Dharma. Many of us have heard the word in discussions of eastern philosophy, but few understand the importance of its meaning to people of all professions. Dharma is personal responsibility combined with one’s social, familial, or professional duty—all with the concept of equilibrium or balance in mind. In Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart, she describes the inherent importance of dharma to those seeking success in any realm.
As westerners, we often like to define what is right and what is wrong in absolute terms. Killing is wrong. Feeding people is good. Stealing is wrong. Healing is good. But the idea of dharma states that there is a right and wrong, a “duty” if you will, for each individual depending on his or her station in life. If someone has joined the army and sworn to fight as his superiors direct, it is his dharma to do so. If killing is involved, it is his dharma to kill. That is the duty he must fulfill based on his station in life. It is also his duty to wear camouflage clothing and stay physically fit in order to protect himself from attack. Sacrificing himself is not the warrior’s dharma. After all, what good is a dead warrior? His dharma is to perform his job while building upon his ability to do his job effectively. That means self-preservation.
Meanwhile, if a physician has taken an oath to save all lives, he must do so no matter whether these are the lives of friendly soldiers or enemies. It is his dharma to do so—his duty. He must get a good night’s sleep; eat well; and never endanger his hands, the sanitation of the operating environment, or his own livelihood, as this would deter him from performing his dharma.
The dharma of a debtor is to pay back his debt as well as he is able—to establish a payment plan that does cause him to cut back on luxuries, does force him to take on a lower standard of living, but does not endanger his or his family’s livelihood. After all, the creditor also has to live and to support his family, so that is another dharma that must not be neglected. Meanwhile, the dharma of a creditor is to collect upon debt. This dharma calls for him to enable the debtor to establish a workable payment plan while still remaining able to recover financially. None of this is anything new to you, I’m sure, but many wrongly interpret their dharma due to short-sighted pressure from professional superiors.
Some folks in the credit industry seem to think it is their dharma to ruin the debtor. To take all they can get and leave the debtor with nothing—no money, no hope, no self-respect. This is a huge mistake on every professional level. Everyone makes mistakes. Life is not about avoiding mistakes and proving that you were born perfect and a genius. Dharma simply states that one must do the duty you happen to have in order to help put things right in the world—in order to bring things back to a state of equilibrium.
Dharma—or duty in the interest of balance—is an interesting subject that brings up a lot of complicated issues. By the way, that definition—“duty in the interest of balance”—is mine, but it’s taken from the ideas put forth in Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart. Chu just defines it as “duty,” but all the examples she gives illustrate how duty, performed rightly, leads to balance.
When discussing the idea of dharma—or duty with a view toward establishing balance—in the business world, it is inevitable that the subject of the disgruntled employee should come up. In Thick Face, Black Heart, Chu talks about this common dilemma: when one is duty-bound to serve a manager who is fool, then what do you do?
Chu hits upon an important point for all of us, no matter our profession, when, in her book Thick Face, Black Heart, she acknowledges that we are all driven by the dual motivation of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. For instance, we typically vote for politicians based on the pleasure and pain-avoidance they promise for our future. Unfortunately, this view of life is short-sighted.
