The Ashram as a Secular Place: An Understanding of the Human as a Spiritual Place

Abstract

In classical Indian thought, four Ashramas, or stages of life, are enumerated. Ashram communities are described in the Indian epics, as in the legend of Sakuntala, discussed by Romila Thapar, who also proposes in her essay “Exile and Kingdom” that Ashrams evolved on the fringes of emerging urban societies, along pilgrim routes, as places of learning and hospitality. In modern times, Tagore and Gandhi re-interpreted the Ashram model as a centre for an indigenous approach to education, and an experimental lifestyle that offered new paradigms for an emerging social order based on Indian economy and knowledge systems. The Ashram community as it evolved over the centuries around the person of the Guru, or the teacher who represented a wisdom based on lived experience, included the concept of the “Sat Sangh”, which was the coming together of seekers after Truth. This approach to the Ashram community was characteristic of the bhakti movement of devotion, which was egalitarian in its social context. Such experiments in the Ashram ideal stressed the secular aspect of community building, and helped in the formulation of alternative approaches to education based on the Indian tradition.