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#463 Dharma

"It is better to perform one’s own duties imperfectly than to master the duties of another. By fulfilling the obligations he is born with, a person never comes to grief."

~ Krishna, from The Bhagavad Gita

Dharma. It comes from the Sanskrit dhri, which means “to support, hold up or bear.”

The word means many things, but according to one of my favorite teachers, Eknath Easwaran, dharma “implies support from within: the essence of a thing, its virtue, that which makes it what it is.”

On a larger scale, dharma means “the essential order of things, an integrity and harmony in the universe and the affairs of life that cannot be disturbed without courting chaos. Thus it means rightness, justice, goodness, purpose rather than chance.”

There’s also a (highly) personal application of dharma. In essence, we all have our own “dharma” or purpose and reason for being alive.

As Krishna states in The Gita, following someone else’s dharma is dangerous. If you live your life trying to impress others and not fulfilling what you’re here to do, you’ll feel the pain.

Here’s a simple but very powerful question to help you discover your dharma (got it from Deepak Chopra’s brilliant “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success”):

“If you had all the money and all the time in the world, what would you do?!!?”

So… if you had all the money and all the time in the world, what would you do?

* journal time! *