Dharma, Ahimsa, the Aims of Life and the Gunas

Overview

Recall questions on the two levels of dharma, ahimsa and karma, Bilimoria on Indian ethics, the four aims of life and vairagya, the four ashramas, and the three gunas and their qualities.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Hindu ethics distinguishes two levels of dharma. What are they, and why does the distinction cause trouble?

   Model answer

   Sadharana dharma is the common duty owed by everyone: truthfulness, non-injury, self-restraint, purity, generosity. Sva-dharma is one's own duty, fixed by varna, ashrama, gender and circumstance, and it can require what the common duty seems to forbid, as when a kshatriya must fight. The trouble is that the two can pull opposite ways, and Hindu thinkers have to say which governs. The Gita's answer to Arjuna gives priority to sva-dharma properly performed; other voices, Gandhi's among them, subordinate everything to ahimsa.

2. 2

   What is ahimsa, and how far does it reach?

   Model answer

   Non-injury: refraining from harm in deed, word and thought. It rises to prominence in the Upanishadic period alongside Jain and Buddhist emphasis on it, and it underlies the vegetarianism of many Hindus, reverence for the cow, and the pacifism Gandhi built into satyagraha. Its reach is disputed within Hinduism: Vedic tradition included animal sacrifice, some Shakta traditions retain it, and kshatriya duty has always allowed defensive and just warfare, so ahimsa functions as a demanding ideal that other duties can qualify.

3. 3

   How do dharma, karma and ahimsa work together?

   Model answer

   Karma makes conduct consequential, so that what you do genuinely matters to what you become. Dharma tells you which action is yours to perform, given who and where you are. Ahimsa constrains how you may pursue it, ruling out injury as a means. Together they produce an ethic that is less about obeying commands than about acting in accordance with an order that will register the action either way.

4. 4

   What does P Bilimoria argue about Indian ethics?

   Model answer

   Bilimoria argues that Indian moral thought is organised around dharma rather than around a legislated moral law or a single supreme principle, and that this makes it hard to map onto Western categories of duty and utility. He draws out the tension between particularised, role-based sva-dharma and the universal virtues, examines how karma and rebirth extend moral accountability beyond a single life, and notes that because moksha stands above the other aims of life, morality is finally instrumental to liberation rather than self-standing. He also questions whether the Sanskrit traditions contain 'ethics' as a separate discipline at all, or whether the moral is embedded in ritual, law and metaphysics together.

5. 5

   Evaluate whether an ethic that assigns duties by role can be defended.

   Model answer

   In its favour: it is realistic about the fact that obligations really do differ between a parent, a soldier and a student; it embeds ethics in concrete relationships rather than in abstractions; and it makes room for the common virtues alongside particular duties. Against it: when roles are hereditary, the ethic sanctifies an accident of birth, and it can leave a person no standing to refuse a duty they judge to be wrong. Reformers within Hinduism have answered by reinterpreting varna as aptitude rather than birth, or by promoting ahimsa and truth to overriding status, which is essentially the move Gandhi made.

6. 6

   Identify the four aims of human life in Hindu teaching, and say what each covers.

   Model answer

   Classically four, the purusharthas: dharma, living rightly; artha, securing wealth, security and the means of life; kama, pleasure, love and beauty; and moksha, release from the round of rebirth. The first three are the aims of engaged worldly life and are treated as legitimate, not as concessions to weakness. Moksha stands above them as the aim that ends the pursuit of the rest.

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