Contemporarily there is a gradual and perceptible shift in the world-views of societies across globe followed by attendant life style. While in India the shift is towards materialism with an increased tendency to seek transient pleasures of life and attendant social and psychological problems, West seem to be veering towards spiritualism seeking sustainable happiness weary of transient pleasures. A few of the developments within our discipline such as the emergence of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, cultural and indigenous psychology, and ecological and positive psychology reflect this shift.
The materialist worldview holds that life of an organism is just a biological event limited to a brief or longer duration between two events -brith and death- with a terminal end. The spiritual worldview of Indian traditions proclaim that life is continuous and it is the physical body that comes into existence, grows, decays, and perishes. That makes a lot of difference in the way meaning of life and notion of well-being are conceptualized.
This presentation will focus on providing a broad overview of the conceptualization of the meaning of life and well-being from ‘Indian psychological perspectives’; and how they influenced ways of living in India; and (c) what generalizations can we make.