Dharma

Dharma, October 1935.

The word dharma seems to be one of the Sanskrit terms that confuses most translators and this is not without reason, because, in fact, it has multiple meanings and it is certainly impossible to make its meaning known uniformly by a single word in another language; perhaps it is even better to keep it as is purely and simply, provided it is explained by commentary. Mr. Gualtherus H. Mees, who devoted a recent book to- wards this topic, ^[439] which, although being confined almost exclusively to the social point of view, shows more understanding than is found in most Westerners, rightly points out that if there is in this term a certain inde- terminacy, being by no means synonymous with being vague, it does not prove that the conceptions of the ancients have lacked clarity or that they have not been able to distinguish between the different aspects of what is in question. This claimed vagueness, of which we could find many ex- amples, rather indicates that the thought of the ancients was much less restricted than that of the modern ones, and, instead of being analytical like them, it was essentially synthetic. Moreover, there remains some- thing of this indeterminacy in a term such as 'law,' for example, which also encloses very different meanings from each other; this word 'law' is precisely, along with the word 'order,' one of those which, in many cases, may render the idea of dharma in the least imperfect way.

We know that dharma is derived from the root dhr, which means to carry, support, sustain, maintain; ^[440] it is therefore properly a principle of conservation of being, and therefore of stability, so far as it is compatible with the conditions of manifestation, since all the applications of dharma always relate to the manifested world. Thus, it is not possible to admit, as the author seems to be disposed towards, that this term could be more or less a substitute for Ātmā, with the only difference being that it would be 'dynamic' instead of 'static.' Ātmā is nonmanifest, therefore immuta-ble; dharma is only an expression, if you will, in the sense that it reflects the principal immutability in the order of manifestation. It is 'dynamic' only to the extent that manifestation necessarily implies ‘becoming,' but it is what makes 'becoming' not become a pure change, always maintain-ing through change itself, a certain relative stability. It is also important to note in this respect, that the root dhr is almost identical, in form and meaning, to another root dhru, from which the word dhruva designating the 'pole' derives. Effectively, it is this idea of the 'pole' or 'axis' of the manifested world that we must refer to if we really wish to understand the notion of dharma: it is what remains invariable at the center of rev-olutions of all things, regulating the course of change by the very fact that it does not participate in it. We must not forget that, by the synthetic nature of the thought that it expresses, language is here much more closely related to symbolism than in modern languages, and that it is from symbolism that the multiplicity of meanings of which spoke a mo-ment ago is held; perhaps one could even show that the conception of dharma is directly related to the symbolic representation of the 'axis' by the figure of the 'Tree of the World.'

Moreover, Mr. Mees rightly points out the kinship between the notion of dharma and that of rta, which etymologically has the meaning of 'rec-titude' (in the same way that Dé of the Far-Eastern tradition is also very close to dharma), which obviously still recalls the idea of the ‘axis,' being of a constant and invariable direction. At the same time, this term rta is identical to the word 'rite,' and it might be said that the latter, at least at its origin, designates all that is accomplished in accordance with order; it comes to take a more restricted meaning only as a result of the degen-eration that gives rise to a 'profane' activity in any domain whatsoever. It must be understood that the rite always retains the same character, and that it is the non-ritual activity that is somehow deviated: all that is only 'convention' or 'custom,' without any profound reason that did not originally exist, and ritual, traditionally considered, has nothing to do with it, which can never be anything other than a forgery or parody. But there is something more: when we speak here of conformity to order, we must not only mean human order, but also, and even above all, the cos-mic order; in any traditional conception there is always a strict corre-spondence between one and the other, and it is precisely the rite that maintains their relations in a conscious manner, implying a collaboration between man, in the sphere where his activity is exercised, and the cos-mic order itself in a way.

Likewise, the notion of dharma is not limited to man, but extends to all beings and all their states of manifestation; that is why a purely social conception cannot be sufficient to allow it to be understood in depth: this is nothing more than a particular application, which must never be sep-arated from the primordial and universal ‘law' or 'norm' of which it is only the translation in the specifically human mode. Without a doubt, we can speak of a proper dharma of each being (svadharma) or of each group of beings, such as a human collectivity for example, but this is really only a particularization of the dharma in relation to the special conditions of this being or of this group, whose nature and constitution are necessarily analogous to those of the whole of which it is a part, that this whole is either a certain state of existence or even the whole manifestation, for analogy always applies to all levels and degrees. We then see that we are far from a 'moral' conception: if an idea such as that of 'justice' is some-times appropriate to render the meaning of dharma, it is only in so far as it is a human expression of equilibrium or harmony, i.e., one of the as-pects of maintaining cosmic stability. All the more so that an idea of 'vir-tue' can apply here only insofar as it indicates that the actions of a being are in conformity with its own nature, and, by the same token, with the total order that has its reflection or its image in the nature of each being. In the same way, if we consider a human collectivity and not an isolated individuality, the idea of 'legislation' only enters into the idea of dharma because this legislation must normally be an adaptation of the cosmic order to the social milieu; this character is particularly visible with regard to the institution of castes, as we will see in a future article. In this way, all the secondary meanings of the word dharma are explained; there is no difficulty except when we wish to consider them separately and with-out seeing how they are derived from a common principle, which is, one might say, the fundamental unity to which their multiplicity is re-duced. ^[441] Before concluding this overview, we must still, to more precisely sit-uate the notion of dharma, indicate the place it occupies among the goals that the traditional Hindu scriptures assign to human life. These goals are four in number and are thus listed in an ascending hierarchical order: artha, kāma, dharma, mokṣa; the final, ‘Deliverance,' is only the supreme goal, and, being beyond the domain of manifestation, it is of an order entirely different from the other three and out of proportion to these, as the absolute is out of proportion to the relative. As for the first three goals, which all relate to the manifest, artha includes all that is good of the corporeal order; kāma is desire, whose satisfaction constitutes the good of the psychic order; since dharma is superior to this, its realization must be considered as properly pertaining to the spiritual order, which accords with the character of the universality that we have recognized. However, it goes without saying that all these goals, including dharma itself, being always contingent as beyond the manifestation they cannot be envisaged, can never be but subordinated to the supreme goal, to which they are in fact only means. Each of these same aims is also sub- ordinate to those which are superior to it, being still relative; when they are listed only with the exclusion of mokṣa, it is then a point of view limited to the consideration of the manifested, and only thus can dharma sometimes also appear as the highest goal offered to man. We will later see that theses goals are more particularly in correspondence with the varṇaḥ; we can say right now that this correspondence essentially rests on the theory of the three guṇāh, which shows that, here again, the hu- man order appears as indissolubly bound to the entire cosmic order.