Dharma Explanation - What is Dharma?

Transcript

Namaskar. Welcome to Tantra Thoughts. Today's video is called explanation of dharma. What is dharma? There are many spiritual words that are often misunderstood. For example, yoga. When people say the word yoga, sometimes they're only referring to stretching or physical exercise. The truth is yoga is a Sanskrit word that means unification. So what type of unification do we mean? the unification between the unit consciousness with infinite consciousness. Likewise, the word dharma is also often misunderstood. In most cases, I've heard people use dharma to mean social responsibility or one's duty in life. In this video, I'm going to explain dharma as it was first explained by Shiva, who I mentioned in another video was the first yogi to teach tantra. One of Shiva's biggest contributions to human civilization 7,000 years ago during his age was this very concept of dharma. So dharma is the innate characteristic of a being or a thing. A great example to explain what dharma is means is by looking at fire. The dharma of fire is to burn or water. The dharma of water is to get wet. The dharma of a lion is to eat meat and also to sleep, procreate and other basic qualities that it has. So dharma is whatever innate characteristic uh happens to be in that particular being. That is why we can't judge fire for burning and we can't judge an animal for killing another animal for food. It's their dharma. So now you might be asking yourself, well what is the dharma for humans? And this is a great question. What's the difference between our dharma and the dharma of animals? Is our dharma also to eat, sleep, procreate, repeat? If that were true, nothing would be setting us apart from animals. Yet we know we are capable of doing a lot more than animals can. In my video, three aspects of the mind, chitta, aham, and mahat, I talk about three stages of tantra. First, a human being must learn to control all of their anim animalistic urges in order to become fully human. After that, a human being learns to expand his or her mind around the idea of infinite consciousness and thus becomes one with infinite consciousness. So although we share dharma qualities with animals because we also eat, sleep, procreate repeat eat sleep procreate, we're different because our mind can go further than that. Our dharma, therefore, is becoming one with infinite consciousness. That is what we are designed to do. That is why the spiritual path is the most important thing that you can have. Now some people might think that this is a bit of a stretch that the human dharma is the quest for enlightenment or is to become enlightened. Eating, sleeping, procreating gives temporary happiness. Many people but many people wouldn't say that this provides lasting satisfaction. Most people want cars, big houses, status, money, fame, all for the purpose of becoming more and more happier. Yet these finite things don't bring infinite happiness. Thus, a human being's deepest secret desire is to be infinitely happy. So therefore, our happiness and the search for happiness is interlin with our human dharma. Our human dharma is to attain happiness. But it is because we have this limitless thirst for that. And so we want actually infinite happiness. And the only way one can attain infinite happiness is through attaining infinite consciousness. Most people are searching for happiness outside of themselves. A tantric yogi knows that infinite happiness only comes from infinite consciousness. In the book the wisdom of tantra by dada va praananda he writes about four stages to the practice of human dharma. Let's go over each one. The first stage is called vistara. Vistara is a Sanskrit word that means expansion of mind. As I've said, the mind is meant to expand. Right now, I'm actually in the beautiful country of Latvia. And uh in Latvia's history, it was once occupied by the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime that tried to control the thinking of its citizens. But you see, this is just like a recipe for failure because anytime you try to control people's minds, that's not going to work because the human mind is designed to expand. It's not designed to be limited or contained. So vistara is that process of mental expansion in order to embrace the infinite and conceptualize the infinite and become one with the infinite. The second stage of our human dharma is rasa which means flow in English. This has to do with the idea that the universe is in a neverending flow and rhythm. It's also like a divine play or a divine dream that infinite consciousness is dreaming or is sort of hosting. And in life we have to learn to go with this divine flow, this divine rhythm. And we have to learn to dance. We have to learn to flow with that. You know, sometimes we don't get what we want. No, you know, no matter how desperately we want something, sometimes it never comes to us. And a true yogi would say, well, it didn't come to you because it wasn't the will of parapusha. So sometimes uh going with the flow and and learning to dance with this divine rhythm or in this divine play is exactly the way toward is exactly fulfilling our human dharma. The third stage or aspect of our human dharma is sava which means selfless service. If you look at some of the most famous spiritual people like or spiritual icons like Jesus or um uh St. Francis, these figures were known to be people that do selfless service. For example, uh St. Francis, he he was he treated the lepers. He's associated with the care of animals. Jesus was known to have washed the feet of his disciples. So it can be said that service goes hand inhand with spiritual development. In fact, the more spiritually evolved you are, the more service that you end up doing, the more that that virtue be uh starts to come out more and more. And the last stage that is discussed in the book is called Brahma Tatsiti. And this is actually the goal, the attainment of the goal. So when a human being does become one with infinite consciousness, they have just fulfilled their dharma. Just like when fire burns, they fulfill their dharma. When water gets wet, it has fulfilled its dharma. So you see let me just take you back now to this idea of happiness being connected with our dharma. You have a very deep desire whether you know it or not for infinite bliss and infinite happiness. Just remember that that can only be attained through the attainment of infinite consciousness. Thank you for watching this video. Namaskar. Bye-bye now. G now give