Living One's Own Dharma and Easing Suffering

Hello beloved reader,

As I mentioned in my last post, my intention is to focus my energy on the book that wants to flow through me right now, so these Substack posts may be less frequent. However, I am also honoring the flow of writing for reading Now, at this moment in time. And that’s the beauty of Substack: its immediacy.

I want to share my struggle.

Not only does the world feel full of doom and gloom right now: with two major wars, global climate change, the immanent threat of the orange one being re-elected, in addition to the age-old global problems of homelessness and starvation. But also simply living the human experience as a spiritual being is not always easy. 

This past week I found I’ve needed to consciously make a choice to cultivate joy.

And I know that gratitude is one of joy’s essential ingredients.

I remind myself to be grateful for my privilege. Privileges like simply being able to turn on a tap and get fresh, clean, drinkable water. 

I’m grateful for the privilege of being able to breathe fresh, clean air. 

I’m grateful for the privilege of safety; that I have access to education and healthcare; let alone the unconscious privilege I’ve grown up with, simply because of the color of my skin.

I’m grateful for the privilege of being able to visit my 86-year-old mother and one of my three sisters who have recently moved to an Australian country town in New South Wales. I watch my 86-year-old mother navigate these elder years, and it’s not easy. The past couple of days I’ve felt on the edge of tears knowing the pain her aging body brings to her. Aching knees and joints, and a general feeling low as she’s just recovering from the flu. There’s no life-shattering pain, just that day-to-day physical and even emotional suffering that is inherent in the human experience. 

Perhaps I’m just feeling sad, and I create a space for this feeling. Knowing it will arise and pass. It’s winter here and it’s cold today. I didn’t sleep well last night.

And yet it is the weekend. And if I don’t have anything I have to do the following day, if I’m not able to sleep, I think about how I only suffer if I resist being awake.

If I surrender to being awake, it’s not a problem. Maybe it’s even a blessing as I can listen to an audio book or an Eckhart Tolle recording.

Is this struggle with surrendering to not sleeping just a metaphor? What other aspects of life is this true for — that if we drop the resistance, we lessen our suffering?

~

A part of me feels like I ‘should’ be doing more in the world. Like I ‘should’ be a political activist and work towards social justice. But I have been well trained to be aware of the ‘shoulds.’

I deeply respect individuals who are political activists and who work towards social justice. I’m so grateful such people exist and that they do the work they do.

Ultimately though, I believe the planet is best served when each human being simply lives their own dharma.

If you have been reading this Substack for a while, you will be familiar with the term dharma as described in the ancient Hindu sacred text, The Bhagavad Gita, and you will already know and understand the next paragraph. But if you have not read this chapter in my book serialized here on Substack, I have removed the pay wall, and I invite you to read it: Chapter 15. The Bhagavad Gita, New Hampshire, April 2013. In any case, this gives you an idea of the definition:

This concept of dharma will take on a special significance for me. We do not have an exact, equivalent English word, for the Hindu word dharma. But its meaning centers around the idea of our “sacred duty,” or “the great work of our lives,” or our “personal legend” as Paulo Coelho puts it in The Alchemist. Or as the poet Mary Oliver writes, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It can also be thought of as one’s purpose, or ‘what lights you up?’  

~

I do my civic duty in voting, but I’ve also come to understand that my own personal dharma is to stimulate an evolution of human consciousness. This happens not only through my in-person presence, but I also set an intention:

May the writing that flows through me in line with the Rising of the Divine Feminine, inspire an evolution of human consciousness.

May this evolution of consciousness help a reader to suffer less, to connect more with joy, and to alchemically transform suffering into personal and spiritual growth.

And now my sense perception of hearing, makes me smile as I write. As I tap keys on this laptop, I hear Kookaburras laughing outside.

A kookaburra’s laugh makes me remember how a sense of humor is essential to the evolution of human consciousness. It makes me remember the Aboriginal sense of humor and how they are so connected with the land, and the humor that comes from living in tune with our beautiful Mother Earth. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but we can learn so much from indigenous cultures, whether that be here in Australia, or in America.

Because of the mild winters here, plenty of birds still fly about outside. The Currawongs and Magpies sing to my heart — their songs are the sounds of my childhood in Pittwater.

~

Living your dharma is the original medicine you can offer in the world. Your dharma is part of the essence of who you are. Perhaps we all knew it when we were a child, but through growing up in the West maybe we just forget.

For the past ten years I’ve rediscovered and strengthened once again that innate knowing of my own dharma. I’ve re-connected with it through studying world religions, through reading and writing, through investigating my life experiences, writing memoir and making meaning, through studying astrology — including through a magical book¹ I learned about from one of my favorite Substack writers,

Jenna Newell Hiott

.

The truth of my own experience is that when a human being learns and understands their own dharma, and they’re at peace with their own dharma, it brings more peace and harmony to the planet.

By excavating our dharma, we get in touch with our life purpose and the meaning of our life. Perhaps what our soul may have designed this human life for, before we were even born.

The danger of white privilege guilt — which is just another form of ego — is the temptation to judge our own work, our own dharma, as inferior, and to think it’s not as worthy as the work that others may do in the world. I could allow my Inner Critic to have a field day with this.

But I call bullshit.

The fact that the world is better served by each human being living their own dharma is discussed in depth in The Bhagavad Gita, especially in one verse in particular: chapter 18, sloka/verse 47.

The part of me that is a Gita nerd, loves to compare this sloka from different translations:

This first translation is from Eknath Easwaran’s The Bhagavad Gita (Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality) (pp. 261-262). Nilgiri Press. Kindle Edition.

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

~

It’s worth noting with Easwaren’s translation, the word “duty” is used, whereas many translations I’ve read, use the word dharma:

47. It is better to do one's own dharma, even though imperfectly, than to do another's dharma, even though perfectly. By doing one’s innate duties, a person does not incur sin.²

~

Mahatma Gandhi was deeply influenced by The Bhagavad Gita.³ His translation is called simply, The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (p. 199). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

And here Gandhi uses the word karma as a verb:

47. Better karma which is one’s duty, though uninviting; than karma which is somebody else’s duty which may be more easily performed. Doing duty which accords with one’s nature, one incurs no sin.

~

This last translation is from Stephen Mitchell’s Bhagavad Gita (p. 160). Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

47. It is better to do your own duty
badly than to perfectly do
another’s; when you do your duty,
you are naturally free from sin.

---

It is interesting to me that all of the translations of the Bhagavad Gita that I have read are translations by men, which is reflective of the fact that we’ve been dominated by patriarchal hierarchies for the past 4,000 years.⁴

It’s also interesting to me that all the translations above, except Eknath Easwaren’s, use the word ‘sin’. The original translation of the word ‘sin’ from Aramaic meant, ‘to miss the mark.’

And that is what we have done with the Christian understanding of ‘sin’ — the religion has achieved the capacity to make people feel guilt so they’re easier to manipulate and control. Rather than simply understanding that humanity is not served when we ‘miss the mark.’

And I love this — yet another moment of synchronicity — early this morning I listened to an Eckhart Tolle recording and he also spoke about sin:

Jesus spoke of liberation and said, “You will become free. The truth will set you free.” His followers said, “What do you mean we will become free? We’re not the slaves of anyone.”

Jesus said, “You are the slaves of sin.”

And what is sin? The deeper interpretation of sin is unconscious living. Missing the purpose of human existence. In Aramaic the translation of sin is ‘missing the mark.’

“You are the slaves of sin,” means you are bound by the unconsciousness in you. You’re missing the mark of human existence — that is what sin is.

Liberation is used in other spiritual traditions, in India. Others call it awakening; it’s another term you can use, it’s the same thing.

So liberation is liberation from your self, the conditioned entity that the Buddha described as illusion. And Jesus said, “Deny thy self.” He means recognize the unreality of the conditioned entity, the self. Who you truly are is the being that is behind it.

And if you’d like to read more about Buddhism and the idea of ‘self,’ I invite you to read this post: Emotional Wounds and Healing; and What is 'Self' from a Buddhist Perspective?

One last word about dharma: I asked my 86-year-old mother — who was a teacher, raised four daughters, divorced, then was creatively resourceful with how she managed money; she subdivided her home, and rented out the other half of her house — I asked her what she would say her dharma was. She responded, “Like Eckhart Tolle describes, I’m a frequency holder.” I believe this is also true of our Thai Forest Buddhist monk neighbors who live across the road from our home in Southern New Hampshire, in the States.

Thank you for reading and/or for listening!

a photo of the late afternoon sun here in Buladelah

And if you’d like to articulate your own dharma, I’d love to hear it❤️🙏🕊️

1. The book is called, The Invisible Garment: 30 Spiritual Principles that Weave the Fabric of Human Life by Connie Kaplan.

2. https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/18/verse/47#:~:text=Bhagavad%20Gita%3A%20Chapter%2018%2C%20Verse%2047&text=BG%2018.47%3A%20It%20is%20better,person%20does%20not%20incur%20sin.

3

“No other book or scripture influenced Gandhi, shaped his character, and transformed his life as profoundly and permanently as did the Bhagavad Gita. Among the many books he read, the “Gita” alone became an unfailing source of strength and solace to him in the darkest hours of his life. As a spiritual reference book, the Gita was not only his constant companion, it was his “eternal mother” whom he esteemed even more than his earthly mother.” — Uma Majmudar, Ph.D.

https://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/Mahatma-Gandhi-and-the-Bhagavad-Gita.php

4. The Oxford scholar and Jungian analyst, Anne Baring PhD, writes extensively about this https://www.annebaring.com/a-crucial-time-of-choice/