Severe penances (Lectures)

Expressions researched:
"severe austerities and penances" |"severe austerities, penances" |"severe austerity, penances" |"severe penance" |"severe penances" |"severe physical penances"

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

Lecture on BG 2.1 -- Ahmedabad, December 7, 1972:

According to Vedic system, therefore, there is forced renunciation. Nobody wants to retire from family life, but the Vedic injunction is that after one has passed fifty years, he must leave his family life. Pañcāśordhvaṁ vanaṁ vrajet. In the beginning, as a student life, he's trained up, brahmacārī, undergoing severe austerities, penances, and taking instruction from the spiritual master about the temporary existence of this material world. In this way, he's trained up very nicely. And even after training, if he appears to be attached to this material world, he's allowed to go home and marry. And some of the brahmacārīs are allowed to remain naiṣṭhika-brahmacārī, without going home and accepting a wife. But one who cannot, he's allowed to accept wife and become a householder and remain there for twenty-five years. Because generally, the brahmacārī was going home at the age of twenty-four years, twenty-five years.