More About Dharma and Duty

Considering One's Own Background (Part 2)

- Kum. Hella Naura

After many years of practice of Yoga that Ahave led, and will hopefully go on leading, to inner changes for the good, this writer keeps reflecting over an advice that is over 3000 years old and still most valid. It is an advice given by the ancient sage Vyasa, author of the long epic “Mahabharata”, of which the “Bhagavad Gita” is just a chapter. It runs as follows: “I am screaming at the top of my voice with both arms upraised: Why are you not carrying out your natural duties (Dharma)?

You are bound to get everything in life by doing your natural duties – wealth pleasure and all. Alas! None seems to be listening to me”. 

So getting ever clearer about the deeper meaning of “Dharma” seems most important. Most often the writer heard it translated as “duty”. However, German or English-speaking nationals must keep in mind that the German word “Pflicht” as well as the English “duty” are both very much narrower in their meaning than the so many-sided word Dharma. Therefore, misunderstandings seem inevitable. As read, the meaning of Dharma is “something that connects, combines, unites”, meaning the connection of all the doings that are required just for a decent living on one hand with religious acts such as rituals and other devotional practices on the other. And all this has to be carried out daily, from getting up early in the morning to going to bed at night. That would be one‘s quite normal duty and Dharma.