Is Dharma the Same as Religion?

A Dharma does not mean a “religion” or “ism” or “samaj” or “mat” or “panth” as commonly understood. Dharma is different from all these. Dharma has directly come out of God Himself for the benefit of the whole humanity irrespective of any caste, creed and human race. No human being can claim as the founder of the God’s Dharma, not even the Avataras like Rama or Krishna. Dharma existed before the birth of all the Avataras. A Dharma is governed by the Holy Scriptures and not by the elected heads of religions. No group of elected or selected people or any society or any institution can change the God’s Dharma. This Dharma is timeless, ageless and does not change or tempered according to the sweet will of few elected religious heads for their narrow selfish interests. None has any right or an authority to deform or temper the Dharma and its Scriptures.

If God exist, He must have created His own Dharma in the beginning of human life on earth and must have revealed it to its various saints and sages during their Samadhi or Self-realization. Since there is only one God, there must be only one Dharma bestowed directly from Him to humanity. That Dharma must have the divine Scriptures directly bestowed from Him through a Self-Realized writer. Such Scriptures must be beyond the capacity to write by any ordinary human mind. What that Dharma is and what are its Holy Scriptures?

God’s Dharma and its philosophy should be without any self-contradiction and doubts and should be universally applied and acceptable by everyone. Thru its Holy Scriptures, God should have revealed the secret of the origin and destruction of the universe and life to humanity. Sanatan or Hindu Dharma is such. God Himself has taken many reincarnations (Avataras) to protect and re-establish it in the past, whenever there was any degeneration or decline in this Dharma.

An incarnation of God is a rare event. His Leela (actions) is unbelievable, powerful and miraculous. A Holy Scripture about its Leela always follows it. An Avatara of God is so powerful that it never accepts his defeat or shows His human weakness even if the whole world becomes against Him. An incarnation of God can never be mercilessly crucified or murdered even by the whole humanity put together against Him. The consequent creation of the Holy Scriptures like Puranas and Upanishads is an evidence of God’s super-powerful incarnation.

A Dharma should be able to explain the philosophical eternal questions like, “Who Am I”, “How and why the universe and all living beings came to existence”, “Who created the universe”, “What is God”, “How to know God”, “How to communicate with God”, “How to become one with God”, “What shall be the end of the universe”, “How can I know and predict everything about everybody from the beginning of the universe till the end of the universe”, birth rebirth and so on. A true Dharma should not be in contradiction to the new scientific discoveries, rather both should support each other.

The meaning of the word Dharma in Sanskrit is ‘Dharan’, which means adoption of some basic characteristics. Everything living or nonliving in the universe has been assigned some unique basic characteristics by the Almighty God. The Dharma of Sun and Fire is to give heat. The Dharma of Ice is to give coolness. The Dharma of trees is to give us fruits. The Dharma of sugar is to give sweetness. The Dharma of water is to quench our thrust. If all these stops doing there assigned work, we say that they are not following their Dharma.

What is Religion

Most of the people think that the religions and Dharma are the same. But there is a lot of difference between the two. All religions must believe in God and soul. If not they should be called non-religions. Either some saints or prophets or the messengers of God might have founded the religion and even God may not be revealed to the founders of the religions. But unlike Dharma, the religions generally do not possess any pre-historical Scriptures or have any spiritual philosophy, which can explain and justify the fundamental truths, doctrines and the eternal questions about the secrets of God and the creation and end of universe, which are haunting the whole humanity.

Some religions may have adopted some simple do’s and don’ts (which they call the doctrines), and so-called Holy-books, which are generally compiled from the diaries of many saints, sages or other people. All religions are not the same as commonly understood. There may be so many contradictions and disagreements between the religions. God Himself never take incarnation (Avatara) in any religion, but in His Dharma He does.

All the followers of a religion are generally the registered members of their religion. They are governed by a group of elected or selected people or by some organizations. They are not governed by the Scriptures (as these are not available with them). Generally, the elected heads neither saints nor have purified their soul nor they are self-realized. Their decisions are generally biased due to their limited knowledge, selfish interests and God is generally ignored in their decisions.

Some religions may try to declare their founders as God or Lord; in fact they were neither God nor the Avatara of God. Such declarations are contradictory to their own Holy-books and against, what their founders have said about themselves. Such deformations and tempering of Holy-books simply confuse the world and leads to controversies. Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Judaism etc are the religions and not Dharma as none of their founder was God.

Scriptures doesn’t mean the so-called Holy-Books.