Decoding DHARMA — Making sense of the confusion: Part 3
When starting to write this week’s piece on decoding Dharma, I must admit to being a bit stumped. I reviewed in my mind everything we have explored so far, and also went ahead to think of things left to be explored. And I kept coming back to the idea of ‘Dharma integrates.’ Yes, but how? The question perplexed me.
To begin with, dharma is ambiguous. And then you have to ask, integrate what? Dharma integrates what? Dharma integrates our personalities, is the response often heard. But again, what does that mean?
Who am I, seems to be the eternal question both in a secular and a spiritual sense. When we hear things like ‘integration of our personality,’ we almost automatically and subconsciously infer that there are multiple aspects of us that co-exist together within the same identity. Practically also, that is true. My personality and the way I behave depends largely on the context within which I am operating. I behave differently (if even slightly) with my friends versus my family or my co-workers. In some situations, I am lively, outgoing and exuberant, and in other situations I am pensive, reflective and calm. My reactions often depend on my mood, which can be influence by the people around me, situations around me, or sometimes by nothing at all. Hence we are definitely multi-faceted beings, with various aspects all co-existing within us.
So, for the sake of keeping things simple, let us call this multi-faceted identity our personality. Our personalities, according to Vedanta, can be divided into three broad categories: our Body, our Mind and our Intellect. We can also say that the functioning of our personalities can be broken down into three broad categories as well: actions (related to the body), thoughts (related to the mind) and intentions (related to the intellect). It seems simplistic, but when we actually think about it, we can admit that we are not always aligned by this. What I want, what I say, and what I do are not always the same. Add to that, what I want versus what I need, or what I think is right is also not always the same. How many times have we been in a situation where we know we should be doing a certain thing yet we struggle to follow through? Being physically fit, eating right etc., often are struggles for us. And these are relatively simple issues to navigate. What happens when we have to deal with morally ambiguous issues? How much do we struggle in our minds to know what to do?
Having our actions, thoughts and intentions all aligned, that is integration of our personalities. When the body, mind and intellect are all on the same page, then all can work in unison towards the same goal. Again, easy to say, but not sure what that means or how to go about it. In order to understand the implications of that, it is important to understand the functions of these tools we have (the body, mind and intellect). That, we will explore next.
