The Supreme Dharma🔗

What is the most superior dharma? Ahimsa is the most superior dharma. A person who has established himself in ahimsa, even the devatas salute.

See, I started with non-possessiveness, aparigraha and I said that we will enter into the sutras. But the first sutra is about ahimsa. Understand, ahimsa is the first step towards non-possessiveness, that is why Mahāvīra is speaking about ahimsa, and then he goes to aparigraha. Let us analyze this ahimsa a little deeply.

Dammo mangala mukkitam ahimsa sanchamodavo devavi tam Tamas shanty jessadammey shaya mano

What is the most superior dharma? Ahimsa is the most superior dharma. A person who is established in ahimsa, even the devatas salute. Ahimsa is the most superior dharma, that is the Truth.

Understand, you can drop any dharma, but ahimsa is the dharma which you can't drop. It is the basic understanding for human beings to co-exist, to live together. Without ahimsa, no human being can live on the planet earth.

Please understand, even the people who have committed hundreds of murders, at some point they had ahimsa, that is why they have not murdered some other people. See, from a young age at some point they were with ahimsa or non-violence; otherwise the day they were born they would have started killing people starting right from their parents.

Ahimsa is the basic Truth of life. One important thing which you should understand, all the great Masters, whether Buddha, Krishna, Mahāvīra, Shiva, all of them are talking more about ahimsa. All the Eastern Masters talk about ahimsa more than about love. Love comes only second, ahimsa is emphasized.

But for a Western mind, the word 'love' looks more appropriate, because it is a positive thing; non-violence is more negative. All the Eastern Masters emphasize more on non-violence than love, because in love slowly you become aggressive. Not only that, when you say 'I love you,' you give some promise to the other person. And all promises are failures; the moment you give a promise to somebody and you don't fulfill, that is also violence.

You give a promise to somebody, 'I love you and I am going to create heaven around you,' the moment you say that you love somebody directly or indirectly you have given many promises - sharing roses, and giving them the idea that you are going to create heaven for the other person, and you are really going to make the other person happy. You have given so many ideas to the other person, and if you don't fulfill them, it is violence. With nonviolence when you start itself you are very clear, 'I can say only one thing, I will not hurt you, that's all.'

So the right way to start love is nonviolence and not love. Love will happen when you really experience nonviolence. You cannot make love happen. No, you can only work in the direction of nonviolence. Love will happen as a byproduct. If you try to work directly in the direction of love, you will mess up, and you will end up creating troubles for you and for the other.

Ahimsa is such a powerful dharma. I always tell people even in my ashram, there is nothing, no rule which will take you away from enlightenment. To tell you honestly, even all the so-called morality is only a social rule.

There is only one dharma , one rule, which is directly connected to consciousness. Understand, all dharmas are based on conscience. Conscience will change in every century - in some part of the planet earth eating vegetarian food is the only right thing, and in some other part you can eat non-vegetarian food. That is perfectly alright as the social rules always change.

Morality has no solid base on consciousness. There is no dharma which is directly connected to consciousness. All dharmas, all morality, are only related to your conscience, means society. If you change the place where you live, the morality changes.

It is just like the constitution of a country, it is just a social law. But there is one dharma, one Truth, which is directly related to consciousness, which is universal that is ahimsa. That is why we say 'Ahimsa paramo dharmah', that is the ultimate dharma, more superior dharma. Nonviolence is the 'Paramodharma'.

Unless you learn, unless you imbibe the idea of nonviolence, you can't live on the planet earth. It is a simple, basic, preliminary understanding to live and let live, to coexist on the planet earth.