Life’s goal is to achieve moksha, release from the relentless cycle of birth and rebirth, being absorbed into the ultimate source of order called Brahma.

The desire to achieve moksha is based on what historian Will Durant calls the “revulsion against life . . . , which runs darkly through all Hindu thought.” This gloomy and pessimistic attitude is well illustrated in the Maitri Upanishad, which asks: “In this body, which is afflicted with desire, anger, covetousness, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, separation from the desirable, union with the undesirable, hunger, thirst, senility, death, disease, sorrow and the like, what is the good of enjoyment of desires?”

A way of avoiding this unhappy condition was given in the Puranas, a series of texts probably composed during the first centuries of the Common Era. Meaning “ancient stories,” these were widely available and came to be known as the scriptures of the common man. The Garuda Purana claims: “True happiness lies in the extinction of all emotions. . . . Where there is affection there is misery. . . . Renounce affection and you shall be happy.”