In childhood he enjoys games and songs, lessons and schooling, and every kind of happy delight. In childhood he gives no thought at all to his future, does not worry or fret over it, and lives his life as a kind of fancy. While he is in this state, forgetful of the world itself, youth comes upon him, beyond anything he has willed. The very moment youth enters, he is blind to everything around him; blinded by pride, he burns away morality and honesty, honour and dishonour, self-respect and decency, dedicates his life to the effort of enjoying something or other in it, makes his head crazy, and with crazy feelings and crazy thoughts sets his life on the road to waste. Just while he is floundering in these pleasures of the senses, manhood enters. As soon as manhood enters, he is bound by many things: responsibilities, the household duties that rest on him as a burden, the duties he must perform; and he tries to think as though he lived in some separate world of his own. Believing that some power has bound him, man turns over plans of many kinds, resolved to make a fitting effort to escape from that bondage. Just while he is in this state of confusion, old age enters. His eyes grow dim, his legs can no longer walk, his ears stop hearing, his hands tremble; brooding over what has passed in his life, he brings his life into a state of wondering what further hardships it will meet. Through childhood, youth, manhood and old age he finds all the time he needs to think about worldly matters, but for thinking of God this old man finds no time at all. ‘By what path will peace of mind come to me? Will the Ānanda of the Ātma come to me?’ Such inquiry is wholly absent in the old man; he only worries over what has passed in his life and what is yet to pass, and so brings his life to its end.