Precept of Hinduism
Pursue the four aims.
Dharma, artha, kama, moksha — rightness, prosperity, pleasure, liberation. The tradition's startling claim: all four are legitimate, in season, in proportion.
What it asksPursue rightness, prosperity, pleasure, and liberation — each in its season
Who it bindsThe householder above all; the renunciate collapses the four into the last
Where it bitesHow much artha and kama is too much: the tradition sets no number, only the requirement that dharma governs both
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held
The purusharthas are unusual among religious ethics for licensing pleasure and wealth outright rather than tolerating them. Kama has its own classical literature; artha has the Arthashastra, a manual of statecraft as unsentimental as Machiavelli. The condition is ordering, not suppression: dharma governs the pursuit of both, and moksha eventually relativizes all three. The four ashramas — student, householder, forest-dweller, renunciate — are the life-stages that give each aim its season.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideas
Ritual sustains the order of the world.
Vedic Religion · core tenet
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Suffering has a cause, and therefore an end.
Buddhism · core tenet
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The soul is liberated by its own effort.
Jainism · core tenet
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Creation is good, and it was made out of nothing.
Christianity · core tenet
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Liberation happens while you are alive.
Sikhism · core tenet
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Knowledge liberates.
Advaita Vedānta · core tenet
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