Living Life in Harmony

An excerpt from Dharma for Awakening and Social Change

When you move on the path of dharma, you move in harmony with your own nature and with the essential nature of all beings. Can you feel those moments when your thoughts, words and deeds are in harmony with life? When you sense such harmony, such alignment, then you are truly following dharma. When that harmony is entirely present, your thoughts, words and deeds become surrendered to the Divine and you perceive the Sublime manifest in everything.

When this happens, you begin to notice all the synchronicities and see the great tapestry that is being woven in the universe and, beholding the harmonious substantive nature of all manifestation, you feel the shower of unconditional love falling gently upon you and every other being.

For one immersed in dharma, the words they speak become truth, not because they have foretold the future, but because, being ensconced in dharma, they are in the rhythm of life. They live in truth. The words of one established in dharma are a balm to the heavy hearts of all beings, for true words are spoken from the heart of hearts, not from the mind or the desires.

Walk in the silence. Be still in the wood. Be as wild as the breeze upon the prairie. Be as vast as the night sky. Fly with the eagle above the mountain tops. Soar on the night breeze. Dive to the depths of the ocean. Live in the rhythmic harmony of the universe. This is dharma.

Can you walk this path? Really, can you? All religions have attempted to teach people how to live and act in harmony and to define in words the path of right action. But the way for each person is unique. You cannot define it or put it in a box, because the way itself moves outside of all boxes. To become whole, to learn to walk in the way of the universe, to move towards the essence of beatitude, to the depths of silence, follow dharma always and stay connected to your innermost nature.

Dharma & Life in Balance
Dharma needs to be followed both by individuals and by society as a whole. When an individual is out of alignment with dharma, their life becomes disjointed and they cease to have harmony with the world around them. They become self-centered and self-absorbed. When a society, a nation, state, social or religious group, is out of alignment with dharma, the society begins to fragment and lose its balance. Prama, the cosmic principle maintaining a stable balance in the universe, is lost.

Prama is very significant in understanding dharma and living in harmony. It refers to the basic balance maintained in the interwoven web of life, the harmony that makes the universe work as a whole. All beings obey the rhythm of nature’s flow and, in doing so, are in a smooth and blissful relationship to life. People can live in complete composure, unhindered joy and happiness when life is in balance and prama is present.

However, this situation of blissful harmony changes with the emergence of desires such as greed, domination and power, which create a civilization out of alignment with its surrounding world. It also changes in a person’s life when they lose this delicate balance and prama evades them. People, without Prama, without balance with the world around them, become disconnected, self-absorbed. They lose the path of dharma in their lives.

Chaos results when dharma has been forsaken and prama is lost. The natural laws that bring harmony to the planet and to all the species of living beings are being violated, and thus the ecological systems and natural order of the world are disrupted. The result is loss of many species, loss of environmental stability and changes in weather patterns. Nature, out of balance, becomes wild, destructive. People have formed societies with the attitude of a conqueror, rather than in harmony with the planet and its natural laws, and those societies are now threatened. The atrocities done to living beings upon the planet in the name of progress have an impact. As the planet moves from order to disorder, from harmony to chaos, the forces unleashed are powerful, and they will reorder the world until harmony is regained and dharma restored.

When there is harmony between all beings, and the natural order of the planet is restored, calm will return to this world. But until such a time, there is bound to be chaos, because dharma is not being followed. For dharma inherently establishes harmony with the natural order of all that is. Dharma is the law, the law of this universe, not the law of man. It is the law which governs the relationship of all beings and their cosmic source. When followed, that law brings balance. When not followed, it creates grave difficulties, for a world without dharma cannot survive.

So, what to do when living beings lose dharma and society loses prama, balance? First and foremost, remember that you are a part of an interwoven, interconnected tapestry of life. When the threads of this tapestry are being pulled apart, you can be a force to weave those threads together by aligning yourself with dharma in your spiritual life. Connecting with the deeper Source of your being, connecting with the highest being, the highest consciousness, allows the harmony that flows from that One to flow into you, into your life and into your actions in the world.

This shift that needs to happen, will happen, not by the rise of one ruler or another, but by the efforts of each person to follow dharma, to live for dharma, and to bring dharma into the world. Follow dharma wherever it leads, whether it be saving the lives of living beings, saving the seeds and food sources, working with the political system, or simply deep meditation, bringing psychic harmony and love into the world by helping people come to their spiritual source. Whatever good work you do, you can be a force for dharma and light, for the harmonizing and reworking of the tapestry of life on this planet Earth.

Each and every one of you has the capacity to make change by changing yourself. Internally, in your spiritual life, align yourself with dharma, with the harmony of all existence and the path towards the One eternal being, towards Parama Purusha.

By doing this, you bring that consciousness, that force of enlightened being into yourself and closer to the Earth. That force is the source of dharma. It will harmonize and heal and bring society back in order.