Dharma / English Meaning

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 3 years before May 15, 2016

MiBeloved 3 years ago

A response to a question about dharma on LinkedIn:

Colleen wrote:

Dharma, What does it mean to you?

Dharma is one of those words which do not easily translate into English. If you sit with it for awhile, you get a sense of it. How would you describe it, and what is your experience in finding your Dharma?

MiBeloved’s Response:

In the translations of Sanskrit books which I published, I gave dharma as righteous lifestyle. That is based on its usage in the Puranas, the Mahabharata and especially the books which described approved social behaviors in Vedic culture. These books are the ones like the Manu Samhita.

It is interesting how you mention “your dharma” or the dharma of the individual. This is because Arjuna in the Gita did explain in chapter one what his dharma was and how he considered its appropriate performance. And Krishna disagreed with Arjuna and refutes all of Arjuna’s arguments some of which were supported with quotes from the Vedic scriptures.

To me the whole idea of “your dharma” or “my dharma” makes absolutely no sense, because neither of us is absolute or is the final determinant in any of these circumstances.

But look at it in another way:

What is the dharma of the earth planet?

To find the answer to that I feel we have to first define the dharma of the sun planet because the earth is relative to the sun and in the practical sense has no independence. It leads a totally trapped existence, forever orbiting until it will be drawn into the sun. It cannot under any circumstance make the decision to liberate itself from this orbit.

According to the Bhagavad Gita, the ideas of the warriors about their individual dharmas made sense only within the scope of the ideas of the Universal form of Sri Krishna. So I am going to bow out of the conversation after making that statement.