Dharma

My Understanding of Dharma

Whenever I ask questions to myself such as

• What should I actually do in life?
• What are the activities worth doing?
• How can I know what I should do?

I always end up concluding satisfactorily as “Dharma”.

What’s Dharma?

From what I understand, Dharma are those things which when followed/carried out/adhered to, make it possible for all living and non-living things to ultimately be together happy and satisfied.

Dharma seems to happen when everyone is willingly unselfish and works for everyone’s good. The meaning of “everyone” could vary depending on the situation and actors involved.

The things that need to be followed/carried out/adhered to seems to include all varieties like soft and hard methods, thinking from the heart and thinking from the brain, and so on, depending on what the situation is.

When talking about a family, “everyone” refers to all the people in a family. When talking about a team, it refers to all the people in the team. When talking about a country, it refers to everyone in the country. So on and so forth.

So, what should I or anyone do in life?

Do Dharma in all the roles one plays. Use common sense to understand what’s expected in that role at that time and do what will bring benefit for all (including oneself). That’s sufficient.

There are multiple roles everyone plays in life and for each person, the roles they play keep getting added, removed and changed. For example, one person may initially be a Human, Son, Relative and Citizen when he’s born and later in life may be a combination of Human, Dad, Son, Husband, Friend, Relative, Citizen, Gardener and Manager.

When he is a baby, using common sense, he is not expected to take care of himself as a Human or others as a Relative, but at a later stage in life, when he has the same roles of Human and Relative, he is expected to take care of himself and others. Also, he has added roles as Dad, Husband, Friend, etc. which come with their own set of activities/conditions that need to be followed so that everyone and everything is together, happy and satisfied. However, even at this later stage in life, with his set of roles, nobody expects him to govern a country because the Universe has made someone else the President/Prime Minister and not this person (at least until that moment).

How can I figure out those things that need to be followed/carried out/adhered to?

There’s no specific way. One can either learn it from someone else or learn by watching someone else succeed/fail at Dharma or try different things to see if it works or learn from books or maybe there are other ways too.

No matter what, it is a continuous learning process as situations keep changing all the time. If one thinks and tries sincerely and persistently, one seems to be able to figure it out eventually. That’s how humans appear to have been created.