Dharma Vahini - Post 3

Chapter  1  Continued......

Dharma is misunderstood

What is meant by dharma? What is the essence of dharma? Can common people lead a happy life and survive if they stick to dharma? Naturally, these doubts confuse the mind in the course of life. Solving them is necessary, even urgent.

As soon as dharma is mentioned, the ordinary person takes it to mean: giving alms, feeding and providing lodging to pilgrims, adherence to one’s traditional profession or craft, law-abiding nature, discrimination between right and wrong, the pursuit of one’s innate nature over the freaks of one’s own mind, the fruition of one’s fondest desires, and so on.

Of course, it is a long, long time since the spotless countenance of dharma was tarnished beyond recognition. Beautiful elds and groves run wild with neglect and soon become unrecognizable bushland and thorny jungle; ne trees are hewn by greedy people, and the shape of the landscape is changed. With the passage of time, people get accustomed to the new state of things and don’t notice the transformation, the decline. This has also happened to dharma.

Everyone has to acquaint himself with the outlines of dharma, expounded in the Vedas, scriptures (sastras), and Puranas. Misunderstood by incompetent intelligence, unbridled emotion, and impure reasoning, these works have been grossly diluted, and their glory has suffered grievously. 

Just as raindrops from the clear blue sky get coloured and contaminated when they fall on the soil, the unsullied message of the ancient sages (rishis), the example of their shining deeds, and the bright untarnished urges behind their actions are all turned into ugly cari- catures of their original grandeur by uncultured interpreters and scholars.

Books written for children contain illustrations to clarify the text, but the children spend their time with the pictures, forgetting what they are intended to clarify. In the same way, the unwary and the uneducated mistake the rituals, which are designed to illustrate the grand truths, as profoundly real in themselves and ignore the truth that they were meant to elucidate. 

Travelers moving along the road rest for a while in wayside shelters, but during their stay, they damage by neglect or misuse the very structure that gives them rest. So too, the dull and perverse alter the very face of Vedic morality and deceive the world into believing that their handiwork is what the Vedas teach!

When such mauling of dharma took place, when the face of dharma suffered disfigurement at the hands of the enemies of God, the Lord responded to the call of the gods and the godly and saved the world from ruin, by restoring right and truth in the eld of dharma and karma, i.e. in both ideal and practice.

Now, who can cure the present blindness? Man has to slay the six-fold beast of inner enemies (arishadvarga) that lead him on to disaster: lust, anger, greed, delusion, pride, and hate. Thus only can dharma be restored.

Continued....