Page 24 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

in the world. Only the culture of spiritual knowledge or the urge
of devotion do not constitute dharma, action too is dharma. This
great teaching pervades from ages past the whole of our literature
— e=a dharma# san1tana#.
*
The highest and greatest dharma
Many think that although works form part of dharma, not so all
types of work; only those that are governed by sattwa and conducive to
niv4tti, abstention or withdrawal deserve this title. This too is a fal-
lacious notion. Just as the sattwic actions are dharma, so are the
rajasic ones. Just as showing compassion to creatures is dharma,
so is destroying the enemy of the land in the field of a righteous
battle. To sacrifice one's own happiness and wealth or even life, for
the good of others, is dharma, even so is it dharma to maintain
in a fit condition the body that is the instrument of dharma. Poli-
tics too is dharma, to write poetry, to paint pictures — that too
is dharma, to gladden the hearts of others through sweet songs
is also dharma. Dharma is whatever is not tainted by self-interest,
be that work great or small. It is we who reckon a thing great or
small, there is nothing great or small before the Divine; He looks
only at the attitude in which a person does the works befitting his
nature or brought by unforeseen circumstances. The highest and
greatest dharma is this: whatever work we do, to consecrate that
to the feet of the Divine, to perform it as yajña or holy sacrifice
and to accept it with an equal heart as something done by His
own Nature:

That is to say, the greatest way is to see in Him all that we see or
do or think and to cover all that with his thought as if with a piece
of raiment; neither sin nor irreligion can ever penetrate this cover-
ing. Without hankering for anything and giving up in our heart

24 All India Magazine, August 2025