Kama
Page 55
Page 297, line 3: The raised linga. Shiva’s paradoxical nature is captured starkly in his ubiquitous representation of the linga. The linga is in the shape of a ‘phallus’. How does one explain an ascetic with a permanently erect phallus? It is probable that Shiva had prehistoric origins, going back to the Indus Valley civilization. Sir John Marshall, the well-known archaeologist who excavated Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the first two cities in the Indus Valley, found a seal which shows a god in a yogic position with an exposed, erect phallus.
Page 297, line 31: Kama ‘is not destroyed but exists in a sublimated state’. R.K. Narayan, Mr Sampat—The Printer of Malgudi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 250. See also Wendy Doniger’s Siva: the Erotic Ascetic, fns 42–44.
Page 297, line 35: sublimation as a sign of civilization and human maturity. Freud in Civilization and its Discontents, in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud—The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Other Works, translated by James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, vol. 21, 1961), pp. 79–80.
Page 298, line 17: He (Shiva) is able to mediate. Wendy Doniger, ‘Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva’, in History of Religions, vol. 8, no. 4 (May 1969), p. 301.
Page 299, line 14: another myth has to be created to accommodate Parvati’s desires. Ibid., pp. 302–03. Doniger explains, ‘That “nevertheless” is the mythopoeic and philosophical nexus of the cycle of countless versions of myths, told and re-told in an eternal search for the impossible solution. The myth expresses the need that can never be fulfilled, that is always just out of reach on one side or the other, even in the world of the gods.’
Page 300, line 23: as we ascended Plato’s ladder. Plato, Symposium, translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1989), III.I02. Martha Nussbaum has an insightful discussion of the ‘ladders of ascent’ in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 482–97.
Page 300, line 32: This state where there is no twoness. Bhavabhuti, Uttara-rāma-carita (1.39).
Page 302, line 4: Where the myth fails, human love begins. Anais Nin, Diary of Anais Nin, vol. 3, 1939–44, edited and with a preface by Gunther Stuhlmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969). I was often reminded of Proust when I read of Anais Nin’s attempts to go beyond self-revelation as she tried to understand the fragile human personality.
Chapter 9: The Enigma of Marriage
Page 306, line 4: ’Where they love, they have no desire’. In an essay written in 1912, Freud used these famous words in explaining the difficulty that many middle-aged couples experience in having sex with their spouses. Freud’s essay bears the extraordinary title, ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love’, Contributions to the Psychology of Love, vol. 11, Freud’s complete works (1922), pp. 177–90.
Page 309, line 7: Where the moon is not inveighed against. Vidyakara, Subhashitaratnakosha, translated by Daniel D. Ingalls, in An Anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965), Verse 823. Also quoted in Sudhir Kakar, The Devil Take Love (Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India, 2016), p. 175.
Page 309, line 16: ‘one does not desire what one does not lack’. Plato, Symposium, 200b.
Page 309, line 25: There is an inherent contradiction between what men and women want. Evolutionary biology seems to support folk wisdom by confirming that there seems to be a difference between men and women when it comes to love and lust. According to David Buss, ‘A male cannot lose by promiscuity. Even one who is loyal to a particular mate may still succeed in leaving more descendants if he also tries to mate with other females. Any children resulting from such encounters will have a lesser chance of survival than the offspring of the female to whom he is devoted. From an evolutionary perspective, the male’s genetic material will be spread more widely if they do survive. This point is not meant to suggest a subtle calculation on the part of prehistoric males. All it suggests is that an inheritable tendency to non-promiscuous behaviour would not become dominant in the male sex. Thus, in general, we should expect lust and love to be separable for males.’ David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating.
Similarly, the evolutionary point of view expects female lust will be dependent upon love. ‘For a female will have a better chance of reproducing successfully if she makes herself available only to a mate of whose devotion she is already convinced. Thus, for a female, feeling loved would be a key condition for feeling lust,’ says Buss. These are obviously not conscious tactics or deliberate. Prehistoric females did not decide to act with the deliberate purpose of serving reproductive goals. They were the result of imagining involuntary genetic mutations that influenced the structure of the brain which resulted in conduct that individuals did not necessarily control. It does support the folk hypothesis of a contradiction in modern romance—men are more likely to incline towards random sex than women. If this is true, some of the sadness of love is the fault of the evolution of the species. One has to accept the findings of evolutionary biologists with some caution. If they are correct, however, they seem to prove the kama pessimists’ contention that we can do little to mitigate the problems of love.
Unlike the kama pessimism of evolutionary psychology, kama optimists believe that love and sex are ‘cultural constructs’. Since they are ‘made-up rules’, we can change them. The twentieth century illustrates some of the dramatic changes in the way women think of themselves; men are finally learning the old lesson of the Kamasutra that a man has a duty to please a woman in bed before himself. Nevertheless, some things may well be biological and will resist change—for example, men still seem to be more aroused by visual stimulation and less by affection than women; jealousy and possessiveness is a self-protective device-desire to hold on to what we have and it too will refuse to change.
Page 310, line 21: They have a biological advantage in Darwinian natural selection. The Economist (November 2013), quotes a study about foxes on a Russian fur farm to underline this point.
Page 311, line 3: Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart. ‘Don Juan I’.
Page 311, line 23: There are those who say an array of horsemen. Sappho, Fragment 16 (a), in Greek Lyrics, Richmond Lattimore (ed.), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Page 315, line 15: ‘Every personal existence is upheld by a secret.’ Anton Chekhov’s famous story is variously translated as ‘Lady with a Dog’, ‘Lady with a Little Dog’ and ‘Lady with a Lap Dog’. Anton Chekhov, Ronald Wilks (ed), The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896–1904 (London: Penguin Books), p. 223.
Page 318, line 3: ‘Man wished to live as much as possible in the sacred.’ Marcea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated by Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Inc., 1959).
Page 324, line 12: ‘Do not inflict upon others what you would not do to yourself.’ Mahabharata XVIII.113.8.
Page 325, line 19: There is melancholic sadness at the very heart of kama. Ibid. I.85.7–8.
Page 326, line 7: fulfilled these three distinctive needs through three different individuals. The popular philosopher Alain de Botton offers an interesting perspective to this moral dilemma in How to Think More about Sex (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2012). I am indebted to him for bringing remarkable clarity to the concept of modern marriage and the tripartite division of labour in the premodern marriage, albeit from a male perspective.
Page 328, line 14: ‘dharma is the best’. Mahabharata XII.167.8–9.
Page 328, line 17: Ramayana, obviously, sides with dharma. Ramayana II.21.57–58.
Page 328, line 18: one should try and achieve all the three goals of the trivarga. Manusmriti II.224.
Page 328, line 23: kama is as basic to human life as food. Jayamangala, 1.2.37.
Page 336, line 13: For the very young, love is like a huge river. Stendhal, On Love, translated by Sophie L
ewis (London: Hesperus Press Ltd, 2009).
Page 336, line 31: Excessive indulgence is what is bad. There are two discussions of pleasure in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Book X discusses the claim that pleasure is the sole or supreme good. In Book VII, Aristotle examines the way that pleasure, or the desire for it, enhances life (1153a, 2D–23).
Page 337, line 11: If I eat sweets in the theatre, I am likely to diminish my enjoyment of the play. Ibid., 1175b, 12–13.
Page 337, line 17: Ethical hedonism. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, pp. 6, 567.
Page 337, line 21: modest, sustainable pleasure, in a calm, free and tranquil state. Two English philosophers follow these Hellenistic traditions. Adam Smith also felt that happiness ‘consists in tranquillity and enjoyment. Without tranquillity there can be no enjoyment; and where there is perfect tranquillity there is scarce anything which is not capable of amusing.’ The Theory of Moral Sentiments, D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (eds), (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), III, pp. 3, 30, 149. A few years later, John Stuart Mill distinguished between excitement and tranquillity as two sources of contentment, the first allowing us to tolerate pain and the second the absence of pleasure. Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (4th edition, London: Longmans Green Reader & Dyer, 1971), II, p. 13. The Stoics would, of course, have opted for the happiest life to be one of calm and tranquillity.
Page 337, line 29: The best state of mind a person could achieve is one of calm serenity. Some writings by Epicurus have survived but most scholars consider the epic poem ‘On the Nature of Things’ by Lucretius the definitive work. It presents in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism.
Page 338, line 18: Infants and children are governed far more by the pleasure principle. Freud first used the insight that the mind seeks pleasure and avoids pain in his Project for a Scientific Psychology of 1895. Later, he argued that ‘an ego thus educated has become “reasonable”; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished.’ (Freud, Introductory Lectures, 16.357). In his book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, published in 1921, Freud hypothesized the possibility ‘of tendencies beyond the pleasure principle, that is, of tendencies more primitive than it and independent of it’.
Page 338, line 25: ‘introspective attitude to life based on taking pleasure yourself and giving pleasure to others’. Michel Onfray has written two books directly on the subject, L’invention du Plaisir: Fragments Cyréaniques and La Puissance d’exister: Manifeste Hédoniste.
Page 339, line 1: there are other things we value besides pleasure. The philosopher G.E. Moore asks us to do a thought experiment: imagine two worlds—one beautiful and the other filthy. You have not experienced either. Yet you would prefer the beautiful rather than the filthy world. Thus, human beings value other things beyond conscious pleasure. George E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903). See Chapter 3 on hedonism, which contains Moore’s influential arguments against hedonism.
In another famous thought experiment, Robert Nozick asks us to imagine a fantastic machine that provides an amazing mix of peaceful experiences which appear completely real. He argues that the majority of people would reject the choice to live this pleasurable life in the machine, mostly because they would prefer living in reality. Just as pleasurable experiences matter to us, so does living in reality. R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). See pp. 42–45 for the discussion of this thought experiment.
Page 339, line 21: ‘reflexive consciousness’. See Note to Chapter 1 about ‘two plumed birds who sit on the pipal tree’ from the Mundaka Upanishad III.
Chapter 10: Happy Love Has No History
Page 343, line 6: If a man commits adultery. Leviticus, 20.10.
Page 349, line 1: Again today / Your cruel father has not come. Vallabhadeva, Subhashitavali, Verse 1106, edited by Peter Peterson and Pandit Durga Prasad (Bombay: Bombay Education Society Press, 1886). Reproduced in W.S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, Sanskrit Love Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 2.
Page 350, line 18: ‘Romantic love is adulterous by definition.’ Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, translated by Montgomery Belgion (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1940), p. 6. Better than anyone else, Rougemont has brought out the contradiction between romance and marriage. He explains that even initially in the Middle Ages when romance was born in the West, when courtly love subscribed to the code of chivalry, and a knight’s loyalty was always to his king before his mistress, the reality was different. He quotes many scholars, such as Mosche Lazar, to claim that the desired end was always adulterous sexual love with physical possession of the lady.
Page 350, line 32: and there is the deep shyness. Tarashashankam, Kavyamala, Gucchaka, IV, p. 78, translated by W.S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, in Sanskrit Love Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 169.
Page 351, line 13: ‘Where are you going, fair maid, on such a night?’ Vidyakara, Subhashitaratnakosha, translated by Daniel D. Ingalls, An Anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965), Verse 816.
Page 359, line 8: ‘The practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the consent of all the people involved.’ The definition is based on a definition by another polyamorist, Zell-Ravenheart.
Page 359, line 25: There is no scientific evidence that monogamy is better in terms of health, happiness or longevity of the relationship. Personality and Social Psychology Review, November 2012.
Page 365, line 21: Was it because it is ‘difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men’? Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1993).
Page 366, line 1: ‘conversation of a woman one loves is like the ground above a dangerous subterranean stretch of water’. Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1050.
Page 367, line 29: He’s stopped loving me. Vallabhadeva, Subhashitavali, Verse 1106. Translated by Jeff Masson, in W.S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, Sanskrit Love Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1886), pp. 3–4.
Page 368, line 21: We’ve made a great mess of love. I have quoted only half of D.H. Lawrence’s poem, ‘The Mess of Love’. The other half continues as follows:
Love is like a flower, it must flower and fade;
If it doesn’t fade, it is not a flower,
It’s either an artificial rag blossom, or an immortelle, for the cemetery.
The moment the mind interferes with love, or the will fixes on it,
Or the personality assumes it as an attribute, or the ego takes possession of it,
It is not love any more, it’s just a mess.
And we’ve made a great mess of love, mind-perverted, will-perverted, ego-perverted love.
Page 371, line 8: they fought and the princess stripped her and pushed her down a well. Mahabharata IX.18.6–17.
Page 371, line 13: Yayati went and asked Devayani’s father for her hand. Ibid. IX.18.18–23.
Chapter 11: Love-Death
Page 376, line 3: For an instant he is a child. D.D. Kosambi, The Epigrams Attributed to Bhartrihari, Singhi Jain Series, No. 23, Bombay, 1948. This is most likely Verse 235 from Kosambi; I have used the translation by Barbara Stoler Miller, Bhartrihari: Poems (Columbia University Press, 1967).
Page 383, line 2: ‘Knowledge of the heart must come from the heart.’ Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 261.
Page 383, line 18: Our intelligence, however lucid, cannot perceive the elements that compose it. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past III:426. The lines immediately prior to these provide the full argument:
I had believed that I was leavi
ng nothing out of account, like a rigorous analyst; I had believed that I knew the state of my own heart. But our intelligence, however lucid, cannot perceive the elements that compose it and remain unsuspected so long as, from the volatile state in which they generally exist, a phenomenon capable of isolating them has not subjected them to the first stages of solidification. I had been mistaken in thinking that I could see clearly into my own heart. But this knowledge, which the shrewdest perceptions of the mind would not have given me, had now been brought to me, hard, glittering, strange, like a crystallised salt, by the abrupt reaction of pain.
Page 383, line 29: ‘The suffering itself is a piece of self-knowing.’ Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, p. 263.
Page 384, line 6: I understood that my love was less a love for her than a love in me. Ibid. III:568.
Page 385, line 1: Mme de Sevigne was after all less to be pitied than most of us. Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, vol. 2 of Remembrance of Things Past p. 819.
Page 386, line 14: the lovers never had any other desire than the desire for death. Sudhir Kakar and John Munder Ross, Tales of Love, Sex, and Danger (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, second edition, 2011), Chapter 2.
Page 386, line 23: He has intimations that this party will be the beginning of his end. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 1.4.106–110.
For my mind misgives
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,