Moksha is The Highest Dharma

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 4 The Heritage of Indian Culture by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Dharmasya tattvam nihitam guhayam mahajano yena gatah sa panthah. The great men of the Mahabharata tell us that we cannot know what dharma is. Dharmasya tattvam nihitam guhayam: It is hidden in a cave, as it were, in the darkness of oblivion—perhaps in the cave of our own hearts. Unless we dive deep into our own hearts, we will not know what dharma is. Our conscience is the voice of dharma. The impartial voice that speaks deeply from within ourselves is the voice of dharma. It can speak inside us, and it can also speak from without by a consensus of opinion passed in a most impartial manner.

Nothing is evil in this world when it is seen as a vehicle which carries a deep meaning within itself which is transcendent to its own outer form. Every nama and rupa is a vehicle for sat-chit-ananda. Sat, chit, ananda, nama, rupa are the five things that we see everywhere in the world. The Panchadasi says that the whole world and each individual particular object are nothing but a complex of asti, bhati, priya, nama, rupa. The first three are characteristics of Brahman; the other two are characteristics of the world.

But what is the world, if it is only name and form? Minus sat-chit-ananda, what is the world? What is a pot, if it is not clay? If we remove the clay from it, we will see no pot. Likewise, if we remove asti-bhati-priya, remove sat-chit-ananda, we will feel nothing is there. That is why the world is supposed to be non-existent in one sense. It is existent as the pot exists, and it does not exist even as the pot does not exist. This is a highly technical theme. The pot does exist because it is clay. What we call 'pot' is only in our minds; it does not exist. But the pot exists; we can carry water in it, as we know very well. We cannot say that we have purchased some balls of mud; we say we purchased pots. The bringing together of nama-rupa-prapancha with asti-bhati-priya into a state of harmony—Existence Absolute, Consciousness Absolute, and Bliss Absolute—is the wisdom of life. One who is bankrupt in this wisdom will be a failure, not only in spiritual and religious life, but even as an ordinary shopkeeper or in a clerical job. A person who is a failure in one thing will be a failure in another thing also, because it is an incapacity to adjust to circumstances that makes him fail, and that incapacity persists wherever he goes, notwithstanding the fact he has changed his profession.

Dharma, artha, kama, moksha are the foundations of the cultural vision of India. Moksha is the deity which is worshipped in this vehicle of dharma, artha, kama. When the deity is absent, we no more call it a temple; it is only an ordinary building, a dilapidated hut, a corpse with no sense. When nobody is living in a house, we do not value it; we do not even look at it. While artha and kama are the visible values of life, and moksha is the universal value of life, dharma is the cementing value of life. We know how important each one is in our life. Nothing can be regarded as wholly unimportant, because everything plays a role in the superstructure of a completeness called human life, which is an advance of the personality towards the fulfilment of existence, moksha—which is not cut off from dharma, artha, kama, but is the fulfilment that is attained as a transcendence, and not a rejection of them.

There is a difference between transcendence and abandonment. When a child becomes a youth, his childhood is not abandoned but transcended. Whatever value was present in the baby is also present in the youth, but the youth is not the baby. He is something different, far superior to the baby. Similarly, moksha is not this world, is not artha, is not kama, and is not even the so-called dharma; but yet, every one of these is present in it in a transfigured form—not in a particularised, isolated, objectivised form. That which we regard as an outside thing will be realised there as Universal Being. This world is not negated, but it will be seen there, experienced there, in a different way altogether. Our vision is corrected; things are not denied or abrogated from experience.

Thus, moksha is the highest dharma, and the way in which it produces its impact upon our practical life is the so-called dharma of our scriptures, our Dharma Shastras, our social laws, personal regulations, regimens, disciplines, etc. This is a very interesting vision which does not ignore anything in this world, and yet does not consider anything in this world as complete. Such a wondrous vision was bequeathed to the great masters of yore in India, on the strength of which they brought down this law of moksha into the practical daily existence of society and the individual through the application of varna and ashrama.

Excerpts from: Moksha is The Highest Dharma - Chapter 4 The Heritage of Indian Culture by Sri Swami Krishnananda