by Swami Kriyananda

The meaning of the word dharma is "duty"—but a particular kind of duty: that which leads you to the realization of your highest Self. There are lower and higher forms of duty; thus we could take the word to mean simply your worldly duty. But in the highest sense, the word dharma means that action which leads you toward God-realization.

Whenever we think of duty, we tend to think in terms of something that's a burden, and that goes against our desires. In fact, we must all wake up from the dreams of childhood to the realization that it can't be a Peter Pan existence forever. We have to assume the burden of working to support ourselves and our families. In the course of life people very often tend to lose touch with that beauty that they've experienced as children in their engulfment, you might say, in duty.

But this, too, is a kind of dream. We must all eventually wake up in God. As Yogananda said, "I slept and dreamt that life was only duty, and I woke up and found life was beauty." So you see that the saints, even though doing their duty in this world, do it with a sense of beauty, with a sense of joy and privilege, with a sense of the love that comes when you're sharing with other people, and with a constant flow of inspiration.

This is the kind of attitude with which we want to approach the whole subject of dharma. When we take it in the right way, we realize that even though following dharma may be difficult in the beginning, because it requires a certain disciplining, once you've got all your energies in the right direction, there is only joy.

I'll give you a personal example. In building Ananda, I had to go out and earn a lot of money, even though what I wanted was to meditate. The thought of having to pay off huge bills with people threatening to foreclose was a terrible burden to me. But I had paid off the heavy debts that we'd incurred, after I'd met the challenge successfully (thank God, or we wouldn't be here), I suddenly realized that my gain wasn't the challenge overcome. It wasn't the money that I'd gained to be able to pay off the land and construct the first buildings. What I had in fact acquired was spiritual attunement and strength. I felt stronger in myself than I had felt before. Slowly I came to understand that there isn't a division between a higher and lower duty if we do it all for God.

Yogananda said, "One time when I was lecturing during the early years in America I began to worry that I was losing touch with God by all the talking that I had to do. Then I realized that in that very fear of losing Him, I was remembering Him, and then I felt reassured." It's the same idea-when we live in the right way, dharma isn't the burden that it seems. It's rather our joy is doing that which God has given us to do. When we do that, then everything flows smoothly. Rather than our dharma being a burden, it's a wonderful opportunity to grow.

It's very important to understand that your dharma is unique; it's the things that you need to do. There's a general dharma that's true for everybody: we all need to learn to love, to forgive, to be in joy, to live peacefully. But there are specific things that are inwardly right for you because they help you to find God. I don't mean that because you happen to be a good actor, therefore your dharma is to be an actor. It may be against your dharma to do that which you're good at, because it may feed your ego and get you off the path.

Dharma is not what worldly eyes see as your duty. Dharma is that which your soul offers you as your way out of duty, back into divine beauty. It follows from this that there are no more or less important roles in this life. When a successful businessman gets to heaven, for example, the angels won't gasp because he owns several railroads. It simply won't matter. We leave this plane of existence not with the things we have done in the world, which will all be forgotten, but with the character and attitudes we have developed here. There isn't anything important to accomplish anyway except knowing God. The position that we're placed in is totally extraneous.

The laws of dharma must be understood not as just black or white. Jesus came to break a lot of the old rules and the crystallized, ossified understanding of his time to help people to understand that the rules are merely a vehicle for charity, for inspiration, for one's attunement. He demonstrated that if, in the name of one particular rule-of honoring the sabbath, for example-you ignore the welfare of a fellow human being, then in fact you're going against the very truth that the Scriptures offer as a rule. It says in the Indian Scriptures, when a lower dharma conflicts with a higher, it ceases to be a dharma. It ceases to be right action.

When we get into the subject of dharma, we must understand it on a spiritual level above all, and only secondarily on a relative level. We have to understand it intuitively, seeing that it's a matter of what the rule was really for, and trying to be in tune with the higher purpose. In fact, we have to recognize that the highest law of all is love, that when you love God you are fulfilling your highest dharma.

There are different ways of understanding dharma. You have to understand it from a soul level. Unfortunately, most people tend to be guided by their desires. They will say, "I feel I should do this," or "I feel I should do that," as if that were the justification for their actions. We must be able to pull back from our own likes and dislikes, our desires and attachments. Only then can we hope to be really guided by dharma.

We should be guided by what is right, not by what we want. The world today tells us exactly the opposite: What we want is what is right. That's not true, unless we take it to the highest spiritual level, which is to say, what we really want is God-His lasting joy and love. But all of these things fall very far outside of the category of what most people think of when they say, "Do what you want."

Those people who think first in terms of what they want don't ever get it together. Those people who think in terms of what does God want, what is best for everybody, are always happy, and their happiness is always growing. I've seen that this is an infallible law. If people think, "First I've got to get my thing together, and then I can think about other people," then years later they're still trying to get their thing together. Whereas I've seen others who think, "No, I'm here for God. I'm living for Him. He'll take care of me." If their faith is dynamic, those people are always taken care of by God.

So be guided not by desire. Be guided by dharma. Be guided by God's will in everything that you do, and you will see that His will is your will. You will see that all God really wants is your happiness, and you will never be so happy as when you offer your will up totally to Him.

Pull Quote: In the highest sense the word dharma means that action which leads you toward God-realization.