Vedic dharma series – Universal and contextual aspects of dharma

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
and how it is today known as hinduism in many social circles but hinduism often makes it seem to be sectarian to be just one ism among many isms but it has a central universal non-sectarian message so when we discuss about this we will discuss about various philosophical themes but today what we will focus on is on the theme of dharma the word dharma is used often in ordinal discourse to refer to religion so which religion do you belong to dharma is often equated hindu dharma, christian dharma, muslim dharma this usage is actually only a very external meaning of the word dharma the word dharma is used in the vedas in the sense of dhri, dhri means that which sustains that which is the indispensable characteristic of a living being and that which is the means by which that thing will exist so dharma to put it more concisely the dharma of a thing is that without which that thing will not be that thing so just as salt will not be salt without saltiness sugar will not be sugar without sweetness or fire will not be fire without being hot so dharma of sugar is sweetness dharma of salt is saltishness dharma of fire is heat so dharma refers to the intrinsic inseparable inalienable characteristic of something now this may seem to be a very philosophical abstract meaning of the word dharma which does not have much correlation with the way in which that word dharma is used the word so the question may come up if a word has some meaning which is so abstract and so disconnected with the way in which the word is used today then what significance does that meaning have most people don’t even know this meaning of the word dharma as referring to the universal essence most people use the word dharma as referring to the religion they equate it roughly with the word religion so what significance does it have if we look at the history of english there are so many words which may have had different meanings 500 years ago 1000 years ago and now they are different meanings so the old meanings of the words don’t have much relevance today except for people who are exclusively interested in the meanings of words those who are philologists those who are world lovers they may find such meaning interesting but otherwise it’s not relevant so why should we bother about what is the meaning of the word dharma when that meaning is not used in today’s context that is because whenever we talk about anything there is an internal or mental concept and there is an outer or external term so conceptions or concepts are at the level of the mind the level of our thoughts they’re subtle and then we verbalise them using certain terms so now the link between concepts and terms that is done through consciousness there is a conscious observer who links concepts with terms now if the meanings of the terms are used differently and the meanings of the terms changes does that change the concept no if the original concept was one thing and the word acquires a different meaning later then the original concept still remains the same but the external word will not refer to that concept now for example to make this a little more simpler today the word science has a lot of respect and a person who is a scientist or a person who knows science is considered intellectually respectable and we would say that Newton, Copernicus, Galileo these were great scientists but actually if you look at the history of language the word science was not there at the time of Newton so nowhere in Newton’s writings his own writings or in the writings of Newton or writings about Newton by his peers by his contemporaries is the word science used so at that time the word that was used was natural philosophy natural philosophy that means philosophy is the study of the reality study of how things are at a metaphysical level at a level of thoughts at a deeper level beyond the appearances so there can be different kinds of philosophy so the philosophy which was associated with nature that means by observing the world around us when we try to understand a particular understand things in a philosophical way that is called as that was called as natural philosophy so natural philosophy later on it was almost in the 17th 18th century that a particular natural philosopher came up with the word science to refer to it now the word science might have existed earlier but it was never used in this particular sense so then now the systematic study of nature to understand the house of its working and hopefully also its vice now this as a concept existed even before the word science existed so that means even if Newton was never referred to himself as a scientist or he never referred to himself as a scientist and what he did we never referred to science still the concept of science remained although the word might not have been there so what I am saying by this example is that now today the word philosophy does not have much respect as compared to science philosophy is considered something abstract something which is for the armchair speculators but whatever it is though philosophy does not have much respect and the word natural philosophy may not make much sense also to be what is the actual philosophy but Newton referred to himself as a natural philosopher so whatever a person may refer to externally there is an inner concept and when we understand that concept then we can appreciate the concept is worth appreciating is worth understanding worth benefiting from then that concept has to be understood so the word science refers to a particular way of acquiring knowledge in a systematic observational and inferential way so that was what Newton did although he did not use the word for it now so natural philosophy may not be very respectable in today’s language but essentially what Newton did was respectable even from today’s perspective because today the word used for it is science so what happens is sometimes when certain words acquire certain connotations certain words have two things there is denotation and there is connotation denotation means its literal meaning and connotation means what it implies so words acquire certain based on there is in semantics is the study of the meaning of words so in semantics there is a whole debate about what exact how exactly is the relationship between words and meanings is are words like a pipeline so for example when i use some word and you hear that word so is a word like a pipeline so i just like in a pipe i must inject water and through the pipe the water will go and the water will fall on you so is a word like a pipeline in which a person injects meaning and the meaning goes to the other person as it is undistorted or so in this so this conveys the idea of words as merely transmitters of meaning so what into meaning meaning into words meanings are injected and then they are transmitted this is one idea of the nature of of the relationship between words and meanings the other idea is that words are not just the transmitters of meaning words are actually the shapers of meaning that means when i speak a word i may have a particular meaning to it and when you hear a word you may you ascribe and slightly or an entirely different meaning to it so depending on the way suppose i have heard the word gay and i know that it refers to say homosexuality and say somebody else has heard the word gay and that person has heard the word as referring only to cheerful so when i speak that word and somebody else hears that word they can have completely different connotations of the word so that means is word something which meaning is externally put into it and it is conveyed as it is unfiltered from one person to another or is the meaning of the word determined by the people’s minds so now if you see dictionaries give meanings of words but just by studying dictionaries can people understand conversations not really very well so anyway the we do not want to go into a make this a class of semantics but the point here over here is that the word dharma may have a particular narrow meaning today but we look at its original meaning to understand how the original concept that was by referred to by dharma was universal so the original concept which is what the word referred to that is universal and understanding that concept is what is important so the original concept dharma meant that that which is a intrinsic nature of something and this led to the idea that things have their intrinsic nature and when things do not act according the things do not act according the intrinsic nature then that is unnatural that is disharmonious and that creates disorder and distress so for example when sugar is supposed to be sweet but if in sugar somebody mixes chilli in it and then somebody else says what is this what kind of sugar is this so that is a disorder if somebody takes salt and puts powdered sugar in it and then an item which is made instead of salt person tastes sugar that will be odd so when things are not according to their nature that is disharmonious that causes disorder so now most of the meanings of dharma which are illustrated by these they are based on examples which are of insensual things like say salt or sugar or fire but the vedic scriptures explain that everything in nature has its own nature everything in nature has its own nature and that nature is something which everything should strive for just as water flows downwards the wind flows from one place to another so like that there is a order within everything in nature and to the extent that everything acts according to that order to that extent life will be orderly now it is interesting that even modern science has discovered that everything in the universe follows laws right from microscopic to the macroscopic there are laws and even then certain aspects seem to be chaotic like some there is a theory of chaos for example scientists talk about that there are certain things which in statistical mechanics they behave unpredictable but even those which behave in chaotic ways they also may be behaving at a microscopic level chaotically but at a larger level their behaviour can be predicted and governed by certain equations that means there is some order over there so everywhere there is order and it is this order that is stabbed by science through technology and then so much power is released when that order is understood and tapped so nuclear power which can cause when tapped and utilised for destructive purposes can cause terrible destruction so just as there is an order of things in nature what the vedic scriptures tell us is there is an order of not just things there is order even of beings and there is an order not only for matter but there is order also for consciousness somehow this is the idea which is missing today in modern science that everything is governed by laws but consciousness has no laws governing it and that is why today the idea is today’s society is amoral. Amoral means that morality is subjective if you think something to be right you do it if you think something to be wrong don’t do it but if I think as right what you think as wrong don’t stop me from doing it because right and wrong are ultimately subjective but consciousness itself also has its nature and this nature is to be understood properly so what do we mean by consciousness has nature at a very broad level we can understand one law of consciousness that is what we put into consciousness ultimately comes out for example when people are exhibited to expose to advertisements so now when they are exposed to the same advertisement again and again and again and the advertisements are made using sophisticated technology and sophisticated understanding of the psychological mechanisms that generate desires within people’s minds then people by repeated exposure to the advertisement think that oh I want to purchase this I want to get this so here what is happening that in psychology or as understood in some way through psychology that there are certain laws so consciousness when exposed to certain things responds in certain ways so this is not a matter of sectarian belief or a subjective conception you know whether it is a person who is a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian whether a person is a African American or a Russian or a Chinese whether a person is educated or uneducated if a person is repeatedly exposed to certain tempting advertisements then that person will have those corresponding desires generated within within and that person will act accordingly so this is a universal principle so just as there are laws which govern gross matter I mean like which are uncovered through physics similarly there are laws that govern consciousness and dharma is about that consciousness and its nature and its interaction so essentially dharma refers to things which are according to their nature which stay in harmony with what they are meant to be so the original meaning of the word dharma in that sense is the intrinsic nature of something so what is our intrinsic nature now the intrinsic nature of everyone is to love and to serve we all want to be to love and to love and to the extent we love or we are loved we express that through service we all express our love through service this is a mother when she loves her child what does she do she serves she offers a breast milk when the baby starts crying he caresses her fondles her fondles her and then comforts her and that way serves her so wherever there is love it is expressed through service and again love and service are characteristics which are universal they do not depend on the sectarian designations again nationality or religion or any such designations in fact what to speak of depending on any human created designations these do not depend even on consciousness being manifested as a human form even when the consciousness is manifested in lower species you know tiger cares for its cubs elephant cares for its babies a cat cares for its kittens and that caring is expressed through love and through service so now depending on circumstances the love and care may be expressed in different ways to some extent but that love and care is there there is people when they want to meet and they have a greeting some in some cultures some people may embarrass each other some people may kiss each other some people may just do high fives they just flash their hands against each other in some cultures people rub their noses against each other they consider that a particular form of greeting so now the way that greeting may be expressed will be different but essentially what is done it is a expression of greeting so there will be cultural variations in the expression of the underlying principle but the underlying principle is universal it is universal across human cultures and it is universal beyond human species also to the lower species so to love and serve is our dharma and this is universal everyone has a tendency to love itself so what the Vedic scriptures say is that that this is our nature this nature cannot be taken away if there is no loving and serving then there is practically no consciousness and that person is devoid of any being that is devoid of consciousness is no longer a being it becomes a thing now here when you understand your dharma if this was the original meaning then how has this idea come about that today people say Hindu dharma Christian dharma Muslim dharma how was this idea of equating dharma with certain religious systems come about actually the dharma is not just an abstract concept we have to understand that the word dharma has multiple meanings so at its foundation it means our original nature but this original nature to love and serve this is in the Vedic philosophical understanding connected with another aspect of our nature that is Sanatana all of us want to live forever no one wants to die and this is something which again science has science by science I mean reductionistic materialistic science has great difficulty in explaining that if everywhere around me I see everything is perishable everything is destroyed nothing is going to stay forever then when everything around me is getting destroyed why do I get the even the desire to live forever if a child has never seen gold then will the child get a desire for gold no if there was something which we had never had any experience of then you’re not even going to get a desire for that our desires come from certain things our desires may be extrapolated may be distorted may be exaggerated based on whatever we have seen but there has to be some connection with what we have seen so just as a child who has never seen gold cannot desire gold similarly when there is nothing which is lasting there nothing that is eternal around us when everything is perishable where does our desire for to exist forever come from and this desire is not just in us human beings it is there again in all species even that mosquito you know it has ingenious ways to try to escape when somebody tries to kill it if I try to hit it the mosquito has sensors by which you can feel the hand coming it flies off before I can hit it so all species have this tendency to live to prolong their life and as much as possible and if it were possible to live forever so where does this come from again materialistic science does not have any answer and what the scriptures tell us is that this comes from who we are we are souls and the soul by nature is satchitananda soul is eternal so now now we have talked about two distinct attributes of the soul one is the souls or the propensity to love and serve and the other is for eternal existence so now the marriage of these two is called as sanatana dharma so dharma is the inclination to love and serve sanatana is eternal existence sanatana dharma is that which brings these two together our inclination for eternal existence our long not just inclination it is an intrinsic longing for eternal existence and our intrinsic longing for love and service so currently our propensity for love and service is there with us it is inalienable it cannot be removed from us it is there even when a person is atheistic even an atheistic person has some inclination to love and serve someone even atheists create their leaders now they make their own leaders of atheists into icons into people who are very respected and then they love and serve them so that tendency is there but this tendency for love and service is presently directed in towards temporary things it is directed towards all sanatana things towards things which are not eternal and when our love and service is directed towards non-eternal things it ends in misery it leads to dissatisfaction why because we love and serve something and then that thing is taken away from us and then it is taken away there is great misery that results by that by the separation from that object so how can we direct our loving and serving propensity towards an eternal object that is the genius of sanatana dharma sanatana dharma teaches us guides us how we can direct our loving and serving propensity towards the eternal supreme being who is god now god may be known by different names in different traditions but he is understood in all traditions which have a basic understanding of god that he is understood to be eternal and he is understood to be our master our lord so by loving and serving him we can attain eternal fulfilment for our propensity for our longing to love and serve so sanatana dharma then refers to what firstly it refers to our eternal nature to love and serve god so the Vedic scriptures explain that as souls we have an eternal nature to love and serve god but currently it is misdirected so now it is misdirected we are loving and serving things which are us sanatana so then what is to be done we need a process by which we can redirect our loving propensity towards god and that process is also called as dharma so now this way we have come to three meanings of the word dharma first is dharma refers to that which is our nature which is to love and serve then secondly when we understand it from eternal perspective dharma in its complete sense means to love and serve god then in a third sense so right now i have a tendency to love and serve but my love and serve tendency is directed towards worldly things so those set of activities by which we can redirect our loving and serving propensity from this world from the temporary things to the eternal that is also called as dharma that means there is dharma at one level at our present level our dharma is to love and serve at our perfected level our dharma will be or dharma naturally is to love and serve god now at a transformational level dharma is that which will direct our loving and serving nature from the worldly things to god so when krishna comes says in the bhagavad gita that dharma samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge when he says that he comes to re-establish dharma he talks about this in 4.7 and 8 in the bhagavad gita that he comes when the dharma declines he comes to re-establish dharma now he is not referring to the first level or third level meaning because loving and serving is our intrinsic nature and that is going to be our nature eternally and at the level sanatana dharma there is no change once we are directed our love towards god that will also be eternal but krishna says i come to re-establish dharma he refers to the the arrangements by which our loving and serving propensity can be directed from matter to spirit so now this arrangement is not just individual but it is a social arrangement what does this mean that the vedic scriptures do not envision spirituality as merely an individual pursuit yes ultimately every soul has to individually direct one’s heart from worldly things towards god that is true but it is not that every soul has to do this individually and society will just be managed without any consideration for this now the idea is that all souls should help each other in doing this and then if they then there is the whole society is arranged in such a way that that all of them are moving towards directing their love towards god then that is a perfect society that is a society which will grow spiritually in a harmonious way this brings us to two levels of dharma so now within this dharma so now dharma we are referring to not as intrinsic nature that intrinsic nature is there but that intrinsic nature right now is not manifested fully because we are directing our love towards temporary things so we now want to direct our love towards eternal things so when we have to direct our love towards eternal things we need a transformational process and this transformation process should not just be individual in terms of helping one individual to transform but it should also be social in terms of enabling everyone to direct themselves towards god so that brings us to the multiple meanings of the word dharma at the two levels right now discussed there is para dharma and there is a para dharma para dharma refers to transcendental religion that means it refers to those activities which directly help us to revive our love for god these are devotional activities for example hearing about god speaking about god worshipping god chanting his names now if we look at what is called as the activities of bhakti then we will see that here shravanam kirtana vishnu smaranam if you just put aside the name vishnu over here the activities are universal hearing speaking remembering worshipping serving the universal activities and if you look at the various religious traditions of the world they all have these activities jesus spoke and his disciples heard god allah spoke through gabriel and mohammed heard and mohammed spoke and his followers heard buddha spoke and his followers heard so this hearing speaking hearing remembering and then acting accordingly these are universal activities irrespective of whichever religious specifically this tradition one belongs to so there is para dharma refers to those activities that enable one to transform one’s love from matter to spirit directly by focussing on god but it is understood also in the vedic culture that one cannot just entirely immediately transform one’s love from matter to god because one has to live in this world and living in this world also requires order it requires harmony and for that there is a para dharma a para dharma is para is transcendental a para is non-transcendental so this para and a para this distinction is talked about especially it is talked about in the gunda upanishad it is hinted at in the upanishad in general but gunda upanishad talks about it talks about para vidya and a para vidya so a para refers to non-transcendental it refers to in one sense material so society has to be arranged materially also in such a way that the spiritual progress of the individuals can be facilitated so that arrangement is also called as dharma so for example a king ruling righteously that helps people to practise devotional activities now if there is no king or if the king is an exploiter and people are living in great anxiety and people are living in uncertainty about whether they will even survive they will get their necessities for survival then they cannot very properly practise spiritual life so arranging society in such a way that the means of transformation can be affected or redirection of one’s love from matter to spirit can be affected from matter to god can be affected that is also called as dharma so now we discussed about two levels of dharma para and a para dharma now in a para dharma again there is classification so because the word dharma because different people at the material level have different natures now remember we are talking about the nature of things is called as dharma so at the level of soul all souls have the same nature to love and serve but we are not just souls right now we are embodied souls and when we are embodied souls the embodiment the body and the soul that body and mind that cover the soul cause that soul’s nature to be expressed in a particular way so therefore each of us has different natures and these natures are classified into four so what is called as the caste system today is actually not a caste system it is actually a system of taxonomy for classification of human beings so these four are essentially human types in every society we will see certain people are intellectuals certain people are administrators certain people who are business professionals certain people who are general assistants who do other kinds of work so these are broad divisions which are there everywhere so what is this got to do with dharma now a dharma of the soul is to love and serve krishna love and serve god in general so this is against universal but when the soul is covered by a particular body and mind that soul’s loving and serving nature will be expressed in a different way so in the way that that love and soul’s loving and serving nature is expressed that is also that becomes the souls that determines the soul’s aparadharma so although the paradharma of all souls is the same the paradharma of all souls is to love and serve krishna the aparadharma of all souls will not be the same the aparadharma will be determined by the nature of the conditioning and there are more classifications there is brahmanabh dharma there is kshatriya dharma there is vaisya dharma there is shudra dharma and again these are dependent on nature so it is not meant to discriminate against people it is actually meant to facilitate people to act according to their nature this is also called as varnashram so now we look at this meaning of the word bhagavad gita this meaning of the word in the bhagavad gita when krishna says in 3.35 here krishna is saying it is far better to do one’s own dharma than to do anyone else’s dharma in fact he says the destruction in one’s own by doing one’s own dharma is far better than trying to do somebody else’s dharma because that is bhayavaha that is dangerous now this clearly is not referring this word usage of the word dharma clearly doesn’t refer to the inherent nature of all living beings because if it were referring to that then there would be no question of swadharma and paradharma because everybody’s dharma would be the same so here it is referring to something else and what is it referring to it is referring to one’s nature at the level of the body and the mind so a brahmana should act as a brahmana and not act as a kshatriya a kshatriya should act as a kshatriya and not act as a brahmana why is this required because in society order has to be maintained and maintaining of order means that people act not in artificially imposed or restricted ways but in the ways which are according to their nature so this is a very significant aspect of vedic culture that in all religions it is talked about how we should direct ourselves towards the spiritual towards the transcendental towards the eternal towards god or some equivalent conception of eternity so but that is talked about but the way in which this can be brought about social or a social arrangement to facilitate this has not been talked about anywhere else so in christianity in islam there are there are law codes which are there but there’s nowhere any comprehensive social arrangement for helping people to act to direct their love for matter towards god so now para dharma and apara dharma ideally should go harmoniously that means that see the parents are devoted spiritualists and the parents train their children to also become devoted spiritualists so the para dharma is to love god and the apara dharma is in a society that should balance children should obey their parents so for the children to obey their parents is also dharma for the parents to be responsible and take care of the children that is also dharma this is apara dharma so the apara dharma and the para dharma when they both go together that is the best and that is what vedic society was originally meant to be now there are certain times when these may be in conflict at that time appropriate adjustments have to be made so that both can still both can still be social order is also maintained and the spiritual interest is also part of it but if there are irreconcilable differences between the two then the dharma for practising spiritual life has to be emphasised because that is our eternal dharma now among these two the apara dharma and the para dharma the apara dharma is not eternal and the apara dharma is also not essential there is some form of social arrangement that is required but a soul who has never been a part of an ashram can still learn to love god and return back to god to help this at a to help to facilitate this happening at a social level apara dharma is required so many people because in the vedic culture the caste system the varna ashram that was there it degenerated into a caste system and the caste system was restrictive the caste system was in some ways discriminatory so because of that people reject the whole gamut of vedic wisdom and they feel this whole thing is discriminatory we do not want it but that is you know first of all apara dharma is not the essential message of the vedic scriptures what to speak of a distortion of apara dharma which is today’s caste system so the essential message of the vedic scriptures is the teaching of para dharma and this is the universal teaching of all the religions of the world and in that sense actually the essential message of the vedas vedic scriptures is non-sectarian it is and it underlies and unifies all the world’s great theistic religions it is essentially a process by which one can direct oneself from matter towards god so by equating the profound world religion dharma with religion what happens is not only is the universality of it lost but along with that uh the empowerment the transformation and the elevation of human consciousness that is possible by understanding the concept of dharma and trying to imbibe it once in one’s life that also becomes lost so that’s why when when the great vedic teachers talk about dharma they distance it from the sectarian religions that are there or the dharma is today having the facility to be practised in any situation so there may be people who may be of different religions but still they can also practise spiritual life they can also learn to love god and they can return back to god that’s why Srila Prabhupada the founder of ISKCON he said that i have not come here to convert people from christians to hindus or muslims to hindus so there is a conversion that is horizontal this is the concluding point we’ll discuss there’s a horizontal conversion and there’s a vertical conversion horizontal conversion refers to changing people’s designations now somebody is a hindu you change that person to a christian or somebody is a christian change that person to a muslim now this sort of horizontal conversion now the very concept of hindu muslim christian this has got nothing to do with the soul the soul is not hindu muslim christian it is a designation that is there for the body and that designation is changeable and changing that designation does not change the soul’s propensity soul’s nature that changing that designation does not automatically enable the soul to love god so horizontal conversion may change the demographics demographics in the nature of population the composition of population but it does not change the person’s consciousness much it is vertical conversion vertical conversion means the practise of paradharma by which the soul changes from being a lover of the world to a lover of god from being materialistic to being spiritual it is that conversion that is vital it is that conversion which is universal that is that which is desirable now horizontal conversion is useful to the extent that it inspires a person towards vertical conversion that means if a person feels inspired but okay i feel inspired by the sacrifice of jesus and by meditating on jesus sacrifice i’ll feel inspired to devote myself to god then if the person changes from one religion to another that is of some use so it’s to give another example to understand this vertical conversion means like climbing up a mountain so now to climb up a mountain there may be different pathways up the mountain so now some person may feel okay this path is very difficult for me so some people may find that a path with steps is easier some people may feel like okay path where i can just hold on to branches and tricks i will go that way some people say i want a clear road whatever it is so there will be different ways to climb up the mountain.
Bhakta Vinod Thakur and Chaitanya Shikshamruth says that different spiritual seers whether they be Plato or Pythagoras whether it be Vyasa or it may be some other they’ve all seen that one peak of the absolute truth from different directions and they have pointed out ways to progress towards that absolute truth so now if somebody is at the bottom of the mountain and the only thing that the person busies oneself with is going round and round at the bottom of the mountain and pull people from the other paths and get them to one’s own path and the person doesn’t climb up the mountain oneself then that is not of much use what is important is one climbs up the and people who are at the bottom of the mountain if they truly see oh this person has climbed so much up so that means this path is good i can climb up also so if people see that those who are devoted to spirituality they are transformed what is the transformation when there is love for god then there is love for all living beings because one understands god’s connection with all living beings so when there is love for all living beings there is humility there is tolerance in the Srimad Bhagavatam the characteristics of advanced spiritualists are talked about in universal terms so they are not talked about in sectarian terms that if this person you know does this particular ritual or this person does that or that or that it talks about one who has tolerance for this self-control one who has compassion these are universal qualities and these qualities develop to the extent one develops love for god and one revives one’s original spiritual nature so the word dharma actually is very different from the word religion so what we call as religion today are external manifestations of dharma that means they are non-essential external manifestations they are they could be means for rising up the mountain but they could well also be means for staying stuck at the bottom of the mountain there is a group of people who call themselves as Hindu atheists it is a oxymoron oxymoron is a self-contract term Hinduism is based on understanding acceptance of the various scriptures and therein is acceptance of god similarly there are people who say that we are Jew atheists this is all ridiculous because it’s like then in this case what has happened is religion has just become another designation to perpetuate one’s ignorance so that which is called as religion that which in today’s terminology people may call as dharma dharma has become a means by which people stay in a dharma so if the activities that are called as dharma do not lead people towards higher consciousness then they are not dharma they are a dharma so only those activities which enable people to rise to higher level of consciousness they alone are dharma and it is that dharma which is the essential message of the various scriptures that which is our essential nature and that is the process by which that essential nature can be revived and our eternal life can be achieved that is the universal legacy and this legacy is not based on belief in certain sectarian conceptions of god or certain sectarian conceptions of what is the revealed truth certain sectarian conceptions of some chosen people no it is based on understanding of the universal principles of what our nature is and how we can live according to that nature so we will continue further exploration of the universal concepts or within the Vedic tradition in our next class. Thank you very much.