The dilemma of Dharma vs Desire

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Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 3 – Verse 35

[It is far better to perform one’s natural prescribed duty, though tinged with faults, than to perform another’s prescribed duty, though perfectly. In fact, it is preferable to die in the discharge of one’s duty, than to follow the path of another, which is fraught with danger.]

In my previous blog, we talked about how the basic purpose of human life should be your own happiness. The discussion was centred on Seligman’s hypothesis – happiness ?comes from pleasure, engagement and meaning. Interestingly, as humans evolve from pleasure to engagement to meaning, their individual level of happiness is enhanced exponentially. And if more people follow such a progression, we can certainly look forward to a happier and progressive society as well as a prosperous planet.

This time, we delve into the topic deeper from two more frameworks on life purpose, or what keeps us happy and fulfilled – one originating in the 20th century and another on life purpose that dates centuries back from Ancient India. In fact, it is in front of our eyes, but we have managed to ignore it quite effectively!

The pecking order of needs

In management classes, we were taught about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which provided a model on how human needs evolve as we progress through different stages of life. Whether you have been part of management school or not, it doesn’t harm to refresh our memory a bit. The Maslow hierarchy is as follows, from low level to high level needs. And it is literally in the form of a pyramid:

Physiological: Basic human survival needs include food and water, sufficient rest, clothing and shelter, overall health, and reproduction.

Safety: Protection from violence and theft, emotional stability and well-being, health security, and financial security.

Love and belonging: Friendships, family bonds, physical and emotional intimacy and membership in social groups.

Esteem: Self-respect (the belief that you are valuable and deserving of dignity) and self-esteem (confidence in your potential for personal growth and accomplishments). According to Maslow, self-esteem can come from two sources: one is respect and acknowledgment from others, and the other is your own self-assessment.

Self-actualization: Fulfillment of your full potential as a person. Examples of these include education, skill development, refining of talents in areas such as music, athletics, design, cooking, and gardening—caring for others, learning a new language, traveling to new places, winning awards.

The first three were defined as lower-level needs while the top two are high level needs. But Maslow also asserted that only self-actualization is a ‘growth need’ while the other four are deficiency needs.

We can surmise that deficiency comes from the actual or perceived lack of something. Although your wants are evolving to higher levels in the first four stages, they are still wants.?Consider esteem as an example, in the case of a well-paying job that meets your physiological and safety needs. Today, we would add materialism, but there was no ‘iPhone’ when Maslow framed this theory, metaphorically speaking!

But there can be significant divergence, for instance, between how an employee views his/her career progression in an organization, and how management views it. An employee may join with certain expectations and understanding of his/her role, while organizational priorities and situations may mandate a different JD over time. This will lead the employee to feel lost and disconnected and have lower esteem. He/she may start underperforming and get even more dissatisfied to see colleagues move higher on the hierarchy.

Moreover, some employees prefer to stick to their areas of specialization, while others are intrapreneurial in nature. Machines should be programmed, not people. Some important to-dos for leaders in such a case become:

-???????Constant communication on roles and responsibilities

-???????Appreciation for achievements

-???????Transparent explanation of organizational priorities

-???????Understanding of the individual’s state of mind

-???????Endeavour to give employees growth opportunities that excite them, else they will look for these opportunities somewhere else.

-???????Respect each team member for his/her strengths. If parents are told not to compare kids, why not leaders?

If we take a slightly interesting tangent, marketers caught on to the esteem need quite well over the decades. With growing prosperity and years of marketing dollars being spent (or sunk in many cases too), we associate more with brands as opposed to products. ‘I need transportation’ today means a lot many things. The car you buy can symbolize luxury, speed, power, status, design sensibility, colour, brand make, coolness, perceived values (name and country association – may be even linked to patriotism), or even environment friendliness.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Transportation is a given – these multiple associations will influence whether we will go for a Toyota, Suzuki, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, Mahindra or Tata. Each brand has a variety of popular models, and each model has different variants based on looks, features, service packages, etc. The level of customization is insane compared to the days of Henry Ford, who developed the Model T Ford in black colour. He famously said:

“You can have any car you want, as long as it’s black!”?

If Ford was alive, I am sure he would have a lot to say to marketers today! This is true across products and services we consume at present. People are increasingly seeking products and services that, in their view, will fulfil their esteem needs. The price they pay may include a huge brand premium, because association with the brand helps them feel more fulfilled – a showcase of their achievements, likes and dislikes or what they stand for.

The Maslow pyramid structure is meant to rank the needs, and also illustrate that it gets lonelier at the top, just how we tend to view hierarchies! The core debatable point in Maslow’s hierarchy is whether one need must be fulfilled before the next one kicks in. Maslow agreed that no need gets 100% resolved before the next one is activated. People may exist, in terms of mental state, at all three levels – you are often juggling between the race for a promotion, spending time with family as well as safety and security (rising cost of living means everyone needs to plan for retirement anyways). A lot depends on the kind of experiences you have in life. ?

The self-actualisation level, on the other hand, is about genuine desire to grow as a person, not because there is something you are seeking from outside – of being as opposed to having. The other three levels are externally driven, while self-actualisation is your inner voice, when all the external noise quietens down. As the shloka from the Bhagavad Gita emphasizes above, life is lived best when you realise and follow your own truth.

The four Purusharthas

Now what would you say if someone told you that a very interesting, and far more evolved framework in this domain emanated centuries ago in ancient India? Life was way more simple in those days, and so were the professions. There were no corporate hierarchies or multinational corporations. Cottage industries, which are generally so marginalized today, were the only living reality of business in that time. But human thinking and intellect somehow seemed far more evolved, and this framework is just one example.

It is something we would have come across in our day-to-day life, but did not really contemplate seriously – Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha. These are the four Purusharthas or goals of human life in Indian philosophy, and are defined as follows (Yogapedia):

Dharma - includes duties, conduct and virtues. Dharma means truth or right way of living, and can be thought of as one’s true purpose in life.

Artha - incorporating wealth, career, prosperity and financial security, Artha refers to having the means and material comfort to live with ease.

Kama - signifies desire for pleasure, enjoyment, love, intimacy, affection and even music or art. Whilst excessive kama can lead to overindulgence, the right kind of Kama can help individuals to fulfill their dharma with passion.

Moksha - the ultimate goal of human life; self-realization and liberation from the cycle of reincarnation. Moksha is believed to occur when an individual has successfully achieved Artha, Kama and Dharma.

The first point to note that this is a framework of purpose and not needs. When you compare it with Maslow’s hierarchy, Kama seems to incorporate physiological and social needs, while Artha may serve the need for safety and esteem.

Photo by RODNAE Productions

Interestingly, ancient Indian philosophy agreed that pleasure is one of the important purposes of life, not a need! The first three Purusharthas already seem to synch well with Seligman’s hypothesis of pleasure, engagement and meaning. Kama is straightforward, whereas Artha may be construed as enjoying success through pursuit of your chosen field of specialization.

Dharma means being cognizant of and living with good values, which would automatically include helping others and being a positive contributor to social growth and welfare. Be conscious of thoughts, words and action, and have compassion and sensitivity to others. According to the Bhagavad Gita:

“The greatest dereliction of Dharma is to desert the helpless in their time of need.”

The second major aspect, as pointed out by Swami Sarvapriyananda, is the concept of hierarchy, or in this case the absence of it! We say Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha in that very order. Why? The explanation is that Artha and Kama are to be pursued within the boundaries or ‘Lakshman rekha’ of Dharma, making the latter the truly the most important Purushartha among the three. In fact, Dharma is the foundation on which we should go about our life. Similarly, Artha needs to be in abundance to support Kama.

“Purushartha can be defined as material religiosity, economic development, sense gratification and, at the end, the attempt to become one with the Supreme."

Shri Shrimad A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

This sounds a better framework than Maslow’s hierarchy or Seligman’s hypothesis to me, as it merges individual purpose with society. Rigorous training in morality and values should be a necessary part of upbringing (here I do not mean dogmatic societal views, but generally accepted principles of good living), although children often hate to be told what to do.

Why should you lose your way in Kama and Artha without understanding values underlined by Dharma? The youth has dreams, aspirations and energy to do wonderful things and solve the most pressing problems on the planet. Once they are firmly grounded in values, they should be given the independence to both enjoy life and to shape their destiny. They are then less likely to go wrong, and society can be saved from a lot of strife and chaos.

Beyond life itself?

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.

Lao Tzu

Finally we come to Moksha, the one element in this framework that is neither visible in Maslow’s hierarchy nor Seligman’s hypothesis. Being last on the list is clearly misleading from a hierarchical perspective. But as we said, there is an interesting hierarchy in the Purusharthas, which is illustrated in the figure above.

Dharma, Artha and Kama are part of the life cycle, but Moksha goes beyond life itself. It is not surprising that while Dharma, Artha and Kama were mentioned in the original Vedic texts, Moksha came up in the later Upanishadic era, apparently when society felt the need to move to a higher level of consciousness.

Moksha is defined in several ways by our texts and thinkers over the ages:

• To be liberated from the cycles of birth and death.
• To be free from the bonds of life while you are living (jeevan mukta)
• To be aware of your true nature as Brahman (the infinite consciousness that unites us all)
• Being free from the illusion of life.
• A continuing revelation and opening to the never-ending depths of wisdom and love

It is very vital for each of us to come to terms with our own mortality, and the fact that nothing we accumulate in this world stays with us forever relations, possessions, money, just everything passes. Achieving liberation from life, while living, means to be ultimately at peace with having no desire or attachment at all. It would then mean that no adversity can ever trouble you again.

Related to this are the concepts of Pravritti and Nivritti – the former is devoting oneself to external action, while the latter is withdrawal from external action to focus on liberation. That is why, Hindu society also identifies four ashramas - Brahmacharya (student), G?hastha (householder), Vanaprastha (forest walker/forest dweller), and Sannyasa (renunciate). There should come a stage when you are able to withdraw from the world, detach from material life and move into spiritual life.

“Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or mental discipline, or philosophy (the four yogas) —by one, or more, or all of these—and be free.”

Swami Vivekananda

We have often seen stories of kings and queens in Indian history who move away from royal life (become forest dwellers) first, so that they can slowly withdraw from the world. And once they do that it becomes easier to progress to the final stage of Sannyasa.

Normally this happens after they have fulfilled worldly responsibilities, but our sages feel anyone can pursue moksha after the Brahmacharya stage. Similarly in Maslow’s hierarchy, people can aspire for self actualization without the need to fulfil lower order needs.

Prince Siddhartha of Lumbini (now located in modern day Nepal), who the world knows as Gautam Buddha, was one such person who abdicated life in his prime, leaving his wife and young son. The prince saw suffering for the first time in his life, and embarked on an exceptional quest to end all suffering, ultimately establishing the Buddhist religion. The story of his enlightenment and his subsequent teachings have guided and inspired spiritual seekers for centuries.

Gautam Buddha lived the life of an ascetic and renounced worldly affairs, but it may not be construed that renunciation is essential to achieve the highest levels of spirituality. In this regard, it is instructive to look at the life of Lord Krishna, the eighth avatar of Lord Vishnu, who is worshipped by us Hindus. But through the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna is known and revered around the world.

The core concept of Karma in the Bhagavad Gita is about being involved in worldly affairs, and yet being detached. Anyone who knows the story of Lord Krishna knows that his life was the perfect epitome of this message. The term Krishna Leela itself means that for Him, life is but a game. Give it your best and stay engaged, but do not get attached to it ever. But that seems an impossible path to follow, right? Then did we manage to simplify life over the ages or complicate it?

Enlightenment, detachment, renunciation seem pretty alien concepts to us who are engaged in the agonies and ecstasies of day-to-day life. And frankly these terms were quite glossed over when we were taught about them in school (unless some of us had the benefit of really dedicated and passionate teachers). It is the very peak of spirituality, and one may wonder why this ultimate knowledge is required at all at this stage. But I firmly believe that this ultimate knowledge prepares us better for living in our present moment, no matter which stage of life we are in. And this will be the focus of my newsletter article next week.