THE DIALECTICS OF

BY

JOANNA MACY Syracuse University U.S.A.

Desire (kama), as a force in human life and in the cosmos, is accorded great attention in Indian thought. Hindu myth and specula- tion give it a central role in creation. Seen as the chief motive power in the flowering of phenomenal life, it is widely celebrated both in lore and in worship. At the same time, no body of religious tradition appears so distrustful of desire as the Indian, nor speaks so em- phatically of the need to annihilate it. Repeatedly and consistently, desire is set forth as the chief impediment to man's self-realization. This dual stance, the celebration of desire and the condemnation of it, might appear contradictory, and the view of the creativity of desire to conflict with that of its destructiveness. This paper will suggest that this is not the case. It will endeavor to show that it is not so much a dichotomy we are dealing with here, as a profound respect for the power of desire and a search to understand and utilize its mechanics within different contexts. Views which appear dia- lectically opposite resolve, on closer approach, into patterns which reveal basic consistencies in the Hindu grasp of the and operation of this power. Among these consistencies, as this paper will point out, is desire's causal relationship to consciousness and in particular to the ego function. A word, first, on terminology and definition. The word kama is often translated as sexual desire or assumed to mean only that. Its usage, however, is as broad as our English term desire, which in similar fashion is used often to denote , but which is by no means limited to that and carries connotations of wish, as well as and craving. (An exception to the above is the specific meaning accorded kaina when it is treated as a purusartha, or goal of life. It thcn means pleasure itself, especially sexual pleasure, as we see in the Kama and the Kama ; ivhile such usage implies a 146 hankering for the pleasure, of course, it does not really denote the phenomenon of desire as such.) Looking at its uses and seeking a common denominator of valid meaning, I would propose the follow- ing definition: that kama or desire is, at root, a felt need for some- thing, a wanting of something which is not yet in existence or not yet a part of oneself; it is the urge to remedy the of one's own incompleteness; it involves, therefore, by definition,, an internal separation, a sense of duality between the subject and the object for which desire is felt.

DESIRE AS CREATIVE FORCE "Covered by void, that which was coming into being, That one was born through the power of heat (). Desire (kama), then, at first was evolved, . Which was the first seed of mind (manas)."

The speculative Vedic hymn RV 10.129, in what appears to be the first allusion to the cosmogonic function of desire, accords it a central and primal role. Desire is that which first emerges from the generative heat; it even precedes the formation of mind itself. Not only that, but the enigmatic and staggering assertion is made that desire con- stitutes the cause, the "first seed", of mind. No explanation of the causal relationship is given. Is desire the first thing consciousness does? its first self-actualizing movement? Or is desire the source of that duality in which mind then can operate? These lines from the Rig Veda hymn, which clearly represents intuitions born of yogic experience, strike two chords that will echo throughout developing Indian thought: desire's causal relation to consciousness and desire's link to that other form of energy, tapas, the heat of yogic austerities. The Atharva Veda, that essentially magical body of literature, of- fers a wealth of recipes and formulae to ensure the blessings of the god,, Kama. They witness to the archaic and largely pre- fascina- tion with the mystery of sexuality and to a deep awe before the sacred act through which the gods continue creation. Here too the assertion is made: "Desire here came into being in the beginning, which as the first seed of mind." 1)

I) Atharva Veda , tr. W. W. Whitney, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi, 1962, A V 19, 52, 1.