The Discontents of Kama: Depictions of desire in Indian Philosophical Texts

 * First thought paper produced during the Indian Philosophy course

The Desire-affirming/Desire-Renouncing Binary in Popular Culture


The pundits of contemporary popular culture often draw a sharp binary between Eastern religions and Western religions based on the way they deal with the phenomenon of desire. Western religions, we are told, are desire-affirming while eastern religions are desire-renouncing. And in this way of seeing thing, Islam often emerges as desire-affirming par excellence, a religion almost verging on pure sensuality. Plentiful Orientalist depictions of decadent sultans indulging in unimaginably sexual culinary and aural fantasies in their harems reinforce this image. So do the frequent and vivid depictions of the gardens of Paradise in Islam’s primary scripture. The Quranic Paradise is no ethereal realm, nor purely spiritual state of nirvana. It is an unmistakably material reality and its silk-draped, wine-drinking denizens and their attractive their mates are far from being desire-less beings.[1] In this scheme of things Hinduism emerges as Islam’s polar opposite, the desire-renouncing religion par excellence. Even since the iconic 20th century politician Barrister Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi swapped his Seville Row suits for the humble garb of a renunciant sanyasi, this reputation of Hinduism has been stamped on modern imagination.
It is worth asking if, and how far, the sacred texts of Hinduism – Vedas and the Upanishads, which are, amongst other things, wellsprings of the Indian philosophical tradition – actually bear out that this impression? Or, as is so often the case with stereoptypes, while this impression carries a grain of truth, it conceals much more. To answer this question, I shall, in this essay, closely examine some texts which I have had the chance to study recently and lay bare their approach towards the phenomenon of desire. My admittedly amateur investigation suggests that the approach of this sacred textual corpus towards the concept of desire cannot be accurately summarized by the affirming/renouncing binary which popular culture often uses. Instead, in so far as the texts go, the relationship is far more complex - it varies from one text to another, from one context within a text to another, possibly varies with time and like so much else in this great living tradition, remains open to re-interpretation.

Kama in the Vedic Corpus


The Sanskrit word for desire is “Kama”. We find mention of it in what is considered by scholars as the oldest and most authentically preserved Indian scriptural text: Rig Veda. In a hymn speculating about the early phases of creation and the monistic principle, we are told:
Desire (creative, or pehaps sacrificial, impulse) arose then in the beginning, which was the first seed of thought…[2]
Like so much of the RigVeda, the statement is short but philosophically fertile. First, desire is being recognized as a cosmic force – it is not something limited to the human universe. Furthermore, desire as a cosmic force is seen as the direct progenitor of thought, another cosmic force, which in turn is progenitor of everything. Come to think of it, this makes for a potent analytic framework: everything else that was created later, got created because some creator – god or demon or human – desired to create it and having desired thus, thought of a plan for creating it and having thought thus, finally created it. It only follows that we should ask: where did this initial “desire” come from? Surely, a case can be made out that desire is one of the first principles, if not the first principle of the cosmos.
The subject of desire is dealt with more comprehensively in one of prayers of the Atharva Veda. Here, the personification of desire, Kama, is treated as a deity. An entire prayer is addressed to it:
She, Kāma! she is called the Cow, thy daughter, she who is    named Vāk and Virāj by sages.
May Kāma, mighty one, my potent warder, give me full freedom from mine adversaries.[3]
Kama’s rise as the first of all cosmic forces, hinted at in RV 10.92, quoted above, is acknowledged here too:
First before all sprang Kāma into being. Gods, Fathers, mortal  men have never matched him. Stronger than these art thou, and great for ever. Kāma, to thee, to thee I offer worship.[4]
Thy lovely and auspicious forms, O Kāma, whereby the thing thou wilt becometh real,
 With these come thou and make thy home among us, and make    malignant thoughts inhabit elsewhere.[5]
Here, Kama is, it must be noticed, a god to be worshiped and prayed to, not a demon to be shunned. Later, this depiction of Kama as Kamadeva becomes a staple of mythology. Some commentators also begin to draw a distinction between two types of desire: Kama, they say, refers to the desire of what is good only and not, for instance, the supposedly carnal desire of sexuality. Wilkins writes:
In the ‘Atharva-Veda,’ this Kama or desire, not of sexual enjoyment, but of good in general, is celebrated as a great power superior to all the gods, and is supplicated for deliverance from enemies.[6]
While interpreters might have their reasons for drawing this distinction between two types of desire, in the original text of the two hymns quoted above, there is no definitive evidence of this distinction. There, it seems clear that desire is simply being acknowledged as a force which is cosmic in its scale, as old as anything else out there, has the potency of deity and is worth pacifying through supplications. Kama of the Atharvaveda is definitively Kamadeva, a god, not a demon.
It is when we reach the Upanishad, the texts that historically emerged subsequent to the Vedas, that the concept attains new complexities and added dimensions.

Kama in the Upanishads


In the Upanishads, desire is no longer a cosmic phenomenon, a force of nature as it were; it has become a psychological phenomenon – a state which human beings experience. But this move - from the cosmological to pscychic, shall we say – is not limited to the treatment of this theme only. It is but a manifestation of the general outlook of the Upanishads and that of the Vedas. Olivelle, the a foremost academic authority on these texts, comments:
While in the earlier vedic texts the focus is on the connections between ritual and cosmic spheres, the concern of the Upanishadic thinkers shifts to the human person…[7]
Early in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, we learn that the locus of desire in the human person is the mind. This syncs well with the Vedic notion that desire is the seed of thought, hinted at in RV 10.92, l. 4, quote above. If thought arises from the mind, so should desire. Yajnavalkya tells us:
The mind is a grasper, which is itself grasped by desire, the overgrasper; for one entertains desires by means of the mind.”[8]
We also learn that the varying desires of this world are ethically all the same and that those who have discovered brahman no longer experience any of them:
It is when they come to this self [brahman ‘the self within all’] that the Brahmins give up the desire for sons, the desire for wealth, and the desire for worlds, and undertake a mendicant life. The desire for sons is after all the same as the desire for wealth, and the desire for wealth is the same as the desire for worlds – both are simply desires.[9]
 And:
It was when they knew this [“immense unborn self – brahman] that men of old did not desire offspring…”[10]
It is in Katha Upanishad that we find perhaps the most sustained diatribe against desire. This highly dramatic piece begins with a scene where Naciketas, a precocious Brahman, has managed to emotionally trap the demon of death. Death is bound its own promise to grant Naciketas whatever he wishes; and Naciketas has had the audacity to seek from Death nothing less the secret of immortality, a disclosure through he would obviously be able to flee Death itself. Death parleys with Naciketas, offering to him instead the fulfillment of “all those desires, hard to obtain in this mortal world” including “lovely girls, with chariots and lutes, girls of the sort unobtainable by men.”[11] But Naciketas is adamant. For him, nothing less than the secret of immortality would do. Trapped, poor Death capitulates before the wily Brahman’ and issues a long response to his question. The crux of the response is that the secret of immortality actually lies in the renunciation of desires:
When they are all banished those desires lurking in one’s heart; then a mortal becomes immortal…[12]
This is a point that had already been conveyed in BU 4.4.5-8 in precisely the same words, though in a somewhat less dramatic effect. In Mundaka Upanishad, the same issue is approached from the other side: the one who are not failed to conquer his desires, we are told, is bound to remain locked in the ostensibly painful cycle of mortality and re-birth:
One who hankers after desires in his thoughts is born here and there through his actions. [13]
In the next line, the connection between desire and the self also begins to surface.
And when one’s self is made perfect, all his desires disappear in this very world.[14]
In another passage in Katha Upanishad we find this connection made out with greater clarity. The renunciation of desire leads to attainment of the highly prized knowledge of the self:
Without desires and free from sorrow, a man perceives the creator’s grace, the grandeur of the self.”[15]
Two passages in the Brhyadaranyaka Upanishads  draw an interesting equation between three states which are otherwise logically distinct: having fulfilled one’s desires; becoming free of any desire; and becoming free of all desires save one, ie. the desire for knowledge of the self. So, for instance, while describing a certain stage in dreamless sleep, Yajnavlakya states:
Clearly this is the aspect of his where all desires are fulfilled, where the self is the only desire, and which is free from desires and far from sorrows.”[16]
In another passage, similar to the previous one, this equation is made clearer. Having had all of one’s desires, becoming free of desire, and desiring only the self - all three are states experienced by someone who does not desire:
[P]eople say: ‘A person here consists simply of desire.’ …. That is the course of a man who desires. Now, a man who does not desire – who is without desires, who is freed from desires, whose desires are fulfilled, whose only desire is his self – his vital functions do not depart… Brahman he is, and to brahman he goes.[17]
One could interpret these Upanisadic passages as saying: it is not desire per se which is reprehensible. What one needs to be careful about is the object of one’s desires, because whatever one desires is what one ultimately gets. If he desire the concomitants of mortality and re-birth – sons, wealth and the world – that is all he will get. But if he desires the secret of his self, the atman, and the immense unborn self, the brahman, then he will get these and nothing less. Soteriologically speaking, the latter is the path everyone shoudl choose. A passage from the Munduka Upanishad supports this resolution of the matter:
Whatever world a man, whose being is purified, ponders with his mind, and whatever desires he covets; that very world, those very desires, he wins.[18]
But just when one feels certain of one’s resolution of the meaning of Upanishadic passages dealing with the concept of desire, this reconciliation is problematized by another passage. In the very next line, we are told:
A man who desires prosperity, therefore, should worship the one who knows the self.[19]
It is surprising to find the Upanishad offering advice to someone profane enough to openly desire worldly prosperity. Shouldn’t one’s only desire be the desire for the self, which helps one attain immortality and freedom from sorrow. In affirming the desire for prosperity and in offering a recipe for its attainment, aren’t the lofty metaphysical Upanishads descending to pragmatic level of the Athervaveda which provides the lay believer with charms he needs to pacify the Kamadeva, the god of desire?

Conclusion


To return to our original point of inquiry: What is the approach of the foundational texts of the Indian philosophical tradition towards desire?
We have seen that desire is viewed from many different perspectives – ranging all the way from outright deification in Atharvaveda to absolute condemnation in certain Upanisadic passages and more qualified approval in yet other Upanishadic passages. The desires that do seem to command near universal respect include the desire for knowledge of the self and desire for freedom from the painful cycle of morality and re-birth. But the identification between the “fulfillment” of desire, being “free of” desire and having but one desire is problematic. Those of us who struggle daily with the tug of carnal desire know all too well that these three states are not necessarily one and the same. The path of desire-fulfilment is a tight rope walk, and different altogether from the path of liberation-from-desire. Why have these different paths been equated? Is is even possible for one to  have all his desires fulfilled?
These are knotty issues, indeed. Perhaps a Shankara can resolve them definitively. But for an amateur student, the lesson seems to be that the approach of Hindu scriptures towards desire is far more complicated that the purveyors of us vs.them narratives would have us believe. There may be a grain of truth in the impression that the Eastern religions are more desire-renouncing than Western religions, especially Islam. But the point must not be taken too far, and certainly not far enough to constitute a neat binary. In philosophical literature, be it eastern or western, finality is rare to be found. If nothing more, an engagement with these texts helps the student appreciate the insufficiency of those simple and easy binaries which we put to good effect in elementary survival-level decisions, but when fail us badly when we are grappling with the highest dimensions of human existence.
Intellectually humbled by this excursion, let me conclude with the prayer of the Prophet, upon his and his progeny be peace: “O My Lord, increase me in knowledge.”



[1] Perhaps not unrelated to this is the familiar but unfortunate caricature of young Muslim men in post-9/11 Islamophobic literature: sex-starved freaks exploding their way to the promised seventy-two virgins of Paradise. Hidden in this image is an long-standing Orientalist trope: the seeming contradiction between stringency of Islam’s code of sexual morality and the deeply sensual orientation of its soteriology.
[2] RV 10.92, line. 4
[3] Atharva Veda, Book 9, Hymn 2, lines 5, 7; translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith, [1895], available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/av/av09002.htm; I’m relying here on this translation, instead of Edgerton’s because of its greater flow.
[4] Ibid, line 22
[5] Ibid, line 25
[6] Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Puranic, by W.J. Wilkins, [1900], at sacred-texts.com. (http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/hmvp/hmvp32.htm)

[7] Patrick Olivelle, Upanisads: A new translation by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford University Press: 2008, Introduction, p. lii; the same translation of the Upanisads has been used everywhere in this essay.
[8]  BU 3.2.7
[9] BU 3.5.1
[10] BU 4.4.22
[11] KaU 1.25
[12] KaU 6.14
[13] MaU 3.2.2
[14] MaU 3.2.2
[15] KaU 2.20
[16] BU 4.3.21-22
[17] BU, 4.4.5-8
[18] MaU 3.1.10
[19] MaU 3.1.10