Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom

that is a sort of cursed cross-grainedness and unwillingness either to
listen (if not obey) or to cooperate within the bounds of family life and
politic society. Later on we find that the comity of nations, that is the
friendship between peoples of different countries, cultures, and polit­
ical systems, is founded on that bedrock of tolerant cooperation. It is
the bedrock of world peace.
This stage helps in civilizing us by cultivating love, forgiveness, af­
fection, compassion, tolerance, and patience to accommodate the dif­
fering emotional and social environments. It all depends upon
generosity, hospitality, and give and take. Hence, it is the highest of the
ashramas, or stages.
Moksa to a youth is taught as detachment from the vagaries and
disappointments of life. To a young child it is explaining that a
promised trip to the zoo or amusement park must be postponed be­
cause it is pouring with rain. It is explaining that Daddy and Mommy
cannot always afford the most expensive toys. Later on it is consoling
an adolescent who fails to be admitted to the university of his or her
dreams. Sometimes detachment is being willing to concede to our ju­
niors that even adults are fallible and can be wrong-do wrong-and
having the humility to apologize. This is the bank of moksa, the
training in detaching ourselves from the sufferings of everyday life, in
a thousand ways. Often we have to acknowledge those sufferings in
order to detach ourselves from them. Conversely, as we all enjoy a
thousand successes, having the modesty to share them and "give away
the grandeur," that is to say, not to take the glory to ourselves, to our
own ego, but humbly to dedicate our fortune to a greater and higher
source, to see ourselves as instruments and beneficiaries of fortune but
not ultimately as their architect. This is moksa, the sweet, flower­
scented, but sometimes sad bank of the river that channels the current
of our lives.
The performance of duty becomes instinctive. Detachment is al­
ways a struggle. That is why the third stage of life is one of progressive