Teaching #7
Having attained human birth, don’t waste it
Understand and set out on the path of good fortune (kalyàõa)
Do not waste precious time by dwelling on the pleasures of the sensesÞspeech, touch, form, taste, and smell — or worry about your belly. You have been chasing these senses in previous lives as animals, birds, as well as insects. Even after becoming a human being, if you carry on like this, you will remain trapped within the 8,400,000 life-forms, and attaining release will be difficult. Value your human birth! Act with discrimination. Understand your truly beneficial path, and behave in such a way that you need not continually return to the prison of the womb.
Commit your life to the dharmik. Submitting to the bondage of dharma yields fortune. Despite having freedom of will, do not think, “We will not stay in the dharma system.” If you stay in the dharma system, then it will better you in this world and even elevate you in the other world (paraloka).
If you think you are free of the system of dharma, then you will be ensnared by the system of adharma, and will ultimately destroy yourself. Mind your own dharma. Minding one’s own dharma is verily the one means by which human life can be fulfilling.
Minding one’s own dharma is urgent in all the fields of one’s individual life — personal, social, political, national, and international. In all areas, if one maintains his body, senses, mind, and intellectual health according to dharma, he can avoid adharma.
Neglecting dharma means adopting adharma. In whatever field one neglects dharma, in that [very] field adharma will take over, and that particular field will become sullied (kaluùita). Subsequently, all the fruits of adharma will befall personally on the offender alone. Only he who commits the action will be held accountable for the result. Hence, while carrying out any actionÞbe it in the field of the personal, social, or politicalÞconsider carefully whether the deed is opposed to dharma. Do not execute even a portion of an action that is opposed to dharma. Sometimes actions which are opposed to dharma may be profitable to a man whose intellect is characterized by the quality of aggression (rajoguõã ) or the quality of darkness (tamoguõã), but their consequence will be powerlessness and disaster. This means that following dharma always yields merit, and following adharma or the dharma of another (paradharma) is always disastrous.
