BUILD A WELL-ROUNDED LIFE: CREATING A 'GOOD LIFE' THROUGH BALANCE
by Pema Sherpa*
Whether it is as lawyers, judges, students, or professionals in any other career, in New York City and other places in the west, we believe that hard work is not only the means of climbing social ranks and prosperity but also our primary source of virtue and fulfillment. We work from dawn to dusk with scarcely a break, believing that it is through hard work that one secures a "good life." However, the surfacing of more and more mental health cases in the legal community beckons us to assess alternative approaches to the "good life." In this article, to juxtapose the principles behind the western work ethic, I will explore an eastern concept of the "good life" called Purusārtha, translated as "objects of human pursuit." These objects of human pursuit fall under four main domains: Dharma - moral values, Artha - prosperity and career, Kāma - pleasure, and Moksha - spiritual values. Antithetical to the western belief, Purusārtha states that material and psychological fulfillment is the result of gaining coherence within these four domains. Growing up in Nepal, we didn't know about Purusārtha, yet our daily lives reflected this philosophy. My family saw life as multidimensional, constituting several priorities and duties, and numerous sources of fulfillment. For example, education fell under my domain of Artha because it was a route to future career success. Academic achievement was expected of me, but it was not my only priority. Dharma —essential to discipline, service, and joy—was freely practiced by contributing to house chores, engaging in social services during weekends, and volunteering to maintain religious and historical sites. Spiritual development, Moksha, consisted of daily visits to pilgrimage sites where we discussed and contemplated on mindfulness and compassion. Although pleasure (Kāma) was not actively sought, it tied into our everyday activities such as feeding birds and playing with children in the neighborhood.
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