In the Light of Wisdom

by Swami Krishnananda

Dharma

In Sanskrit we use a term called dharma, a word which we might have heard many times. Dharma is not religion, as it is often translated—it has a different connotation altogether. Dharma has much to do with morality and is often identified with morality or moral behaviour. Yoga morality is the principal dharma of the student of yoga. The term dharma is very interesting and something which we have to understand. It is a Sanskrit word which simply, etymologically means a quality, a character or a property. Dharma is a property, a characteristic and a necessary concomitant of an existent nature. That which necessarily follows from the very being of something is its dharma. Something which should automatically and necessarily follow, like a corollary flowing from a theorem, could be said to be dharma. If it does not necessarily follow, it is not dharma. Sometimes by reasoning we may come to some conclusion, but that is not dharma. By legal arguments we do not deduce the dharma of a thing. It spontaneously follows, like the breath of our personality, like the light of the sun, the liquidity of water, the heat of fire or the weight of material substances. This is the crux of religious philosophy and the principal teaching of religions, which is why many a time it gets identified with religion. The way in which we have to conduct ourselves in life in conformity with the Reality of life is dharma.

We have another interesting set of terms in Sanskrit: satya and rita. These are two terms which would be beneficial for us to remember. These words occur in the Vedas, and the Vedas are the oldest scriptures—not only of the Hindus, but of the whole world. In the Vedas we have these two important words: satya and rita. Now, rita may be identified with what we generally know as dharma, and the controlling factor behind dharma or rita is satya. While dharma may be the necessary conduct which should follow from something, that something from which it follows is satya. I hope that you understand me. Rita or dharma is something that follows necessarily, and that from which this follows necessarily is satya or Reality. We may call it Truth, if we like. Reality is satya. The characteristic of Reality is rita or dharma. Dharma is a later innovation of the meaning of the term rita. The original Vedic word for dharma is rita, but later this new word dharma was coined to make things a little clearer.

Dharma, or the characteristic of Reality, has a very wide connotation, and it is this which determines moral conduct in life—particularly in yoga morality which is the foundation of the practice of yoga. I shall not tire of saying that we will succeed in yoga only if we know what yoga morality is, and without it there will be no yoga. The original meaning of the term rita is cosmic order. The regularity of the universe and the system according to which the world works, or the law that seems to be inexorably operating everywhere—that is rita. We always see the sun rising from one particular direction. It never changes the way of its movement. The seasons rotate in a particular fashion. The astronomical peculiarities and the laws operating in the stellar regions—we may say the law of the astronomical universe which has a tremendous influence upon our own bodies, personalities and all society—may be said to be the outcome of rita or the cosmic order of things.

Our conduct in life cannot be detrimental to or even deviating from the cosmic order. There is a system or an order set up in the cosmos as a whole, just as there are laws of a government which are applicable in a country. We are not supposed to deviate from this order but are to necessarily abide by it. Our conduct in life necessarily follows from the cosmic order, and if the order of the universe is one manner, our conduct cannot be another. When due to our own egoism, we go contrary to the cosmic order or the law of nature, we know the reactions—we suffer. Whenever we go contrary to the law of nature or the law of the cosmos, we have many difficulties such as physical illness, nervous breakdown, sensory debility, mental aberration, lack of memory, social conflict and even battles and wars. All these can be attributed finally to man’s egoistic deviation from the cosmic order. Any attempt at abiding by this order would be tending towards not only the health of the body, personality and of society, but would also take us nearer to the Reality of which the cosmic order is only an expression.

That we are required to follow a rule of morality ensues from the indivisibility of Reality. We may be wondering why this moral law should be there at all. Who invented this? It has not been invented—it is there. It is there, because something is there. There is something, somewhere. We cannot say that nothing is there. That something which seems to be somewhere, which cannot be denied at any time, is demanding allegiance to its nature. That something which is somewhere seems to be everywhere—to our own misfortune sometimes. We do not like policemen standing everywhere. Likewise, many a time we seem to be afraid to hear that something is everywhere. What kind of thing could it be? We do not like something to be everywhere. We want to be alone somewhere, but that is not possible in this world. The world is made in such a way that we cannot be alone. Everywhere somebody is seeing us. Even in the darkest corner of the nether regions this presence will be seeing.

I would like, by way of digression, to tell a story and to give some relief to the mind from understanding such difficult concepts. There once was a saint called Kanaka Das, who was lowborn according to the Hindu caste system. Though the people did not look upon him with due respect because of his so-called low birth, there was another great saint who wanted to teach the public that there was something in this man that was far superior to the traditional rules of caste. The saint gave a plantain fruit to everybody and said, “Eat this where nobody sees you.” All the disciples went to some corner where nobody saw them and ate the plantain. Kanaka Das however held this plantain in his hand and looked up in all directions for half an hour, for one hour, for two hours. He returned with the plantain to the saint and said, “I cannot eat it in a place where nobody sees me, because everywhere somebody seems to be looking at me.” The others thought, “This is a crazy fellow—he cannot find a place where he can eat a plantain without being seen. Why not go to a nearby room and eat it?” But he alone said, “Everywhere I see some eye gazing at me, and I cannot eat this plantain where nobody sees me.” He then explained who was seeing him. This description of the Absolute is given in a few verses of the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavadgita. Such a description cannot be found anywhere. There are only a very few verses, and we can commit them to memory, if not in Sanskrit then at least in an English translation. We will find who is seeing us everywhere, and why it is that we cannot be alone in this world.

The Cosmic Order

There is an indivisible something which is at the background of the laws that operate. The government is not merely a set of laws—we know that. The laws are formed on account of a necessity felt. That necessity is something prior to the framing of the laws. A good statesman will tell us what the government actually is. It is not persons, for all the officers put together do not make the government. It is not the president, prime minister, the ministers or the governors that make the government. It is not the constitution of the country that is called the government. There is something else, prior to all these formalities and formulations, which only the statesman’s keen insight can see. The very presupposition of the set-up which we call government in ordinary language is the rationality behind the governmental system.

Likewise, there is rationality behind the laws of the universe. It is this rationality that determines not only natural functions such as the seasons, the sunrise, etc. but also the growth of our bodies. From childhood we have grown to adolescence; now we are adults, and later we will become old. All these processes, including the biological evolution, the bodily reactions of hunger, thirst, sleep and so on—everything conceivable, all rules and regulations, needs and necessities—are explicable only in terms of this cosmic order which is an expression of the indivisibility of things. We may be wondering, what could be the law of an indivisible substance? We ought to think for a few seconds as to what it could be. The indivisible something can express itself only in terms of indivisibility.

To explain this expression of indivisibility, one could say that it is a tendency to integration. That which refuses to disintegrate is Being. The very definition of Being is that it cannot be disintegrated at any time. If it can disintegrate, it is not Being. That which keeps itself in an eternal balance and will not brook any interference from outside, at any time, is Being. When such an indivisible Being which cannot be interfered with expresses itself in space, time and externality, it draws things towards itself. The tendency towards Being is the cosmic order, and that also is morality, that is righteousness, and that is goodness. The tendency towards Being is the definition of morality, and any kind of tendency to disintegrate or to deviate from our Being is the opposite to it and is un-morality. The tendency to move towards the centre is morality. The tendency to run away from the centre is immorality. To integrate is morality, and to disintegrate is immorality.

Anything and everything has this tendency. It may be the smallest incident of our workaday world, it may be the tiniest action that we perform in our day-to-day lives—it makes no difference. It may be the gigantic movement of a star in the heavens—it makes no difference. All these are governed by the same law and in the same manner. What we call the force of gravitation is nothing but this tendency to Being. A chemical reaction is nothing but this tendency to Being. One element mixing with another to form a third element is tendency to Being. This tendency to Being is explicit in the astronomical universe as gravitational pull, in the chemical world as reaction, and in our own personalities as the biological urge, and in our psychological world as a dissatisfaction with everything in the world and a longing for more and more.

These are expressions of the very same law that operates everywhere. The substance that is incapable of division cannot also allow division in any of its expressions. Any division is intolerable in life, whether it is in family or in our own personalities. When it is in the personality, we call it schizophrenia; and if it is in a family, we call it misunderstanding or discord. If this division is found with a nation, we call it a revolt. If it is in the whole world, we call it war. But all these mean the same thing—a tendency of the unit of expression to move away from what keeps it in unison. This is the philosophical explanation of the moral law and its scientific basis.

Satya, which I mentioned earlier, is the indivisible Reality, and rita is the expression of this Reality in the space-time world. The expression takes place in many levels. In the material world it is cohesion, gravitation and chemical reaction, and in the biological world it is an urge. In the psychological world it is longing, aspiration and a discontent with the present situation. These are all the variegated expressions in the material, biological and psychological levels of the very same law. It works in the moral level as well as in the spiritual level, as we will see. All the world is governed by one law, because Reality cannot be more than one. The moral law therefore is the same as the physical law of gravitation, only working in a different realm for a different purpose. Conversely, when we dissipate ourselves we tend towards a wearing out of our bodily cells, a weakening of the nervous system, a debilitation of the nerves, a weakening of memory, etc. This is all contrary to yoga, because yoga is that conscious tendency of the mind to integrate. When we consciously tend towards integration, we are practising yoga, and when we cannot do this—when we move hither and thither like a fly that moves in different directions with no apparent purpose whatsoever—then we are earthlings bound to suffer. The cosmos is a unitary Being and we are an integral part of it, and we tend towards it. Every part tends towards the whole, and this is the simple intelligible explanation of yoga morality.

The Practice of Morality

I do not wish to go into details as to the various terms of the moral canon enumerated by Patanjali in his sutras. I wanted to give you the crux of the whole matter and the presupposition of the practice of morality in yoga as the foundation for that practice. We ourselves can appreciate why morality should be the foundation of the practice of yoga. Personal moral integration and discipline of personality constitute what are called the yamas and niyamas in yoga. We should be morally pure and personally disciplined. Patanjali gives various descriptions for this practice, and he wishes to take us gradually from the outer to the inner.

He tells us therefore not to hurt or harm others, not to speak pointed and barbed words to any person, to speak sweetly and positively, and to help others if possible—or at least to do no harm if is not possible for us to help. He also encourages us to conserve energy through brahmacharya, not to take things which do not really belong to us, and not to accumulate things which are not necessary. These are the canons of morality according to Patanjali, which are called in Sanskrit: ahimsa (non-hurting), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (conservation of energy) and aparigraha (non-covetousness).

One of the disciplines is contentment (santosha), which means never to grumble, never to be in a melancholy mood, and never to curse fate and God, but rather to be joyous and buoyant in spirit—to be in a position to skip and jump at any moment. This is contentment, and this is a necessary discipline that Patanjali teaches students of yoga. Saucha is purity both internally and externally. External or bodily purity comes about through bathing and external cleaning of the body and the clothing. Internal purity comes about through right thinking. Contentment or santosha comes about on account of this practice of purity. These observances constitute a kind of austerity or tapas. Tapas means austerity. We look with awe upon a person who is a tapasvin (one who practises austerity). We have heard of people who practise tapas and attain tremendous powers. Power is nothing but the energy that is released out of our personality on account of the control of the senses.

We cannot be powerful if the senses are extroverted and we indulge in the pleasures of sense. The so-called powers of yoga are nothing but our own energy released, like atomic energy that can be released. The energy is hidden in us, but we waste it and dissipate it through sense enjoyments. When we practise tapas in its form as sense control, power comes automatically. Our thoughts assume a tremendous force; our speech or the words that we utter become true. Non-indulgence of the senses is tapas. This makes us powerful like a thunderbolt, strong in our personality, in our speech and in our thoughts, because the mind has become very powerful in concentration and meditation. This is tapas.

To enable the practice of tapas, to enable sense control and to give us certain positive suggestions in the practice of this discipline, we are asked to follow another technique, which is the daily study of a scripture of yoga. This is called swadhyaya. This does not mean just reading some book in a library. If we pick out some random book from a library and read it, this is not swadhyaya. ‘Swa-dhyaya’ means ‘Self-study’, that is, study pertaining to the true Self. Swa means ‘Self’ and adhyaya means ‘study’. That which is spiritually beneficial and intellectually disciplined, enabling a control of oneself may be regarded as swadhyaya. The study of such books as the Bhagavadgita, the Upanishads, the Sermon of the Mount from the Bible, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis, the Dhammapada of Buddha and such texts may be taken as guides in our swadhyaya. We should not have too many books in swadhyaya—otherwise our minds get distracted. Later on it will be profitable to take to only one kind of concentrated study. We should not read a hundred books, because they will sometimes create doubts. Swadhyaya is then one of the disciplines described and is considered to be as important as our physical exercises, asana or pranayama, and also as important as our daily meal or bath.

Saucha, santosha, tapas and swadhyaya (purity, contentment, austerity and sacred study) are four of the disciplines. The fifth one prescribed is self-surrender to God. This is partly a discipline of bhakti yoga and partly a discipline of every yoga. Self-surrender implies a recognition of the omnipotence of God. If God is omnipresent and omnipotent and omniscient, we cannot but surrender ourselves to Him. It follows again as a dharma or a necessary corollary from the very nature of God. If God is omnipresent, we cannot but be an integral part of Him. This recognition of our being an integral part of God—integral means inseparable—this recognition itself is an act of self-surrender. We cannot any more remain a different or isolated being. We cannot any more think as a person unconnected with Reality. We cannot think except in terms of the cosmic order of God. We cannot but be moral. We cannot but practise rita, because satya is there determining it in the background. Though there are many stages of the practice of surrender of self to God, the essential meaning of it is the voluntary recognition of the omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience of God. That which automatically follows from this acceptance, namely, that we cannot even exist independent of God—this is self-surrender.

These disciplines, yamas and niyamas, which are the first rungs in the ladder of yoga, are two of the accessories to the practice of yoga. I have said that there are at least seven accessories altogether, along with seven stages of meditation, and seven transformations of the mind that one undergoes in meditation. These I will try to gradually touch upon in later lessons. Try to remember all these points, because all these things that I have spoken on are like small bricks. If isolated bricks are taken out from the baking oven and thrown pell-mell here and there, they will serve no purpose. But these bricks that we have brought forth can be joined together to constitute a beautiful building, so that all will come together to comprise necessary units in the building of the edifice which is the practice of yoga.