IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijicbm/v38y2026i1p1-19.html

The spiritual theory of human pursuits: an integrative view of four life goals

Author

Listed:
  • Sukhada Sukhada
  • Shatrunjay Rawat
  • Sharda Nandram

Abstract

Every human being has a desire to be happy and to attain continuous happiness. These desires and goals, collectively, along with the means that help achieve such goals, are termed puruṣārtha chatuṣṭaya. This paper aims to explain these four ultimate life goals by delving into the original Sanskrit sources and provides a hermeneutic analysis of their antecedents. It shows how dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa together form an integrative framework for human life, connecting ethical conduct, material well-being, desire, and liberation, and showing how they form a whole as 'a theory of life'. Such a theory is designed to inspire a way of sustainable living with inbuilt corrective behaviour based on a consciousness where there is space for everyone and everything to coexist. To grasp it, however, requires a shift in our mindset to understand why we do the things we do in the first place, in order to redesign how we act to confront even the more wicked problems we face in this era.

Suggested Citation

  • Sukhada Sukhada & Shatrunjay Rawat & Sharda Nandram, 2026. "The spiritual theory of human pursuits: an integrative view of four life goals," International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 38(1), pages 1-19.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijicbm:v:38:y:2026:i:1:p:1-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=154071
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijicbm:v:38:y:2026:i:1:p:1-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=235 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.