SD offers the same.shiv wrote: Western Universalism gives you wealth, health and pleasure right now in this life. What does SD offer in comparison?
Balu's casting into modern language of this might be helpful.
https://www.academia.edu/5497432/Indian ... ity_System
PS: an excerpt.
Human beings do not have multiple desires for specific objects, say these Indian traditions. What we have is Desire: in the singular, unqualified, and objectless. Consequently, to say, as we do, that we have ‘many desires’, or that ‘we have a desire for something’ would be false and misleading.
However, Desire has the property of attaching itself to any and every object. When I desire Armani clothes or a beef steak, I do not have desires for these particular objects. What I do have is just one ‘Desire’ that attaches itself now to Armani clothes and then to beef steak. Our desire for multiple objects does not show that we have many desires but shows, instead, that it is merely one and the same Desire attaching itself to different objects.
The limitlessness of our desires does not have anything to do with the limitless number and variety of objects in the world but with the fact that Desire has no intrinsic goal or object. That is why Desire cannot be satisfied: nothing can satisfy it.
To make this notion of Desire perspicuous, let me use an economic metaphor. The Desire that the Indian traditions talk about is like Money. Money is singular, there are no plural monies. Money can become savings, financial capital, Industrial capital, mercantile capital, money-lending capital, or merely something we exchange for some commodity or another. Money can take the form of various currencies, shares, gold or any other commodity. Money can buy anything because it is indifferent to what it is exchanged against. According to the Indian traditions, Desire is like Money: it is limitless; it has no intrinsic object as its goal; it can be accumulated in any form or quantity.
Chasing after satisfaction of desires, as we experience our strivings, is intrinsically and inherently frustrating. Such an endeavour is also a direct cause of unhappiness because Desire is unsatisfiable: nothing can satisfy it.
However, true to their nature, the Indian traditions do not suggest that no one, ever, finds happiness in accumulating money: it is also a possible route. One could accumulate Desire and chase after satisfying it and claim that s/he is happy in doing so. While possible, to most of us however, such a route might not be the best choice.
In the western thinking, the nature of the world is used as a pragmatic argument to suggest that we have to put restraints on our desires. Our desires are infinite but the resources of the world are finite. However, this argument convinces only those who want to be convinced; it cannot convince the sceptic, who might be an optimist (‘science and technology will solve the problem’) or an ignoramus. Further, this argument makes the ‘Other’ – whether the other is Nature or other human beings – into the enemy: the ‘Other’ is the source for the unsatisfiability of human desires. Consequently the ‘Other’ is always the threat that the ‘self’ confronts in its attempts to fulfil its desires.
In the Indian traditions, by contrast, neither the ‘self’ nor the ‘other’ has anything to do with the limitless nature of our desires or our inability to satisfy them. It is in the nature of Desire that it is unsatisfiable. Consequently, going-about with Desire is crucial to being happy. That is to say, one can learn to be happy and this learning involves acquiring the ability to deal with Desire. Asceticism is of no help as a societal solution, even if some individuals could be happy by living ascetically. The road to happiness involves people learning this truth about Desire at an individual level, among other things.
Happiness as the ‘end’ or telos of humankind cannot be conceived normatively. Any normative conceptualization either ignores the factual diversity in what ‘happiness’ means to people (different people conceive ‘happiness’ differently) or claims that only some specific conception of happiness (‘the union with God’, say) is the true end and meaning of human life.
The Indian traditions claim that this disagreement and the diversity of opinions about happiness are typical of condition humaine. It is neither necessary nor possible to seek consensus about this end: we merely notice divergences and differences, and take this diversity as our starting point. However, in their attempts to strive for what they consider happiness is, human beings are impeded by certain things. Our task, therefore, is to think about and help remove these impediments. Consequently, we need to discuss the common impediments to our search for happiness. There will always be discussions and disagreements about what happiness is; but we can successfully identify things that prevent us from being happy.
Consequently, how to relate happiness to the economic system? Or to economic and management theories? There are, it appears to me, two broad ways of doing this. One way is to retain the image of man as a creature with infinitely many needs and desires and try and graft happiness on to this picture. Then, I do not see any way forward other than a restriction of these needs and desires and the practice of asceticism. Then, you are coupling the western image of human beings with the religion that created the western culture, namely, Christianity.
The second way is to change our image and thinking about human beings: in that case, we need not fight Desire or even restrict it but merely learn to go-about with it. These two ways make use of two different theories about human beings that explain the limitless nature of our desires.
One theory blames it on human nature. It tells us that this human nature will neither make us happy nor ‘deliver us from evil’. In seeking happiness, we are our worst enemies: human nature (spontaneously) prevents us from becoming happy. We need Gurus, priests or experts, to tell us what ‘true happiness’ is, and that we can become happy if we learn to be ascetic and control our desires.
The other theory tells us that each of us can be happy, if only we learn about the nature of impediments that hinder our search. Truth or knowledge liberates, and this can be learnt and taught. The Buddha or Shankara, for instance, claim to teach us knowledge about human beings the way scientists teach us about Nature. This knowledge will also help develop the ability to go-about with Desire.
