Hinduism

==== Kāma (sensory, emotional and aesthetic pleasure) ====
{{Main|Kama}}
Kāma (Sanskrit, [[Pali]]: काम) means desire, wish, passion, longing, and pleasure of the [[senses]], the aesthetic enjoyment of life, affection and love, with or without sexual connotations.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Macy |first=Joanna |year=1975 |title=The Dialectics of Desire |journal=Numen |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=145–160 |doi=10.2307/3269765 |jstor=3269765}}</ref><ref name="mmwse">Monier Williams, [http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia/ebooks/mw/0300/mw__0304.html काम, kāma] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019211540/http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia/ebooks/mw/0300/mw__0304.html |date=19 October 2017 }} ''Monier-Williams Sanskrit English Dictionary'', p. 271, see 3rd column</ref>

In contemporary Indian literature kama is often used to refer to sexual desire, but in ancient Indian literature kāma is expansive and includes any kind of enjoyment and pleasure, such as pleasure deriving from the arts. The ancient Indian [[Indian epic poetry|Epic]] the [[Mahabharata]] describes kama as any agreeable and desirable experience generated by the interaction of one or more of the five senses with anything associated with that sense, when in harmony with the other goals of human life (dharma, artha and moksha).<ref>R. Prasad (2008), ''History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization'', Volume 12, Part 1, {{ISBN|978-8180695445}}, Chapter 10, particularly pp. 252–255</ref>

In Hinduism, kama is considered an essential and healthy goal of human life when pursued without sacrificing dharma, artha and moksha.<ref>See:
* "The Hindu Kama Shastra Society" (1925), ''[https://archive.org/stream/kamasutraofvatsy00vatsuoft#page/8/mode/2up The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana]'', University of Toronto Archives, pp. 8;
* A. Sharma (1982), ''The Puruṣārthas: a study in Hindu axiology'', Michigan State University, {{ISBN|978-99936-24-31-8}}, pp. 9–12; See review by Frank Whaling in Numen, Vol. 31, 1 (July 1984), pp. 140–142;
* A. Sharma (1999), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/40018229 "The Puruṣārthas: An Axiological Exploration of Hinduism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201229174154/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40018229 |date=29 December 2020 }}, ''The Journal of Religious Ethics'', Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 223–256;
* Chris Bartley (2001), ''Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy'', Editor: Oliver Learman, {{ISBN|978-0-415-17281-3}}, Routledge, Article on Purushartha, p. 443</ref>