March 16, 1998 – What is dharma’s role?

            After Maharaj gives members of the Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee a very strict talk—“Looking at today’s management, I wonder where the great qualities of our tradition have gone”—he tells me what I should say if asked to speak somewhere:

            What is dharma’s role? Keeping us worry-free inside, leaving it all to Him, the One who takes care of everything. If you love God, see that Love in the whole cosmos, in colleges, with whomever you deal. Do to others as you yourself want to be treated. If you become a ruler, dharma makes you compassionate. Dharma’s role is to remove our evils, increase our love and desire to serve, eliminate our ego. So long as a person doesn’t leave hatred, isn’t healed of that disease, going to holy places will not bring light. An egotistical mind is not pleasing to God. 

Dharma’s role is to clean the mind. Sometimes we hurt others. Dharma’s role is to clean that. A snowplow’s role is to clean the snow from roads, to keep cars from slipping. Dharma’s role is to clean us and keep us from slipping.

God gives us the power to love, to do seva, to share all good things—our income, our time–to sit with the sick, to talk with those who are in misery. This is dharma’s role. It doesn’t necessarily require great amounts of money. Our thoughts want peace, love, joy. God gave us these. We should use those gifts. Jesus said, “Love my Father.” That means he was like a child, leaving everything to his Father. The rule is that if you please someone here, your Father will be happy.

Woman is the luckiest in God’s house. All prophets and saints are created from her, just as the Earth gives birth to everything. After coming to Gobind Sadan, I felt that we must stop complaining that we are not prophets. Maharaj ji says that in God’s House, women are the “number one man.” Our role is to teach children to love, pray, and serve. Then they will not need the support of drugs. We are to give children training in the home—training to love, to get along with others.

Why have the prophets taught us tolerance? They tolerated even crucifixion. But we become separate over the smallest things. We should understand differences as the nature of things. There should not be any fighting in the home. It is very necessary for us to teach and show children about prayer. It doesn’t work if you pray and then show anger.

Don’t judge religion after seeing priests. Instead, read what the prophets have said and done. Divorce, hurting others, and crime all end inner contentment. Choose contentment. The prophets went contented to the cross. They saw His Light in everything. The Guru said, “No one is an enemy, no one is a stranger. My brotherhood is with all, for His Light is united with all, including me.” Jesus and Guru Granth Sahib said to look at your own evils before throwing stones at another person. Guru Gobind Singh said that God, Paramatma, is spread in every place. Water calls to Him, “Listen to my song.” All of Nature wants to please Him.

Maharaj concluded this message about the role of dharma by telling me to emphasize the effects of divorce and drugs on children. He wants his message to reach everywhere, so in addition to giving wonderful private and public talks himself, he coaches some of us what to say to other audiences. He says, “Now religion has such a bad name, but our work is to spread dharma.”