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enlightenment From the point of view of wisdom the life of sensation is nothing except the life of misery, bondage and delusion Thus evaluated sensuous pleasure itself is a disvalue or dulkha, and heya The Jainas formulate quite clearly that desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, are not pure psychic elements, on the contrary, they depend on bodily structures and objects and their presence misdirects the psyche into the ways of spiritual evil The earliest of the Jaina canonical texts, Āyāranga, contains a most eloquent plea for a life above sensuous temptations Similar sentiments and reflections are common in other Śramanic schools and sects and, later on, they find adequate expression in Brahmanical literature also
Since the senses are naturally extrovert (parāñcı khāni), the sense-bound ego is appropriately Bahırātman It has been argued that if the irrational pursuit of sensuous values is obviously unacceptable, a rational programme or calculus (Nītı) of such pleasures and pains could well be the only available guide at the level of common practical life or Vyavahāra In the Arthaśāstra and Kāmaśāstra generally a mixture of Epicurean and Machiavellian tendencies may be seen while in the Dharmaśāstra a more Stoical point of view finds expression These three śāstias were generally held to be in harmony under the assumption that subject to the basic rules of morality, the pursuit of interest and pleasure could well be sought to be maximized as a good A clever, even ruthless, strategy has a place in the sphere of competitive politics and business just as sensuous pleasures have a place in the sphere of leisure in personal life The notions of Artha and Kāma are essentially utilitarian and hedonistic Their acceptance in the essentially ascetic ideology of Jainism as of Buddhism was only as of a necessary evil Since pleasure itself is a snare rather than a good, its rational pursuit could only mean the ordering of life in such a way that one could gradually win freedom from the craving for pleasure and learn to value spiritual freedom as the highest good The rules for the householder are designed to subserve the ends of virtue within the context of sensuous and practical life
