Social dharma and soul-killing greed

Dharmic Symbiosis

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

Despite their differences in theology, we have seen In practical terms there is little distinction between the ethics of Buddha and that of Manu. They may be derived from different world-views, but they converge in important ways: Both systems promote certain core values: nonviolence, charity, truthful speech, and a clean and honest livelihood. The symbiosis at work between Manu’s law and Buddha’s eightfold path has given Eastern philosophy a consensus about the basic laws of human ethics--long before Christianity.

From the most ancient laws of the Vedic period to the time of Buddha five hundred years before Christ, certain traditional ethics of dharma were in wide acceptance: especially nonviolence, charity, duty, and truthful speech. The ideals of simple living and high thinking are values that are still cherished above market capitalism and exploitation.

Since time immemorial, Eastern philosophy then has valued being mindful while living a purposeful life in harmony with society and spirituality.

Dharma as Divine Love

While Buddha’s dharma focuses on individual enlightenment through personal practice, the more ancient Hindu dharma seems to focus more on one’s role in society. But this is only a superficial reading of Manu.

Manu understands that social duty is only one component in the human condition. All must struggle to survive. As we have some duty to society, society itself is responsible for its members. As the body politic, we need to feed the stomach, but the stomach also has to nourish the rest of the body. However our qualities and work involve us in a given group, whatever our contribution to the group may be, the group itself should correspond. Even more so than other species, humans are social. One who does due diligence in society will be rewarded and maintained by that society.

In the social doctrine of Manu, duty or dharma should lead to artha, sustenance, security, and even prosperity. Material prosperity or artha was never the highest value in a Vedic society, as it is today.

Manu understood prosperity an aspect of the human condition, one that had to be reckoned with. In modern life it is everything. In our 21st century globalized economy we are made to feel that every human transaction must have a monetary value, and must lead to prosperity.

Activities that are not monetized are questioned as valueless.  Oscar Wilde pointed out that “A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Human values have been flattened by the demand to monetize every transaction. Why take the time to make real friends when we can have virtual friends on Facebook? And yet the purpose of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google, Apple, and Amazon is not to produce goods and services, but to transform the inner life of the mind into a product, to put a price on everything while flattening human values. So, in the internet age where where all information is for sale, we have all become cynics. https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads

For Manu, where dharma was properly performed there would naturally be artha or prosperity. One flowed from the other as naturally as a mountain stream flows to the river. Security and prosperity for one’s family would be guaranteed as long as one followed one’s social duty. Our modern society sees no need for dharma in the traditional sense. Dharma is fine as a kind of patriotic spark to be fanned into flames in election years. Dharma is useful as a religious sense to keep the citizens in check. Voltaire argued that if God did not exist we would have to invent Him. In his “Social Contract” Rousseau argued the need for “civic religion” as a public profession of faith that aims to inculcate political values and that prescribes dogma, rites, and rituals for citizens of a particular country. One might argue that in over-heated capitalist countries this is the only kind of dharma that remains: allegiance to church, political party, nationality, and racial identity form a social “religion” that acts as glue to hold a nation together.

We criticize Manu’s view of dharma as being “backwards” since thousands of years after its formulation its practice has been perverted. His honest look at how we fit into society has been turned on its head. Instead of serving to liberate us from social stereotyping and allowing us to work according to our qualifications, India’s caste system pigeonholes people from birth and forces them to serve as cogs in an inhuman machine. But India is not the only place where the abuse of dharma goes on.

Administrators of civic religion everywhere are unconcerned with the idea of dharma as a noble duty leading to prosperity and security. Rather than offering opportunity based on qualities, regardless of race, color, or gender, the machine runs on algorithms calculated to serve the rich and powerful through racism, sexism, and social discrimination.

The system which disregards dharma as a spiritual principle recognizes only artha or prosperity as a value. But this soul-killing materialism has had disastrous results.