Page 15 - NAMAH-Oct-2022

Namah In the Face of Error and Evil

govern our outgoing thought and action and Error, bondage and the path to freedom
our relations with each other so as to help best
both our own growth and that of the human The difference between dharma and scriptural
race towards the divine ideal. injunctions or the rights and responsibilities
enshrined in a constitution is the shift of the locus
Dharma is generally spoken of as something of action from outward to the inner. Dharma is
eternal and unchanging, and so it is in the not a rule-book though one may express it in the
fundamental principle, in the ideal, but in its form of a book as Dharmassaastra. The difference
forms it is continually changing and evolving, is that rule-books often divide human life
because man does not already possess the ideal into black and white. They do allow the grey
or live in it, but aspires more or less perfectly zones of human existence but as something
towards it, is growing towards its knowledge inevitable and permanent. After all, it is only
and practice. And in this growth dharma is all realism that no rule-book can ever contain a
that helps us to grow into the divine purity, detailed injunction for each and every act. Yet
largeness, light, freedom, power, strength, joy, much of mankind actually lives in these grey
love, good, unity, beauty, and against it stands areas and where they blindly follow the state
its shadow and denial, all that resists its growth machinery or religious edicts, they have little
and has not undergone its law, all that has not scope of moving out of these grey territories
yielded up and does not will to yield up its because there is no real impetus to do so. Blind
secret of divine values, but presents a front obedience to outer machinery takes away our
of perversion and contradiction, of impurity, intrinsic ability to judge and choose.
narrowness, bondage, darkness, weakness,
vileness, discord and suffering and division, Fortunately, the evolutionary impulsion within
and the hideous and the crude, all that man creation is pushing through these grey
has to leave behind in his progress. This is zones ever reminding us of the imperfection
the adharma, not-dharma, which strives with of religion and science, ever pushing us to
and seeks to overcome the dharma, to draw new challenges and dilemmas so that we
backward and downward, the reactionary force may eventually discover the inner light to
which makes for evil, ignorance and darkness. guide us replacing the insufficient lamps of
Between the two there is perpetual battle and belief in a book or the rules of the constitution.
struggle, oscillation of victory and defeat in Dharma is precisely such a luminous guide that
which sometimes the upward and sometimes gives us certain general guidelines yet instead
the downward forces prevail (2).” of enforcing them through a common code asks
man to ultimately consult the inner guide in
his own heart where the Truth resides. In fact,
the purpose of dharma is not just to maintain
law and order in society, — that surely is one
of its functions, but to help man grow within
until no rule-book or scripture is needed to help
us navigate through life in a meaningful way.

Thus seen dharma is very simply the right law

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