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Kiet Nguyen IHRTLUHC

Professor Amy Nottingham-Martin

Freshman Studies FRST 101

Response to Professor Proctors Lecture on The Bhagavad Gita

Before hearing Professor Proctor's lecture, I barely understood the

definition as well as the significance of dharma in The Bhagavad Gita. The

book defines dharma as the sacred duty or religiously ordained duty

which everybody has to fulfill. It confused me because I did not know

whether there was a certain set of duties specified by the religion or

whether there were rules as to what is considered duty or the right thing

to do. Before the lecture, I could only vaguely interpret the term dharma.

But after listening to Professor Proctors lecture, I now understand

this much better. I started to feel I understood the term better when she

gave an example of what students are supposed to do in a lecture, and

said that it is the students dharma to pay attention. She said that other

groups of people, children for example, also have a different set of rules,

or dharma, which helped to answer my question whether there was a

specified set of rules that people had to fulfill. It turned out that all kinds

of people, including me, have their set of duties that they have to fulfill,

and that is a very helpful revelation in my perspective. She also made it

very clear for me when she explained that dharma is what one has to do

in the present situation. Although Arjuna is facing his cousins and teachers

on the battlefield, they are technically his enemies in this situation of war,

and it is his dharma to fight against his enemies. In addition, she

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unequivocally distinguished between the Shreyas (the path of correct

actions) and the Preyas (the path of pleasant actions), thereby also

helping me understand dharma better, because sometimes the correct

action may not be pleasant to accomplish. Most of all, her analogy

between dharma and a sense of harmony in the universe topped it for me.

If we fulfill dharma, we are helping to keep a sense of balance or harmony

in the universe. That is a very interesting and elucidating point to me.

All in all, I am glad that I fulfilled my dharma as a student by

attending the lecture because I now understand The Bhagavad Gita much

better with an unambiguous definition of dharma in mind.