The Natural State

Dharma: Nature’s code

Before the emergence of expansionist, organized, and institutionalized religion, which initiated the man-made practice of labeling people as believers and non-believers, people simply lived life expressing their own nature and aptitude, indulging in practices, traditions, and laws that fit their context and environment. These practices were context dependent and changed, morphed and evolved with situations. Since these were natural law, innate knowledge based practices, they can be called Dharma based Traditions or Dharmic Traditions. Dharma is the natural principal that makes life and existence possible. It is innate and hardcoded in nature. For example, left to its own ways, a mango tree will only produce mangoes as producing mangoes is its Dharma.

Some of these Dharmic traditions were simplistic and basic while others were deep and complex. Many others were somewhere in between. So the default mode (left alone/tamper free mode) for all of existence was and is Dharmic. Native American traditions, nature based traditions and of course Indigenous Indian traditions all are Dharmic. They draw inspiration and knowledge from nature and externally and internally observed phenomena in existence (like western science does but only for material phenomena). Most Dharma based traditions today stand destroyed by organized, institutionalized religion.

The homogenization of thinking

With man’s desire for more-more land, more money, more reach, more power, etc, organized and institutionalized religion came into being with its aim to control and subdue others. In order to control and manipulate large groups of people, doctrines, laws, tenets and practices were formulated, adopted, and misappropriated with the aim to homogenize people into a narrow stream of thought and expression. Peoples’ minds were trained not to question and not to think for themselves.

In my understanding, this is the foundation on which the institutionalized and organized religions of Christianity and Islam are based; these religions are also referred to as Abrahamic Traditions/Religions. Judaism is also from the same tradition but does not have the same expansionist ambitions like its two younger counterparts.

So, before the west converted to Abrahamic religion, it too was Dharmic.

What is Sanatana Hindu Dharma of India?

In India, before the imposition and acceptance of foreign ideas, people did not follow any organized religion. Faith and connection to the divine, to the unseen, the unknown, and the unknowable, was very personal. Each person was free to relate to the divine in whatever way one saw fit. It was no one’s business whether someone saw god in a rock or a mother, in an animal or plant or as a gay, lesbian, male, or female being. It was no one’s business if one related to god as a son, a pet, a wife, or a friend, or king. It was no one’s business if someone did not relate to god at all. Each person connected based on their own aptitude and personality.

Freedom of thinking, search, and discovery of truth was given highest value so even after the coming of organized religion, majority followed their own personally preferred way, which is the case even today when in most of the world other Dharmic traditions have been wiped out.

The West re-learns freedom of thinking from Indian Dharmic traditions

When ambitious, greedy, lustful, and inquisitive invaders, missionaries, visitors, and colonizers came, they were quite taken by the plurality and diversity of language, clothing, food, traditions, and most importantly, diversity of thought. Not only did they take loot back from India, the wise and discerning among them also took new ideas that were very shocking and unimaginable for the narrow-minded, homogenized, and organized-religion-practicing west. There were of course some indigenous Dharmics in the west too but often they were persecuted and or killed. Some western folks, however, were still able to cut the limiting shackles of institutionalized religion and move beyond to see the universal truth.

So the west got re-introduced to its own dharma through its exposure to Sanatana Hindu Dharma of India. It was reminded that there is a truth beyond man-made objects and concepts (including man made religion) that must be discovered and looked into to be able to live well in body and mind. So even in the process of being plundered, India helped raise human consciousness.

With the exposure to Dharma, but still under the influence of the ‘coolaid’ of organized, expansionist religion, the west ushered in the age of reason and science and decided that the way to deal with discord between reason and organized religion is to separate Church and State.

It, however, did not realize that while on paper Church and state can be marked as separate; inside a person’s mind, there are no such separate compartments. So now, instead of one organized institutionalized entity, there were two. These two entities constantly fought (and continue to fight), butting heads while trying to control and manipulate people to follow their own limited view of truth. In the US, the state further split into left wing and right wing/Conservatives and Liberals, where conservatives were perceived to be more religious than the liberals.

Western labels out of context in Dharmic India

In India, before the coming of foreign organized religion, there was no concept of right wing or left wing. In today’s India too, the concept of left and right is not really applicable. While India has a left thanks (but no thanks) to the westernized education system, there IS no Indian right. Therefore, when someone talks about “right wing” Hindus, it becomes immediately clear that they have poor/shallow/limited and westernized understanding of India, her history, and her ethos.

Where Dharma is followed, nature, humans, animals, arts, crafts, science and technology, all thrive. This was exactly the case with India and the reason it caught the eye of invaders, plunderers and colonizers.

Dharma-based practices of meditation, Ayurveda, and authentic Yoga that kindle in people keen observation, perception, and expression skills, are waking many people around the world to their own forgotten Dharma. Organized, institutionalized religion finds this unpalatable.

To become a positive force in the world, organized religion will need to drop its claim to exclusivity. To be aligned with reality and existence, it must view itself as a part of the whole. Nature (Dharma) shows us that existence loves diversity of name, form and thought.

I bow down to the ancient Rishis and wise men of India, that have kept pure wisdom and knowledge alive across generations and generations so that anyone with the desire to know has precious resources, tools, and techniques available to them.

I bow down to the tradition that values and practices embodied knowing. I bow down to the tradition that values the seeking of truth over seeking of pleasure or heaven.

I bow down to the seers and carriers of knowledge, not out of some civilizational or moral high ground, but because I see value in what they say- that “seeking pleasure we become unhappy and seeking truth, we become content, peaceful, and blissful.”

Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu! May all of existence be at peace