What’s My Dharma?
By: Varun Jain
Tags: Love, Spirituality, Religion, Life, Peace

What’s My Dharma?

Our karma will reveal our true dharma.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

When asked about themselves, many people may mention this one thing they identify with, their religion; “ I’m a Christian”, “ I’m a Muslim”, “I’m a Buddhist”, or “I’m an atheist”! Our religious inclination has become something we identify with. The question is, is this my identity? Is it true? If yes, to what extent?

The one who is reading and comprehending this is that awareness residing behind those eyes. The soul is nothing but conscient energy. We are eternal beings taking up these costumes which we call ‘our bodies’. As we wear different ‘costumes’ during the course of our life, what are the chances that we have always taken birth in one particular religion? One may be a Christian now but maybe in the previous birth, he or she may have been a Hindu or a Buddhist or anything for that matter. These religions are for the body, i.e, one may have taken birth in a Christian family, but that doesn’t become one’s eternal identity, the same way as one has taken birth in a male body, but that too is not his eternal identity. It is the characteristic of the body. This is a world of labels and we live as per that, that’s fine, I being a male won’t go around wearing female clothes thinking that, “I don’t identify myself as a male, I can wear anything”, that will be ridiculous. The point is I needn’t identify with these labels. I need to know these for what it is — labels.

The ‘I’, is beyond all these labels. It is which is prior to every label. The ‘I’ is the one we attaching the label too. These labels are not eternally true. These labels are temporary. One birth I can be born as a male in another born as a female. Likewise, in one birth one can be a Christian, and in another, could be born into another religion. Hence it is not eternally true but ‘I’ — is. This not to say one shan’t study it. One can always reference religious studies to understand the deeper aspects of it that will help in the process of self-realization but one needn’t identify with it. Just because of this false identification, there have been countless wars just fought in the name of religion. Identifying ourselves with our religion separates us, it has divided us into these fragments leading us to believe we are all separate when in fact we are all one family.

Religion in Sanskrit is called ‘Dharma’. As per the Oxford dictionary, dharma means ‘The eternal and inherent nature of reality, regarded in Hinduism as a cosmic law underlying right behavior and social order’. So what is our Dharma? What is that cosmic law which will render ‘right’ behavior? One can get this answer when one looks within. Reflect what is the state of mind you really like to be in. You will find that we all long for peace, love, and joy. We all looking for the same thing regardless of our religious or cultural background. The soul yearns to stabilize itself in its original dharma but doesn’t know how to and it tries to fill that gap by seeking outside.

How do we stabilize in our true Dharma?

Be the ‘self’. Have moments of self-awareness where the mental activity is silenced and allow those moments to expand. It is then our true original qualities emerge. Observe the mind without judgment, this is one of the ways to calm down the mental activity.

The true eternal nature of the soul is peace and love. It is when our ego dissolves, we stabilize ourselves in our original nature. Our ego is the wall that separates you and me. When the ego is dissolved, love flourishes and that is our true original dharma. It is this love which is the “cosmic law which when adhered to will render the right behavior”. Where there is love; care, compassion, and gentleness become natural, towards the self, with one another, and also with nature. Don’t confuse this love with what people nowadays think love is. This love is a result of the dissolution of the ego. It is a sense of inclusiveness with everyone and everything.

When our actions come out of love, our actions are embellished with divine grace. Our simplest of actions become graceful, even if our action is something as trivial as cleaning the floor. Our karma will reveal our true dharma.