On Dharma and being ourselves

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
We want to say dharma if it comes from the root dhri, dhri means to sustain. So dharma is the activity which sustains us, the activity that enables us to be who we are. So in that sense, we don’t really choose dharma over ourselves.
It is rather by choosing dharma, we become ourselves. We become the fullest manifestation of who we are by dharma. So dharma is not a set of religious rituals and certainly not a set of don’t do this and don’t do that and don’t do this.
So yes, there are some pleasures we do need to abstain from, but then that is required for any activity in life. If there’s an athlete, the athletes, they have to have a strict regimen, they regulate their diet, they do so much discipline so that they can be good athletes. So in any field to become something worthwhile, there are some things we abstain from.