hexafu

“untouchables” – harijan (God’s People)

22.

The Wants of Man

If we were to take Hinduism as a whole – its vast literature, its opulent art, its elaborate rituals, its sprawling folkways – if we were to take this enormous outlook in its entirety and epitomize it in a single, central affirmation we would find it saying to man: You can have what you wantThis sounds good but it throws the problem back in our laps. For what Do we want? It is easy to give a simple answer but hard to give a good one. India has been with this question a long time, and has her answer waiting. The wants of man, she says, are four.

23.

He begins by wanting pleasure. This is natural. We are all born with built in pleasure-pain reactors.To the person who wants pleasure, India says in effect: Go after it – there is nothing wrong with it. It is one of the four legitimate ends of life. The world holds immense possibilities for enjoyment. It is awash with beauty and heavy with delights for all our senses. Moreover, there are other worlds above this where pleasures mount by a factor of a million at each successive round; we shall experience these worlds too at later stages in our becoming.