Krishna’s first practical teaching to Arjuna is simple and direct: “Arjuna, look to your dharma.”

Look to your dharma!

And what is this dharma that can save Arjuna?

The Sanskrit word “dharma,” as used in the Bhagavad Gita, is so full of meaning that it is impossible to grasp its full scope through any single English translation. “Dharma” can be variously, but incompletely, translated as “religious and moral law,” “right conduct,” “sacred duty,” “path of righteousness,” “true nature,” and “divine order.”

René Guénon, in his classic Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines, comes as close as any author to the meaning of dharma as we will use it here. “Dharma,” he says, “is the essential nature of a being, comprising the sum of its particular qualities or characteristics, and determining, by virtue of the tendencies or dispositions it implies, the manner in which this being will conduct itself, either in a general way or in relation to each particular circumstance.” The word dharma in this teaching, then, refers to the peculiar and idiosyncratic qualities of each being—those very essential and particular qualities that make it somehow itself.

Scientists now tell us that every brain is like a fingerprint—utterly unique. So, too, every nervous system has its own complex idiosyncrasy, every human mind, every human body, every spirit. We might say that every person’s dharma is like an internal fingerprint. It is the subtle interior blueprint of a soul.

And how precisely do we discern this dharma hidden in our being as a kind of seed? How do we manifest this unique dharma DNA?

In many cases, perhaps even in most cases, the discernment of dharma is a difficult, even agonizing process. It is only born out of our wrestling matches with doubt, with conflict, and with despair. And so, the authors of the Gita have placed their protagonist—the exemplar of the seeker of dharma—on a field of battle. The stakes are high. The decisions are complex. There are countless moral gray areas. And yet, there is no escape from choice and action.

Will Arjuna’s story help us extract ourselves from our own particular quagmire of dharma? At the beginning of our encounter with the Gita, it may not be perfectly clear how much we can identify with Arjuna. We almost immediately face a small speed bump. In an outward sense, indeed, Arjuna’s dilemmas around dharma seem quite different from ours. Arjuna’s dharma was, of course, prescribed for him. In the caste system of ancient India, roles and dharmas were prescribed at birth. Arjuna was born into the warrior class. So, he was destined to be a warrior. It was his sacred duty to fight a just war. He never had any choice in the matter, nor was his dharma based on any particular personal qualities. Indeed, in the traditional culture in which Arjuna lived there was no such thing as a personal self. The self was a “socially embedded self.” So there was no notion of personal dharma.

We live in a different kind of culture, of course, in which there is most emphatically a personal self, and therefore a personal dharma. Strangely, however, when we drill down into this issue, we discover that our dharmas, too, are in many ways not personal. They are not, in the ways that really count, our own choice—not based on our own ideas, wishes, or concepts. They are based, as Arjuna’s was, on what is already mysteriously within us at birth: our fingerprint.

Krishna, in his teaching to Arjuna, points to a truth that also holds true for us.

You cannot be anyone you want to be.

You cannot be anyone you want to be?

Really?

The notion that we can be anyone we want to be is a slippery half-truth that saturates contemporary culture—reinforced by several generations of self-help literature. How many times have we heard it: “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Krishna would say, “Well, not exactly.” Yes, our inner possibilities are fantastic beyond imagining. But no, these possibilities are not nearly as subject to our ego’s manipulation as we might like to think. Actually, you can only expect a fulfilling life if you dedicate yourself to finding out who you are. To finding the ineffable, idiosyncratic seeds of possibility already planted inside. There is some surrender required here.

Thomas Merton came to precisely this conclusion after decades of spiritual practice. He wrote: “Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.” This quote is enshrined as the Epigraph to this book—and for a good reason. Its wisdom is at the very heart of dharma.

So how do we discern our dharma? How do we discover the magnificent inner blueprint?

In the next section of the book, we will turn our attention to these very questions—to the discernment of dharma—and in particular to three important principles that can be found deep in the center of Krishna’s teaching for discerning the hidden and at times inscrutable dharma within:

    1. Trust in the gift.

    2. Think of the small as large.

    3. Listen for the call of the times.

In our narrative we will examine six stories in the light of these principles: three “great” lives, and three (so-called) “ordinary” lives. We will look at the stories of Dame Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most distinguished primatologists and conservationists; we’ll examine the life of Henry David Thoreau, perhaps America’s most important philosopher and naturalist—himself a devotee of the Bhagavad Gita; and finally, we will take a close look at the dharma-struggles of Walt Whitman, one of America’s first thoroughly American poets. Each of these human beings struggled hard with the questions of identifying and bringing forth what was within in ways that might illumine our own struggles. We will look, too, at three ordinary lives. We will follow the progress of our friends Katherine, Brian, and Ellen in the light of Krishna’s teaching. How do they work out the realization of their true selves—the discovery of their own particular dharma?