Dharma

Dharma comes from a root meaning to hold or support: it is what upholds. In the Vedas it is close to the cosmic order (ṛta) kept by sacrifice; in later Hindu thought it is the whole order of right conduct, social, ritual and moral, and also each person’s own part in it, their svadharma, which depends on their nature and station in life.

The Mahābhārata is above all a book about dharma, and about how hard it is to know. Its heroes are bound by duties that conflict: to family and to justice, to truth and to mercy. Again and again the epic says that dharma is subtle. When the Yakṣa asks Yudhiṣṭhira what the path is, he answers that reasoning settles nothing and the scriptures disagree, that the truth of dharma lies hidden as if in a cave, and that the path is the one the great have walked (Book 3, section 311).

The Bhagavad Gītā takes up the same question on the battlefield. Arjuna would rather beg than kill his kinsmen; Kṛṣṇa tells him that it is better to do one’s own dharma imperfectly than another’s well (Gītā III.35, XVIII.47), and that the way to do it is without attachment to its fruits. For the contemplative traditions dharma is not the last word: the Gītā’s final teaching is to give up every dharma and take refuge in the Lord alone (XVIII.66). But the path to liberation runs through right action, not around it.