“It is the glory of man that he is conscious of himself. However, the self he is aware of is not a complete, adequate self. It is, unfortunately, a wanting, inadequate self.” Swami Dayananda Saraswati
The last post introduced the problem of existential human suffering.
Although our outer circumstances vary wildly, both the cause and the remedy for this basic human malady is the same for everyone.
Before we can find a solution to this problem, it’s first necessary to have a clear understanding of the cause.
The following article is the first of several to be excerpted from a commentary I am writing on the Bhagavad Gita. This will be a fairly systematic unfoldment of the main principles of Vedanta.
What I’m going to share with you here is a basic understanding of what drives human behaviour, and why you’ve most likely spent a lifetime seeking happiness in things that can never deliver it.
The Battlefield of the Human Mind
The human mind is a cauldron of unrest, conflict, desire, fear, and attachment.
This inner conflict is such an integral part of our experience that many of us aren’t even consciously aware of it. We assume that life is meant to be full of stress and grief.
But this inner turmoil is unique to human beings. Whereas animals follow their nature without question and without the burden of a ‘self-concept’, the faculty of intellect sets us apart from other creatures. We have the ability to self-reflect and to choose our own fate.
Both a blessing and potentially a curse, the power of self-reflection is the cause of our bondage and also the instrument of our liberation.
The problem with self-awareness is that the ‘self’ you become aware of may not be acceptable to you.
It’s for this very reason that human beings are driven by a sense of lack and inadequacy.
We’ll go on to explore how, by taking the body, mind and ego—which are by their very nature limited—to be who you are, you experience an acute sense of lack and limitation.
All beings have a natural compulsion to free. Limitation in any form, whether physical or mental, is unacceptable to us.
That’s why the mind, reeling against this sense of self-limitation, compels you to pursue an endless succession of desires.
“I WANT” becomes the mantra of the mind because, more than anything, you yearn to overcome the sense of limitation at the core of your being.
Your natural instinct for freedom and self-preservation manifests as binding desires for those things you believe will contribute to your well-being and aversions to whatever you believe will obstruct it.
A person can only want something they think they don’t already have. If you want to be happy it’s because you don’t already feel happy. If you want to be whole it’s because you currently feel incomplete.
Therefore, the more acutely you feel yourself to be lacking, the stronger your desires, wants and fears will be.
The mind is extroverted by nature and social conditioning only reinforces this.
That’s why you tend to fixate upon the objects of your environment.
You determine from an early age that if you could just get the world to match up to how you want it to be—if you could somehow master the transactional world and get what you want—THEN you’ll be happy, free and complete!
The First Three Pursuits
It’s on this premise that you spend your life pursuing the various ends that you believe will bring a lasting sense of wholeness.
Vedanta outlines four basic categories of human pursuit, called purushartha.
1. Security and Wealth (artha)
The first of these basic human goals is artha, or security. We all have essential requirements, such as food, clothing and shelter.
We rarely stop at the basics, however.
It doesn’t matter if you have a good job, a nice house, and a decent car. There are always going to be better jobs, bigger houses and flashier cars out there.
The sense that you never have quite enough is fuel for the fires of artha. Our hyper-consumerist culture takes full advantage of this and in a thousand subtle and not so subtle ways seeks to fan the flames of avarice.
Artha compels you to seek happiness in money, possessions, real estate, relationships, power, and recognition.
The problem is enough is never enough and fulfilment is perpetually elusive, because there’s always more and better out there somewhere.
2. Desire (kama)
The second human pursuit is kama, or desire.
Once security is no longer your main concern, your focus shifts to pleasure. You get bored and want to feel good so you likely turn to food, sex, entertainment, socializing, beer, gaming, travel, and an endless array of tantalizing pleasures.
For many in the West, who no longer have to worry about immediate survival, kama becomes their primary drive in life. That’s why the entertainment industry is one of the biggest industries on the planet.
3. Virtue (dharma)
When you realise that kama might bring pleasure but little fulfilment, you may turn to the third human pursuit, dharma.
The word ‘dharma’ has different meanings depending on the context, but in terms of purushartha it relates to the desire to be virtuous; to do what is right.
The more mature you become as a person, the more you commit to dharma by seeking fulfilment through friendship, helping others, giving to charity and various other noble acts. Instead of trying to extract all that you can from the world, you start to think in terms of giving something back to it; to making a difference in the world.
Almost all human endeavour can be rooted in one or more of those three categories, whether it’s vying for a promotion at work, investing money, frequenting singles bars, or picking up litter on the street. Whatever you’re doing, you’re generally doing it to attain security, pleasure, or renown and fulfilment.
The Limitations Inherent in Seeking
Some people get pretty good at the game. Perhaps they amass personal fortune and enjoy success and recognition. They marry the man or woman of their dreams and go on luxury cruises five times a year. Their quality of life is unquestionably good.
But that doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on their quality of mind. As the rich and famous often lament, success is no guarantee of happiness. In fact, sometimes the more you have, the more you suffer.
One of life’s great perversions is that everything is in a continual state of flux. Things are constantly changing. This makes it impossible to hold onto anything.
You could spend the best part of a lifetime striving to attain the greatest object of your desire only to find that, after the initial high, you become accustomed to it and it no longer provides the same emotional high.
Or perhaps the object itself changes. What can be your greatest delight one day can become the bane of your existence the next. If you don’t believe me, go take a look at the nearest divorce court!
The limitations inherent in pursuing artha, kama and dharma as a means of fulfilment are clear.
First of all, you have to acquire the object of your pursuit. This often involves a lot of time, effort, sacrifice and pain on your part. Even once you’ve attained it, you then have the struggle of maintaining it and seeing that you don’t lose it. The final pain involved is the pain of eventual loss. Whatever you gain in life you can and eventually will lose. The greater the pleasure the object gave you, the greater the pain you experience when you lose it.
The truth is, nothing remains fulfilling for very long. Things are constantly changing and the mind has a thirst for novelty. Given that other people are also chasing their own agendas and goals, this conspires to deliver endless frustration.
The basic conclusion that any sane and honest individual will reach is that life is a zero-sum game.
Life being what it is, every gain entails a loss.
You have the ability to transact in the world and pursue your goals, but there’s absolutely no way you can get what you want the whole time. Even when you do get what you want, it often comes with a hefty price tag, so you’d better be extremely sure that it’s what you really want.
Samsara
Once you get sucked into the game of desiring and acquiring, it can be hard to get back out of it.
In the East, the term for this is samsara.
The word samsara comes from the root samsri, meaning “to go round; revolve; pass through a succession of states”.
Samsara relates to the cycle of birth, death and rebirth; “passage through successive states of mundane existence”.
It’s a state of endless becoming. You’re never satisfied with what you have or what you are, so are compelled to keep performing action in the hopes of attaining certain results.
The problem is, the more you do, the deeper a hole you’re digging for yourself.
The wheel of samsara is kept in motion by desire. Desire prompts action, and the action creates a psychological tendency to repeat itself.
Let’s say one day I discover chocolate cake.
I pick up a spoon and taste it.
I discover that I like it, and this simple action—taking a bite of cake—creates a desire to eat more cake.
Each time I succumb to the desire, I strengthen both the desire and the tendency to act on the desire. This tendency to repeat an action is called a vasana.
The problem is, I’m no longer eating cake because I necessarily want to eat cake. I’m eating it because my likes (cake) and dislikes (lack of cake) are driving my psyche.
So who’s really running the show here?
To make matters worse, owing to the law of karma, every action generates a corresponding reaction. Before I know it, my cake vasana is out of control and I’m struggling with my weight and in danger of developing diabetes.
Once you’re on the samsaric treadmill it can be almost impossible to get off again.
You rely entirely on external supports to bring you happiness, even though this happiness is by its very nature fleeting.
But, like a junkie, you keep trying to extract whatever drops of pleasure you can squeeze out of life. Thus, the cycle of desire and action perpetuates.
The Fundamental Problem
Of course, it’s never really the object of your pursuit that you truly want.
What you really want is to feel different.
Owing to your self-concept—the image you have of yourself as a limited and lacking entity—whether consciously or unconsciously, you consider yourself to be deficient and inadequate.
That’s the real reason you chase things in the world. It’s to add something to yourself; to improve yourself; to make yourself acceptable in your own eyes and in the eyes of others.
All desires stem from this basic sense of lack and self-dissatisfaction.
This is the fundamental conflict at the core of the human psyche. It’s a gulf between who you are and who you want to be—between your subjective wants and your objective reality.
Everything you do is an attempt to bridge this gap. Every action is motivated by the desire to be whole, complete, and free of the suffering that seems endemic to your very nature.
Chasing after the shiny, seductive objects of life—whether fame, fortune, real estate, fast cars, soul mates, or even spiritual experiences—is at best a distraction. It’s like trying to fix a car’s engine by adjusting the wing mirrors.
Your failure to deal with the root of the problem dooms you to almost perpetual suffering.
Nothing in this world will do the job of making you feel whole.
Fortunately, there is one final pursuit.
Most people aren’t even aware that it exists.
The fourth purushartha is called moksha.
In English, it means ‘liberation’ or ‘freedom’—and this happens to be what Vedanta is about. Another, perhaps less helpful word for it (due to widespread misconceptions associated with it) is enlightenment.
The Highest Goal
Freedom is life’s highest goal.
In fact, freedom is life’s ONLY goal.
Whether you’re seeking artha, kama, or dharma, it’s actually freedom that you want. By pursuing security, you seek freedom from your sense of insecurity. By chasing wealth, you seek freedom from poverty.
By pursuing any desire, you seek freedom from that desire—freedom from the want that compels you to act; from the sense of lack, need, or insufficiency.
The problem is, seeking freedom in external conditions, circumstances or objects can only ever lead to bondage.
As long as you depend upon any external variable for your freedom, you are bound, because you’re totally dependent on it. The moment it changes, as it most certainly will, you’ve lost your freedom.
Moksha is the highest goal because it ends the need for all seeking.
Instead of digging for scraps of happiness in the ever-changing, unpredictable outer world, you learn to turn within and start seeking happiness in yourself. This may not come easily, because you’ve likely spent a lifetime thinking of yourself as a lacking, deficient being, totally dependent on others and the world for your well-being and happiness.
The problem isn’t that you actually lack anything, however.
The problem is summed up in the words of the poet Walt Whitman:
“You have not known what you are. You have slumbered upon yourself all of your life; your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time.”
This is where Vedanta comes in.
According to Vedanta, the issue is not one of ‘becoming free’.
Vedanta points out that you can’t ‘become free’ because you are already free.
The problem is lack of knowledge. You are free, but you don’t know that you are free.
You are bound only because you take yourself to be what you are not: a jiva—a separate, limited body-mind entity.
By inquiring into this assumption, which lies at the root of existential suffering, you come to realize that your very nature IS freedom.
As I have said, Vedanta is neither a philosophy or a religion. It is a pramana; a means of knowledge. The subject is you; therefore, the knowledge it provides is Self-knowledge. The removal of ignorance regarding your true nature is the key to liberation.
As we’ll discover, the dawning of Self-knowledge–the realisation that you are by nature free, untaintable and the source of your own happiness–is the light that forever dispels the dark suffering of ignorance.
The articles in this Essence of Vedanta series are excerpts from my commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which systematically unfolds pretty much the entire teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Be sure to get your copy and enjoy the entire series and much more in its entirety. “Bhagavad Gita – The Divine Song” by Rory B Mackay is available on the Unbrokenself shop here, and also on Amazon and all other good booksellers.
The next article in this series will explore the mechanics of samsara from a psychological point of view, and then we will explore in great depth the nature of the self, and this misapprehension of who you take yourself to be which has created a world of suffering for you.
Having identified moksha, liberation, as the highest human pursuit, Vedanta provides a scientific and time-tested means to attain it. Properly understood, Vedanta offers nothing less than a roadmap to psychological, emotional, and spiritual freedom.
Other articles in this series
Limitation, The Quest for Liberation and the Four Human Pursuits
Samsara and How to Escape the Wheel of Suffering
Who Are You? How to Practice Vedantic Self-Inquiry
What is the Self? Vedanta and the Power of Self-Knowledge
Vedanta, Spiritual Practice and the Necessity of a Qualified Mind
Karma Yoga: Vedanta’s Secret Weapon For Purifying the Mind
