Dharma (Right Order and Duty)
Both the law that upholds the world and the right way for you to live within it.
Dharma is one of the richest words in the tradition. It means the order that holds the cosmos together, and at the same time the right way for a person to live — one's duty, ethics, and proper role given one's stage and station in life. It is what is fitting and sustaining, as against adharma, what tears the fabric. Because it is so context-dependent, much of Hindu ethical and legal literature is an inquiry into what dharma actually requires.
How it traveled
- Bhagavad-gītāKuru-Pañcāla region · -150explains
Key passages(18)
Better is one's own Dharma, (though) imperfect, than the Dharma of another well-performed. Better is death in one's own Dharma: the Dharma of another is fraught with fear.
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For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of Dharma, I come into being in every age.
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Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
He was not strong enough. He created still further the most excellent Law (dharma). Law is the Kshatra (power) of the Kshatra , therefore there is nothing higher than the Law. Thenceforth even a weak
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There are three branches of the law. Sacrifice, study, and charity are the first,
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Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Nakiketas said: "That which thou seest as neither this nor that, as neither effect nor cause, as neither past nor future, tell me that."
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Those therefore who observe this rule of Pragâpati (as laid down in §13), produce a pair, and to them belongs this Brahma-world here. But those in whom dwell penance, abstinence, and truth,
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He is the beginning, producing the causes which unite (the soul with the body), and, being above the three kinds of time (past, present, future), he is seen as without parts , after we have first wors
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