Light of the Bhagavata
by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

The beautiful white clouds, freed from all burdens of water distribution, float in midair, like mendicants freed from all family responsibilities.

As long as one is attached to the so-called responsibilities of family burdens, he is always full of cares and anxieties about meeting his family expenses. The four orders of social life, as designed in the varnasrama system, are very scientific and cooperative. In student life one is taught the primary principles of the human form of life. One who enters the householder’s life can execute the duties of a family man because he has already been trained for this job in the brahmacarya-asrama. And after fifty years of age the householder retires from family life and prepares for the life of sannyasa.

The householder is duty-bound to maintain the members of all three of the other asramas, namely the brahmacaris, the vanaprasthas, and sannyasis. In this way, every member of society was given a chance to retire for a higher order of spiritual culture, and the householders neglected no one. The brahmacaris, vanaprasthas, and sannyasis all curtailed their necessities to the minimum, and therefore no one would begrudge maintaining them in the bare necessities of life.

In Kali-yuga, however, the entire system has gone topsy-turvy. The student lives in luxury at the expense of the father or the father-in-law. When the educated, indulgent student becomes a householder by the strength of university degrees, he requires money by all means for all kinds of bodily comfort, and therefore he cannot spare even a penny for the so-called vanaprasthas and sannyasis. The vanaprasthas and sannyasis nowadays are those who were unsuccessful in family life. Thus the so-called sannyasis try to construct another home in the name of the sannyasa-asrama and glide down into all sorts of luxury at the expense of others. So all these varnas and asramas have now become so many transcendental frauds.

But that does not mean that there is no reality in them. One should not conclude that there is no good money simply because one has met with counterfeit coins. The sannyasa-asrama is meant for complete freedom from all anxieties, and it is meant for uplifting the fallen souls, who are merged in materialism. But unless the sannyasi is freed from all cares and anxieties, like a white cloud, it is difficult for him to do anything good for society.

Next chapter (LoB 33)