Dharma and Desire

In my last post I talked about the non-duality insisted upon by meta-Reality. At some level, according to Bhaskar, the universe is interconnected. As I try to grasp what he's saying, I can't help but rely upon the words and concepts familiar to me because of my background in Christian theology. In Genesis, it is claimed that mankind was created in God's image (Imago Dei). If that were so, then every human being would have the seed of God in them--they'd be interconnected via God-grist. This God-seed would blossom in unique ways given each person's biological/cultural context. Each human being would become a unique manifestation of God's image. According to Bhaskar, there is a state of being in which all illusions, all bad habits (whether mental, spiritual, physical) are shed such that this God-seed blossoms to its fullest potential. Bhaskar calls this state of being ground-state, and a person's fullest potential dharma.

For instance, if I determined that my life's goal was to become a successful author, in order for this goal to be realized it would have to resonate with my dharma (my fullest potential) and in order to achieve this most efficiently I'd have to remain as much as possible in my ground-state (a state of being clear of splits, illusions, and distractions). In a recent interview, Bhaskar compares this kind of "enlightenment" to Hinduism (or Vedanta):

Vedanta and other traditions have placed great emphasis on practices such as meditation, and even given the impression that the route to enlightenment is to be achieved through meditation, and that everything else you need, all the other virtues, will flow automatically, so to speak, from good meditation. This gives a very misleading picture... As you move into your dharma, everything will become for you more effortless, more spontaneous, you’ll have more energy, tend to get more things right, etc. But you’ll still be living in the world of duality... [We] can achieve transcendental identification with our [ground-state] in meditation, inaction, in removal from active life, but the definition of an enlightened being is someone who is in a non-dual state in the relative phase of existence, that is in ordinary life.

In other words, where in most Eastern religions enlightenment is acheived via withdrawal from society, according to Bhaskar, you approach your dharma when you are in society.

This resonates with the idea of the incarnation in Christian theology--that Christ became God manifested among us. Monasticism, whether Western or Eastern, does not jive well with Bhaskar's conception of transcendence.

One more interesting thing to note about one's dharma is that it is fully realized only when every other human being on the planet is able to attain it as well. This is because we are interconnected (a part of me will always be only as good as the rest of the world). The desire to achieve dharma coupled with the frustration of never being able to fully realize one's potential is perhaps a good explanation for the mechanics behind the philosophical phenomenon of Desire.