Svadharma

A talk by Mr Donald Lambie given at the School of 
Philosophy, SE London branch on 20 February 2023.

Very good to be with you ladies and gentlemen and I am delighted 
that we’ve got people also from St Alban’s and Kent and Kingston, 
Sussex; so welcome. If you haven’t been here before this is Athene 
House, we’ve got Athene here, the goddess of wisdom. She also has 
a certain warlike aspect to her nature, depicted on the right and 
that’s to fend off the darkness which is represented on the sculpture 
on the right. 

And here we have a beautiful statement, by a man who used to be 
in the school until he died a few years ago, from Shakespeare: This 
above all, to thine own self be true. It is beautifully written. 

   

So, it is a most fitting place for us to meet. I haven’t been here since 
well before Covid. It is nice to be back.

I want to talk this evening on the subject of svadharma. I’ll explain 
what that means, why I want to talk about it and why it is important. 
And I hope in half an hour’s time you will think this is the most 
precious gift that you have. And if you think that I will have 
succeeded. And if you don’t think that I will have failed. So, let’s 
hope for the best.

Svadharma is made up of Dharma which is a difficult word to 
translate into English. We can say ‘law’ and that’s as good as anything: 
the laws of nature, the universal laws of nature. Sva means ‘self’ or 
‘my’; so, dharma is universal and svadharma is individual.

To give you an example, there is a statement, ‘to love your neighbour 
as yourself’. This is a universal commandment. Now let’s imagine 
you live at number 20 whatever your road is, your Svadharma is to 
love the people who occupy number 21 and 19 either side of you, to 
love them as yourself. Svadharma is particular, it’s individual. It’s the 
operation of the general, universal principle at the individual level. 

To take another example, the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you 
would have done unto you. This is a universal statement applicable 
to everyone and it’s astonishing how many traditions it’s found in. 

So that is the dharma, the universal, general statement. When it 
comes to how an individual acts in relation to other individuals 
then it’s svadharma. So, for example, Sri Vasudevananda Sarasvati 
at the end of one meeting said that his svadharma was to make sure 
that we are following the right direction. This was his svadharma.

So we could translate svadharma as duty, one’s own duty. And the 
reason I wanted to talk about it is because, as often as not, when we 
say the word duty it connotes a kind of heaviness, an obligation, 
something slightly unpleasant in one way or another but, as I said, 
I’m hoping to convince you that it’s not heavy, it’s not unpleasant. It 
is our greatest gift. Svadharma.

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