (student), Grihastha (householder), Vānaprastha (retired) and Sannyasa (renunciation). Brahmacharya represents the bachelor student stage of life. Grihastha refers to the individual's married life, with the duties of maintaining a household, raising a family, educating one's children, and leading a family-centred and a dharmic social life. Grihastha stage starts with Hindu wedding, and has been considered the most important of all stages in sociological context, as Hindus in this stage not only pursued a virtuous life, they produced food and wealth that sustained people in other stages of life, as well as the offsprings that continued mankind. Vanaprastha is the retirement stage, where a person hands over household responsibilities to the next generation, took an advisory role, and gradually withdrew from the world. The Sannyasa stage marks renunciation and a state of disinterest and detachment from material life, generally without any meaningful property or home (ascetic state), and focused on Moksha, peace and simple spiritual life.
  
  The Ashramas system has been one facet of the dharma concept in Hinduism. Combined with four proper goals of human life (Purusartha), the Ashramas system traditionally aimed at providing a Hindu with fulfilling life and spiritual liberation. While these stages are typically sequential, any person can enter Sannyasa (ascetic) stage and become an Ascetic at any time after the Brahmacharya stage. Sannyasa is not religiously mandatory in Hinduism, and elderly people are free to live with their families.