In the Vedic world, to practice dharma meant performing yagna. Yagna was translated by European Orientalists as a sacrifice. But in sacrifice, you give something to appease a deity who needs nothing from you but your loyalty and obedience. In yagna, you exchange. You give in order to receive. You feed a god and the god is obliged to feed you back. The assumption here is that the god is hungry. He needs praise and food. When he gets what he wants, he gives what you want.
Exchange is an indicator of humanity, for it shows empathy for the other’s hunger. This act of feeding others, and letting others feed you, is also karma yoga, the yoga of action, described in the famous Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. For in yagna, you have control over the giving, but no guarantee of receiving. You need to trust that those whom you feed will eventually reciprocate. More importantly, their failure to reciprocate will not shatter your faith in humanity.
Bhagavad Gita is part of an epic Mahabharata where a hundred brothers with eleven armies fight five brothers with seven armies over the property. The strong refuse to share their wealth with the weak, even though the weak are family members, even after the weak are willing to compromise. This leads to a war, which is called dharma-yuddha, or the battle for civilisation. The civilisation will collapse when the strong dominate the weak, when laws benefit the mighty rather than the meek, for then civilisation will resemble the jungle.
Bhagavad Gita talks about yagna as well as yoga. Yoga is traditionally defined as the un-crumpling of the human mind. The human mind is unique. It is blessed with imagination, so can be expanded with wisdom, and contracted with hunger and fear. Yoga enables the expansion of the mind, by unknotting the knots of hunger and fear that contract the mind. Yagna truly happens when it telescopes into yoga. For yagna demands giving away what you have to someone else.
Devdutt Pattanaik is an Indian physician turned leadership consultant, mythologist, author and communicator whose works focus largely on the areas of myth, religion, mythology, and management.
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