Bhagavad Geeta defines what is Swadharma. Swadharma can be understood as a natural instinct, an inborn passion, a genuine interest or a way to live or a cause to die for! It is what you are. The swadharma of a sandal tree is to impart fragrance, even to the axe that cuts the tree. The swadharma of a snake is to bite when provoked. None is wrong. They are the way they are. We classify them as right or wrong because we are not the way we ought to be.
We do things so that we can get a better job, or a better pay or be more socially acceptable. We normally don’t do things that we would love to do, things that will make us feel complete or at peace with ourselves. Such work is a reward in itself. It naturally eliminates the possibility of greed, anger, over-attachment, emotional imbalance or apprehensions for future.
Because of our brought-up, or social surrounding, we are not able to recognize or discover what we are supposed to do. Normally, we are already told what we are supposed to do. 99% people end up doing something that they are told to do. This creates a society full of depressed, anxious and angry people.
It is indispensable for us to discover our true calling because we can never become peaceful, happy or even successful if we are doing something we are not fit for. If we don’t like it, we don’t have the right resources to do that work. Besides, we will be missing out on something that can make us truly and immensely happy!
Everyone feels and processes the external stimuli in a different manner. And therefore everyone is a natural fit for a different job.
Let us take the example of the cognition process in a musician, architect, photographer as compared to an analyst
A musician works with his right creative brain. The eyes of a musician and an analyst will see that same sight, however, the perception formed by both of them will be very different.
Let us take the example of a share market screen. The analyst will see numbers to analyze and make a conclusion. He is driven by the logical concept of profit and loss. An analyst normally has the logical intelligence. His senses and mind are trained to process the numbers in a specific manner and to notice any abnormality in the patterns. His capacity is limited by a well-defined and precise method to reach the target. There is no room for creativity as in the case of a musician. As the analyst accepts one pattern and rejects the other and sticks to his aim.
A natural musician will see a pattern, almost like a tune in the curves and lines of the share stock graph. Normally a natural musician has a rhythmic/musical intelligence. He might feel the music in the noise of stock market hall. Unlike the analyst, the musician is guided by the sense of beauty and harmony. A musician is on an untargeted path, where the music happens as a discovery. There is no set formula for making music. Therefore, a musician welcomes ideas that are not based on material profit and loss.
A natural architect is a mix of creativity and logic. He tries to balance between the two to create beauty and comfort at the same time. He works with numbers and turns them into attractive and useful patterns. It is important for a good architect to have a good sense of aesthetics, which again does not work on dry logic. He can be considered a mix between the analyst and the musician.
A natural photographer also will see the beauty in the patterns of the stock market. He has the imagination or the visual intelligence to create a story out of the pictures. Again, his mind or perception is not limited by rules, guidelines or targets. He will see the stock share graph as a picture and not as a piece of numerical information. He will hardly notice the numbers on the graph. His brain will not rush to calculate the numbers on the graph and conclude whether they reflect profit or loss. In fact, his senses will be absorbed in aesthetics of the patterns, their colorfulness, and symmetry.
A natural analyst turned musician forcefully will try to create rhyming sentences or a set formula for making music, instead of trusting a creative instinct. All his production will be similar, just like the products of the same assembly line. So why do something that you are not good at and leave the opportunity to shine at something that you excel at!
The Horse of Greed
Why do we do something that we do not like or enjoy? Either we are driven by our greed or the driving social pressure. Some of us are just exclusively after money, probably they hope to enjoy and live life in their next birth! Some of us trade the mindless draining labor for a few moments of bliss, they are living their life in fractions. They switch off the life as they leave for office at 9.00 am and switch it on as they reach back home late night, however sometimes it is too late to enjoy 🙂
The rare ones enjoy life and money, fame and power come pouring after them because what they do or create is rare, priceless and vital to the human development, be it the paintings of Micheal Angelo or scientific discoveries of Einstein. But why should such people be rare? why don’t all of us want to be our best? Every child dreams of seemingly impossible or impractical things but as she grows up, she gives up dreaming, gives up walking. She is taught to hook herself to a horse that will take her places; looks better, easier, safer and predictable. But doing something out of free will is like riding a horse and something only for money is like being dragged by a horse. Most of us are being dragged by our horses!
But in the process of being safe and acceptable, we lose the opportunity to discover the wild abundance that lies inside. We do something that we are not good at and therefore we get something that is not good enough for us. A natural artist might not be interested in math, a natural mathematician might not be interested in sports, a natural sports-person might not be interested in poetry. We cannot excel at something we don’t like. Compared to our true potential to earn, we can earn only peanuts by doing a job that we don’t like. Even to earn money, it is a bad approach to follow the crowd. We can be far reacher if we follow our natural instincts!
Bhagvat Geeta states that it is better to die following one’s natural instinct or passion rather live comfortably, doing a work meant for someone else. One’s own religion or swadharma brings peace, whereas someone else’s brings fear. Trust me, a natural musician or a photographer turned in to an analyst will ruin the organization and himself…….
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