Dharmic Kama!

In my yoga class, we are taught that the four important aspects of human life are: a.) Dharma - Duties / Righteousness, b.) Artha - Material prosperity, c.) Kama - Desires, d.) Moksha - Liberation / Salvation. There is a lot of commentary on this. In particular, I am told that dharma decides what the acceptable desires are (and am also expected to repeat this in exams). This is in my opinion quite crazy - trying to find dharmic sanction for desires!

Who is to decide which desires are acceptable and which is not? Moreover, the fact that one particular desire of mine does not have 'dharmic sanction', certainly does not make it go away. Out of fear of the law or out of fear of being made a social outcast, one might not openly indulge in it. Nevertheless, ones mind will be totally obsessed with it and will try to find underground ways of satisfying that craving! So, its quite obvious, that dharmic sanctions have no true effect on the desires an individual possesses.

On the other hand, if one tries to totally understand the desires, one might be able to bring about a total transformation from a state of craving. What are desires really? Aren't they a playback of some pleasurable event from the past, from memory? Otherwise how would we know that the target is pleasure giving? So, desire is nothing but memory of pleasure. This memory of pleasure then forces us to behave in certain ways, much like the dog that remembers from its training days that it will be given tasty food if it runs behind the object that its master throws and catches it. Hence, desire is nothing but learned behavior where we are addicted to seeking pleasure. Thus it is nothing more than addiction. So, the desires we might have are highly specific to our social environments, the ones for which we are trained - like how some dogs catch Frisbees, some others sniff bombs.

When the mind becomes intelligent enough to witness this, the cause of a desire and its effect on the individual, in totality and is startled by the fact that it has been acting out like an automaton, programmed to seek pleasures, a transformation of indescribable beauty happens. The mind then behaves much more spontaneously and stops behaving like an automaton. Therein lies the moksha or liberation from desires - not in quoting countless ancient scriptures that talk about what is acceptable and what is not.