18 - Strategic initiatives

Summary

At a time of financial hardship for institutions of higher learning, the following words of the poet Bhartrhari may offer some comfort:

He may sleep on bare ground or on a couch,

Fare on roots or dine on sweet rice,

Wear rags or heavenly robes;

When he is rapt in reflection, a sage

Pays no heed to pain or pleasure.

The comfort lies obviously in the fact that poverty is by no means a necessary adjunct of wisdom! And in fact, depending on what is meant by ‘wisdom’, it could well be argued that the luxuries of a soft couch, sweet rice and heavenly clothes can actually be acquired by means of wisdom. That certainly is the argument of most of the material I would like to look at in the present chapter. ‘Wise’ in this case refers, rather humbly, to the man who is clever, shrewd and even ruthless or crafty. Whatever complexities of Wisdom may be in store for us at further stages of our exploration, no such difficulties are attached to the ideas we shall be exploring here. This worldly wisdom possesses a neatly defined home in the wider context and structure of Indian culture. Sandwiched (as artha) between dharma and kāma, ‘religion ’ and ‘love’, it makes up together with these two the triad of the three ends in a man's life, the three legitimate aims to be pursued during one's active career in the world.