Part one · That same question

Every life, one day or another, meets this question: what does all this mean. The Indian tradition gives it a structure. The four purusharthas, dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, the legitimate aims of life, where the worldly aims are honored so long as they stay within dharma, and moksha is the final aim. The four ashramas: brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha, and sannyasa (Patrick Olivelle, The Asrama System). Moksha is the main answer here: in Advaita, the atman (self) and Brahman being one; in bhakti (devotion), a love-filled union with a personal God. And the Gita’s three paths: jnana, karma, and bhakti.

Beyond this lies a wide field too, set down here as a map, not a verdict. For some, the answer is meeting that Supreme, or serving it. For some, the ceasing of suffering. For some, right relationship with others and their flourishing. And for some, meaning is made by choosing and answering for oneself, the existentialist answer (Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning).

Part two · Four who carried it

Now four teachers, a short story for each, and then the build of each answer. With history’s cautions kept close.

Buddha

The prince saw four sights outside the palace: old age, sickness, death, and a renunciant. The question rose: why is there suffering, and can it end. The answer came in the four noble truths: that ordinary life carries an unease, that its root is craving, that it can cease, and that the eightfold path leads there. Alongside, dependent origination and anatman: nothing stands apart on its own, and there is no fixed I. The first sermon is the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11).

Jesus

One caution first. Historical reconstruction places him in the Jewish society of the Second Temple period, a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, whose question is what God asks as his kingdom draws near. The answer is repentance, love of God and neighbor (Mark 12:28-31), the reversals found in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), and trust in a final judgment. The caution: the sources are the Gospels themselves, written decades later by the communities that worshipped him.

Krishna

The caution first: this is the divine speaker of the Gita, not a teacher on history’s record. The crisis is Arjuna’s, a moral paralysis before his own people, duty, and death. The answers: the atman beyond the body, which is not the body (chapter 2); action done with attachment to its fruit released, karma-yoga (chapters 2 and 3); and love-filled surrender, with the darshan of the cosmic form (chapter 11).

Guru Nanak

The question is how to know that one formless truth, and the obstacle is haumai, the self-centered ego. At the head of the Japji and the Mul Mantar stands Ik Onkar, here in Devanagari, सति नामु करता पुरखु निरभउ निरवैरु, the true Name, the creative being, without fear, without enmity. The path is nam-simran, remembrance of the Name, lived inside an honest householder’s life: kirat karo, vand chhako, naam japo. And that saying, that there is no Hindu and no Musalman. The caution: the janamsakhi life-stories were written in a spirit of devotion (W. H. McLeod).

And at the end

Each one meets some face of the same condition: that we suffer, that we die, that we must act without a firm address, that we feel cut off from the Supreme. The Buddha reads it as craving, to be let go. Jesus reads it as a relationship, to be mended before the coming judgment. Krishna’s Gita reads it as a call: stand in the atman beyond the body and do the right act. Nanak reads it as an ego, to be melted into that One. All four answers are true answers, and they do not combine into any single doctrine.