Discovering Svadharma
Can Puruṣārthas help us discover jobs that aid our svadharma and svatantra?
Recently, a friend asked - How do I select the right job and the right company (or startup) to work? As a student of Dharma, I thought it would be interesting to apply the four Puruṣārthas lens to look at it.
It is important to note that Puruṣārthas is a meta-framework. It doesn’t tell you what to do. It simply says, when you make a choice, try and use these as four touchstones. Use these questions as reflective questions while making your choices.
I elaborated on the design of this framework here.
Can the four Puruṣārthas help us select the right job?
Dharma - Does the company solve a problem that benefits you, the other and the collective context we live in?
Before I ventured into agriculture, I worked in the technology consulting industry. I decided to work full-time in agriculture because I felt that here was an industry that could redefine my relationship with food, it could create transformative possibilities for the vast majority of India that lives in villages, and help me confront hard questions of limits to growth, sustainability, Climate Change.
But there was a problem. I never went to any agricultural college. My parents aren’t farmers either.
My maternal great-grandfather though was a wonderful agriculturist (in my biased view) who collaborated with G.A.Natesan to publish “Farming Guide” in his mother tongue Tamizh in the year 1908, based on his farming advice articles in the popular nationalist tamizh language newspaper “Swadesamitran” that was founded in 1882.
In 2014, I could retrieve a reprographic print from the last available copy that sits currently in London Museum. My moonshot target is to become competent enough in this domain to translate my great-grandfather’s book from Tamizh to English in a 21st-century context.
Not studying agriculture has been a great blessing in that regard. For it always keeps me in the edge, helps me see the domain and be the proverbial child who could ask naive questions and get away with it, because, anyways I haven’t formally studied Agriculture:)
Artha - Does the company help you make wealth and power that is dharmic?
Although Artha encompasses wealth and power, it is important to understand that dharma regulates artha. The tamizh translation of this word, porul பொருள், embodies the depth of the meaning this word carries.
How do you make wealth? Do you make wealth from means that prey on baser instincts of man? Or do we make wealth in ways that tap into higher human potential?
In Jaithirth Rao’s fascinating book, Economist Gandhi, he brings a fascinating point that illustrates the role of Artha. When Mahatma Gandhi moves to India to plunge into the Indian Independence Movement, he chooses Ahmedabad of all places. Around that time he moved to Ahmedabad, Gandhi explains why.
In his own words,
‘If the wealthy and the educated wish, they can change the face of Ahmedabad. The biggest Jain firm is in Ahmedabad. It is said that the firm of Anandji Kalyanji is wealthier than any other firm in the world which can be described as a religious body’
Kama - Does the company offer you an intellectually stimulating environment, an environment in which you feel belong?
Kama symbolizes passion and pleasure, yoked by dharma. Kama is intrinsically connected with navarasas. And it is important to remember what Krishnamacharya said in context with navarasas.
Yogacharya Krishnamacharya has said that a mature person will be able to experience the navarAsa (the 9 emotional states of being) fully and come back to a state of equanimity without experiencing blocks in the expression, or residues after the event.
Moksha - Does the company help you enjoy the process more than the outcome?
I have written enough about why moksha is never about salvation, as it is commonly understood. Moksha is a powerful examination of what it is to embrace life and work without an objective.
A more recent evocative exploration I discovered in this regard is a book by a Stanford AI professor, Why Greatness cannot be Planned. Objectives are great when we are dealing with everyday work. However, when we are dealing with work that can move humanity forward, work that can create meaning, objectives are often a deal-breaker and oftentimes, make us stray away from discovering our highest potential.
What do you think? Would this framework be useful?