The Essence of Dharma-7.

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19/04/2017.

(Spoken on February 11th, 1973)


If we do something to save our family, to protect our family, we are doing the dharma of our family.

But suppose in protecting our family we are harming some other family; that will not be ultimately justifiable.

We may pay Paul, but we cannot rob Peter for the sake of that. We cannot commit burglary for the sake of helping poor people.

Helping poor people is justifiable and necessary, but we should not do it if the funds are collected by burglary. So good on one side should not imply bad on another side.

We have, therefore, a concept of samanya dharma and vishesha dharma.

Vishesha dharma is the conduct which is justifiable on a specific occasion, but samanya dharma is the conduct which is justifiable on all occasions.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued ..


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