Dharma

Dharma is a Sanskrit concept with several layers of meaning that cannot be cleanly translated into any single English word. At its most fundamental, it refers to the natural order of things, the principle that sustains the cosmos. At the level of the individual, it refers to one's own specific duty, nature, and appropriate path — the particular way of being and acting that is right for this person, in this station, at this moment in life.

The Bhagavad Gita — the most concentrated and most widely read philosophical text in the Hindu tradition — addresses dharma in its most difficult form: Arjuna, the warrior prince, faces a battle in which he must fight and kill members of his own family and clan. He wants to refuse. Krishna, his charioteer and the divine voice of the Gita, argues that his duty as a warrior — his dharma — requires him to fight, and that the refusal to fulfill one's dharma is not compassion but confusion. The soul does not die with the body; the action performed in accordance with one's duty, without attachment to its fruits, is the highest form of human action.

The concept of svadharma — one's own dharma, as distinct from the dharma of others — anticipates by two millennia what Emerson meant by self-reliance: envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide. The particular nature of each person, their specific place in the order of things, their particular gifts and responsibilities, constitute a path that no one else can walk for them. To imitate another's path, however impressive, is to abandon one's own — which is the only path that can lead to genuine fulfillment.

Swami Vivekananda brought this teaching to the West in his lectures on Karma Yoga: work performed in accordance with one's nature, without attachment to results, purifies the mind and develops the character. The work itself, done from right motivation and in accordance with one's nature, is its own reward — and its own spiritual practice.