ACCORDING TO ROD STRYKER,
kama, or the desire for plea-
sure, is what makes the world
go ’round. “Desire for pleasure
is what drives all human behav-
ior,” he says. “Kama can be sen-
suality, but it’s also art, beauty,
intimacy, fellowship, and kind-
ness—it’s what brings a sense of
delight to our lives. There can
be pleasure even in sacrifice.”
Kama gets some bad press,
Stryker notes, possibly because
it’s the purushartha most likely
to run amok. Excessive kama
can lead to overindulgence,
addiction, sloth, greed, and
a whole host of other “deadly
sins.” But it is good, and indeed
necessary, when it exists to sup-
port dharma. “If we set kama
in the context of dharma, we
understand it to be a part of
the richness of life,” Stryker
says. “Every accomplishment
has been sought for the plea-
sure that it provides. We live in
service to a higher purpose, butMOKSHA, OR LIBERATION, is widely considered to
be the pinnacle of the purusharthas. In its broadest,
most elevated sense, moksha means achieving nir-
vana, or the complete liberation from the cycle of
incarnation. “Moksha is about getting off the wheel
of samsara [the cycle of suffering caused by birth,
death, and rebirth],” Kempton explains. “You can be
a good person who is living a dharmic life, taking care
of yourself and your family, enjoying your family life
and your career, but all of that will be ultimately
unsatisfying unless you are also doing the practices
that can lead to moksha.”
Yet moksha doesn’t have to be some other place
and time or some exalted state to be reached only
once and to the exclusion of the human experience.
“The question with moksha is whether it is a goal
or whether it is your nature,” says Brooks. “In other
words, do you become free or are you born free?
One view is that moksha is a kind of otherworldli-
ness—the opposite of dharma. The other argument
is that freedom is your nature, that it’s here and now.
Every time you look into a baby’s eyes, you get a hit of
moksha. You don’t feel confined by that responsibility
of being a parent; you feel that it offers you the deep-
est sense of your own freedom and choice.
Simply taking time to remember your own inher-
ent freedom, in other words, gives meaning to your
dharma—and everything you do. Practicing yoga, in
a very real sense, is practicing moksha. “You are as
free as you experience yourself to be,” says Brooks.KAMA
3 PLEASURE
MOKSHA
FREEDOM4
along that path there is the
pleasure we take from family
and friends, art, love, and har-
mony in the world around us.”
Brooks agrees, saying that
whether we deal with it skill-
fully or not, there is no life
without kama.
Shining the light of aware-
ness on your desires can help
you focus on the ones that
honor the true essence of life.
“The conscious pursuit of kama
is a profound yogic practice,”
Kempton says. “To practice
kama yogically means to prac-
tice being fully present with
whatever you’re experiencing.
There are many levels of plea-
sure, from eating a pizza tofinding a meditation practice
that allows your heart to
expand. As a yogi, you learn
to distinguish. You know
which pleasures are saturated
with consciousness and are
drenched in the ecstasies of the
soul, and which ones leave you
depleted or lying to yourself
about what is really going on.”
Brooks notes that focusing
on the right kinds of pleasure
can lead you toward your
dharma—and help you fulfill it
with passion. “Passion is never
the problem,” he says. “Passion
is the solution.” Find your own
solution by inquiring deeply
about your own pursuit of
pleasure.