Heinrich Zimmer described these four stages of life in Hindu philosophy:

1. Disciple stage: It is the time of submission to an authority, learning, accepting criticism, and conforming.
2. Adult stage: Midlife; it is a time to step on a role of responsibility like managing a house, being married, taking care of dependents, working, submitting to social constraints or imposing them to others. This is a time of total conformity to an identity defined by society.
3. Hermit stage: Afternoon of life; as one’s dependents enter their own adult stage, one can let go of social and familial duties. Letting go of these allows one to withdraw from society and engage in contemplation and meditation.
4. Pilgrim stage: In the evening of our lives, we dedicate ourselves to endless walking, which symbolizes “the nameless Self with the omnipresent heart of the World”. This stage involves complete detachment from Self and the world as well as the past and the future. One simply become the present.

I propose that stages 2 and 3 don’t have to be completely linear. Once one gets past the disciple stage, one can choose to let go of social identities and pursue pilgrimage then, if one wants, go back to society to live a social life.

This also reminds me of the problem about public work vs private work or why would anyone not live in public.

References

Gros, F. (2014). A Philosophy of Walking. Verso.

Hindu philosophy distinguishes four stages on the journey through life. The first is that of the pupil, the student, the disciple. Thus in the morning of life, the essential tasks are to obey the master’s injunctions, absorb his lessons, submit to criticism and conform to the principles laid down. It is a time for receiving and accepting. In the second stage the man, now adult, in the midday of his life, becomes the master of a house, married, responsible for a family: he manages his property as well as he can, contributes to the upkeep of the priests, exercises a trade or skill, submits to social constraints and imposes them on others. He agrees to wear the social masks that define a role for him in society and in the family.Later, in the afternoon of his life, when the children are ready to take over, the man can abandon all social duties, family expenses and economic concerns, to become a hermit. This is the stage of ‘withdrawal to the forest’, in which through contemplation and meditation he familiarizes himself with what has always lain unchanged within us, waiting for us to awaken it: the eternal Self, transcending masks, functions, identities, histories.And the pilgrim eventually succeeds the hermit, in what should be the endless, glorious summer evening of our lives: a life henceforth dedicated to travel in which endless walking, in one direction and another, illustrates the harmonization of the nameless Self with the omnipresent heart of the World. The sage has now renounced everything and attained the highest level of freedom: that of perfect detachment. He is no longer involved, either in himself or in the world. Indifferent to past and future alike, he is nothing other than the eternal present of coexistence. And as we know from the pilgrimage diaries of Swami Ramdas, it is when we renounce everything that everything is given to us, in abundance. Everything: meaning the intensity of presence itself.