What is Dharma?

[Polarbear]

I know that dharma means order or law, but what sort of order or law?

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Order or law is a limited translation.

Dharma is truth, dharma is righteousness, dharma is the highest good for all, dharma is duty, dharma is the clothing compassion wears.

Dharma is most fundamentally embodied in mother and father - for most people, mother moreso as men have been programmed to be adverse to a nurturing role.

I defined dharma on HDF sometime back in this context, and I don't think I can do so better again:

Just as is God changeless and always-changing, so is the dharma.

The dharma is timeless, unchanging. The dharma is without beginning or end, always changing.

It changes to accommodate, yes, just as does a mother, who, as our first guru, plants the seeds of all virtues. Jai mata bhava, an exalted state of being, may we all realize that we have all been mothers to all beings, and our hearts stationed in this truth.

A good mother is full of virtues, but does she demand that her child be able to match her own standards? Of course not, if she did, there would effectively be no bond between them, and no learning process. Childhood is a process of educational transgression, much like karma and embodied life in general. How lucky are we to have the mother as guide in childhood, may the dharma be likewise for us throughout our life, and may we never forget that the dharma is embodied in the mother.

Likewise, the dharma is our eternal mother, giving to us our own true nature; this is the function of the dharma, this is also what a human mother does in bringing forth and nurturing life, causing it to manifest its own nature. What an incomparable gift.

So then, let our dharma be a mother to us. May it change to accommodate the needs of the time, the place, the society it manifests itself. It is moral, for the sake of the immoral. It is just, for the sake of the unjust, and it is kind for the sake of the unkind. It reforms everything in its image.

The sanatana dharma is openly manifest in all systems of thought - wherever there is truth, righteousness and spiritually efficacious means, the Sanatana Dharma lives. Most particularly, from our viewpoints, it is manifest most powerfully as our own convictions, which cannot be forced to arise by scriptural injunction, though indeed they can result from a true reading of scripture; the reading is not true merely because the words are.

It is not in vain that Yudhisthir, verily Dharmaraj himself, expressed that Svadharma is the highest dharma. No shastric injunction, phrased and understood in mere vaikhari, can compare to the pashyanti injunctions from the adi guru within, the wordless resolve to be worthy of the supreme grace.

 

[Vinayaka]

In my view, it's complex. There have been entire books written on it. For starters, there are 4 levels: universal, social, human, and personal, and there's or course overlap. More on that here: dharma - Jyotish - Vedic astrology - Vedas

Most often, though, its used as a synonym for svadharma, as when a person asks, "What is my dharma? But there are other views as well. One of those words that connotes a lot of different things to different people.

 

[AmerikanZen]

I know that dharma means order or law, but what sort of order or law?

I have a hunch that it is some sort of universal spiritual law.

 

[Polarbear]

In my view, it's complex. There have been entire books written on it. For starters, there are 4 levels: universal, social, human, and personal, and there's or course overlap. More on that here: dharma - Jyotish - Vedic astrology - Vedas

Most often, though, its used as a synonym for svadharma, as when a person asks, "What is my dharma? But there are other views as well. One of those words that connotes a lot of different things to different people.

How are human and social truths separate?

 

[Vinayaka]

How are human and social truths separate?

Please, I am no expert at all, but I do have a limited understanding. Social dharma refers to how we relate to one another. Teachers teach students, students listen, a king rules, peasants help the king, we pay our taxes so there is rule in the land, there are bosses and employees, each with a duty to each other ... that sort of thing.

Our human dharma refers to the stages of life, that as a kid we have certain duties like learning, then on to as an elder we have duty to give sensible advice. This is more the individual duty, but applicable to all individuals.

Svadharma, on the other hand is completely individual, right to the person. So my dharma is different than yours.

But I have a very limited understanding.

 

[AmerikanZen]

What is Dharma?

Buddha's spiritual teachings & explanations.