This essay is a near-verbatim adaptation of the live spoken teaching, edited only for continuity and readability.
Namaste, everyone. Today, I want to talk about a very central part of enlightenment. It's almost like a technique, but it's not really a technique—it's so much more than that. The word is Svadharma.
In enlightenment, we're seeking a state of mind, and our actions—this state of mind comes largely from meditation. In meditation, we connect with the effortlessness of being what we are—the source. We become a true expression of ourselves, beyond conceptual modifications. We become lights. The light actually emerges.
In meditation, when we're completely free, when there's no resistance to life or the moment, the energy is open. We're just unfolding through time, not even doing it anymore—it’s just happening. You might see the decision within a greater scope, being beyond decision.
In meditation, we formally sit down and tap into the source. There's no self anymore, or we're erasing the self. Erasing the self in the sense that we're becoming disinterested—there's a renunciation. We're simply absorbed in being, and there's no structural self there, or at least the structural self becomes very thin and stops obscuring that free-flowing light, that energy.
So, light happens when we're in this state of extreme freedom. Dharma and light go together, actually. When you're in the Dharma, it's as if God is moving you, and you're one with the entire concurrence, the body of the universe, and there's a condition of light.
Light happens when there's this effortlessness, when there's complete, absolute alignment, because everything is made of light, and it's the resistance to it that obscures it.
That's the formal meditative side. But what do we do between meditations? Karma plays a big role. Karma means action. If we do the wrong thing between meditations, we can't enter into a deep meditative state—we have to kind of make up for it. So the goal is to stay meditative between meditations. But what does that mean? What does that look like? What way do we live our life that is conducive to deep meditations immediately?
You sit down, and boom, you're there. The key is to be living an aligned life, to be extremely true to yourself, to not live with a self-image that's constantly judging you or interfering with the natural unfolding of your true nature.
It's really almost like dancing. If you can dance uninhibited, there's a very similar feeling. Can you just be yourself? And there's a great deal of humility involved in that, right? I am what I am, take it or leave it. There's a great deal of love, because you're not exploiting others, you don't want them to act a particular way to get something out of them, so there's no pretense. You're just, I am what I am, you are what you are. Hopefully we'll be together if we're meant to be, or not if we're meant not to be.
But within all of this is this term I keep using—to be true to yourself. So, Dharma, or Svadharma, is a formal practice in what you love to do, for the sake of doing it. It can't just be about serving others. There's a level of interest that is there, and it's woven into the fabric of your spirit. You just care. You always cared about something.
Now, that could be biology, philosophy, mathematics, writing, dancing, business, engineering—it could be all kinds of things. But the point is, there's something in you that is mathematics, is music. You are an expression of that. Your inspiration itself brings that into form in the universe.
Why do anything? The universe is empty and meaningless. That's something I learned at Landmark, actually. At the end of their whole big long weekend that you go there—and Landmark is kind of an interesting experience, and can be very helpful, actually. You go and you spend the whole weekend with these people.
Self-help kind of stuff often ends with the conclusion that life is empty and meaningless. It's interesting to look at that through Dharma, because we give meaning to this universe of rocks and stars and mountains. We give meaning to it. We come here with a wish, a dream in our heart, to live an arc of experience—a destiny that should unfold from our infant stage to our very old age.
Through that process, we go through an unfolding of development. Michael Jackson, for example, was five, then he was sixteen, and then he became the king of pop at thirty in the '80s and '90s. He went through this arc of experience in life, but he was always evolving—a seed that was beyond time. That seed is the inspiration inside of us.
Part of our job in life is to find out what that inspiration is, what drives us. It's all about self-honesty. What does it really mean to you? It's hard to do this when the world is clamoring with expectations, pushing you into a box, scared of you taking a leap of faith or a leap into the unknown.
The heart doesn't need to see. It knows that it's doing what it's meant to be doing. It moves forward without knowing the next step; it automatically has to take it. It's continuously walking into the unknown, in freedom, without security. But there's a deeper security there, which is the security to be at home inside yourself, being what you're meant to be. The light is a cosmic home. There's a wonderful sense of being safe in the light.
So, Svadharma is a formal practice in doing what you would do just for the sake of doing it. A good word for this is "autotelic." It means you do things for the sheer joy. When you practice your Dharma, you get better at it.
There are a number of things that are of concern. First of all, you may say you're a dancer, but you're a very unique kind of dancer. In fact, you're the best dancer in the world at dancing the way you dance. We're always the best in the world at being ourselves—whatever that is. We're not the best in the world at anything, except for one thing. My teacher's teacher, Rama, said this: being who we are.
If you look at someone like Nikola Tesla, he was an engineer, but a very particular kind of engineer. He didn't make car engines; he made electric motors. Car engines simply weren't interesting to him. What fascinated him was using electricity and magnetism to build machines. For him, it wasn't just about the machines themselves, but also about transferring energy and creating entire systems—transferring electricity and everything that goes with it.
Finding out who you are is a very important step in this practice. It's part of the path to enlightenment, and that's what I'm suggesting here. If you want to become enlightened, you have to know who you are, so you can live in your integrity, in your art, in your creativity, and in your purpose.
By the way, when I'm sitting here talking, when I say "art and creativity," I focus on Kira. When I say "purpose," I focus on Jenna, because I know what words resonate with each of you. Although both of you have art, creativity, and purpose, I have a sense of which ones come first for you. Maybe I'm mistaken, but there's a kind of language or paradigm that's informed by our Dharma.
When I use language, there's mathematics woven throughout in a very particular way. The math I do is very geometric, and I like to approach it through computers, computer science, and coding. To me, they're all one. This is a very specific kind of mathematics. For me, mathematics is a philosophical inquiry into the universe, but it's also a state of mind. Unless it brings beauty into my own mind, it means very little to me.
It's also very social. I like to share math; I don't like to do it only by myself. I want people to see it, and I want it to have flair—almost like a rock star on stage. You'll see this in my videos, my math videos. These are things I've discovered about my own Dharma.
It's good to try to find out what you would be if you were being completely true to yourself. Svadharma, which means your Dharma, requires a practice. You need to sit down and do it. You give yourself a space to just have some fun. That's the key.
I've been working so hard this whole month. I actually haven't done a lot of math lately, so today, as part of my practice to get ready for the sermon, I did a whole bunch of math. It helped me reconnect, and I realized how much I'd been missing it. It was amazing how it changed my state of mind.
I've also built a very deep reservoir of power in my math, and that's something that happens in your Svadharma. The more you do it, the more you store power there. It's personal power—it's qi. It's your will to live, your will to create, your will to see. All of these are involved in the personal power you generate when you engage in your Dharmic activity.
These sentences I'm saying have a lot of power stored in them. The power you generate when you engage in your Dharmic activity—there's something there I'm sharing with you that's very precious. You and I should write it on the wall so it's never forgotten, because I forget it every now and then. That's what today was reminding me.
So, let me share a list I have here. One of the things that Svadharma does for us that's absolutely invaluable is that it creates a sense of independence. When you're doing your Dharma, you don't feel lonely. You don't feel you need others. You feel independent and strong and whole.
This is a major paradigm shift from the codependence of humanity. Most people feel a degree of codependence—they need their show, their food, their companion, all kinds of things. But when you have your art, you sit down and you are free. You are independent in your own practice. You have an art to come home to when you need it most, and that is a precious refuge.
When you're doing your Dharma, you enter into light because there's a state of non-resistance. You feel like, "I'm here to do—right now, I'm doing what I want to be doing," and there's an easefulness. There's a lack of resistance that dissipates energy. Sometimes in life, we push through and dissipate energy, but in enlightened states of mind, there's no pushing. You're just pure integrity unfolding constantly, and there's no dissipation of energy. You retain all this inner power.
There's no egoic self-talk that dissipates energy. There's no attachment and aversion that dissipate energy. When we sit down and formally practice our Svadharma, we're cultivating the karma of being in flow state, of living without resistance. We generate power in the activity, and we cultivate the neural pathways and the habits to stay in a state of gracefulness, of integrity.
The goal is to be unapologetically as completely you as possible. Go crazy with it—that's the fun part. If there were no society, and you were listening to your heart, that innocent child spiritual being inside of you, what would you do? Would you make everything iridescent and sparkly? Would you make mathematics something completely different than anybody's ever seen? Would you be a doctor who uses, I don't know, electromagnetism from the planets to heal people? What might you do that's completely out of left field? Every Dharma has so much potential.
These fields that we know of—they were created this way. Just think about how ridiculous it is: we're going to use these tiny little creatures called bacteria and viruses, learn about them, use microscopes that can see them, and medicine that can interact with them. This is medicine today, right? But 300 years ago, they weren't thinking along those lines. Somebody came in and was a trailblazer. They said, "Hey, medicine can be this." Usually it goes quite slowly, but every now and then, there's a very enlightened individual who takes a giant leap because they can do nothing else. They can do nothing but be themselves.
It's painful to conform to the limitations of the status quo, of the times. It's painful in a spiritual way that's problematic for enlightenment. So this is all a part of enlightenment, and I was thinking, okay, how do we make more progress on the path here as a Sangha? I wanted to really tell you how important this is. You can sit down for 30 minutes a day and do your Dharma.
Today I sat down. It's hard to do 30 minutes sometimes, but even 15 minutes can be a very powerful thing. This is a multi-year endeavor and inquiry, so you might get better at this, ask questions. You might have been doing it a long time already, but this is a good thing to question right now.
There's so much connected to this. Dharma helps you develop lucidity, because the way you live and what you master helps you make sense of infinity. The universe is something to make sense of. How do we make sense of our lives? Well, we use metaphors for things that we really understand. You might say, "Oh, you see what's happening over there?"
That's kind of like a choreographed dance. And if you know dance and choreography, you might be able to use those structures to make sense of what's happening in a business, or in a restaurant, or whatever it might be.
Mathematics is a very powerful one—well, they're all powerful. And you don't choose your Dharma, so I shouldn't say it that way. That's interesting, you don't choose your Dharma. Mathematics can be a nice complement to any Dharma. But dance can be a nice complement to the mathematician's Dharma, right? Because it frees a mathematician up from maybe a degree of rigidity.
So, you could have your Dharma, and then you can bring other things in that support it. I'd just like to talk about a few enlightened people.
Bruce Lee is a very good example of somebody who lived his Dharma and entered into enlightened states of awareness. He actually went into Samadhi through martial arts. Martial arts is a very classical Dharma, for mastery through form and practice. It's for inner mastery through outer practice.
Another person is Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore was a brilliant poet who became enlightened as a poet. He started a school, his whole life was around poetry, and I think he won the Nobel Prize.
Emerson is a writer, one of the best writers in human history, that I know of. He became enlightened as well. Shakespeare is actually an example of this too, believe it or not.
You see, enlightened beings aren't always a sage in a cave. Sometimes it's Shakespeare. Sometimes it's the actor on TV. But the thing is, they entered into states of awareness. If you read Shakespeare, you're like, how did he do that? Well, he was in a state of mind. He was in a state of freedom.
And you can see, even in the things that he says, the depth of wisdom, the lived wisdom that he was sharing. He wasn't just a great writer, he was a wise sage sharing through his plays. He was a playwright, right? He used plays. Emerson wrote essays—very different.
So there's a number of people in history—I think Mozart was one as well, Pythagoras was one. There are a number of people who became enlightened through mastery of some sort of art form.
Finding your Dharma—let's end on this. To find your Dharma, look through your life and ask, what are the things… and it's never too late. It's never too late, because you'll get an immediate joy from this. What are the things that were always present in my life? Like, you've always been doing that.
Sometimes it's hard—sometimes it's right in front of you and you can't see it, which is a little bit frustrating. But don't be frustrated, because you'll dissipate energy. Just keep considering it.
When you look at, like, okay, what did you do after school when you were a teenager? What did you do during school? What did you do in elementary school? What did you do in your 20s? What did you do in your 30s? Just go through and see what are the things that have been a part of your life the whole time.
Now, it's important to think of it as something that you can refine. It's a skill set. Now, oftentimes it exists within a larger scope. Like, you might say, for example, Bruce Lee was a martial artist, but then he was an actor. That was kind of a larger scope, but the martial arts was the thing. If he got confused and said, well, his Dharma was acting, he might have gone and done something that had nothing to do with martial arts, right?
He was also a philosopher. But the key is, it's gotta be something where you can revel in the subtleties of it. Think about it like, in mathematics, I can keep learning higher, more subtle things and get better at understanding the basics, even. You can always become a better dancer, you can always become a better doctor, you can always become a better martial artist or a painter, right? So there's gotta be some sort of joy in the mastery.
It can't just be about caring for others. There's something you do for you. It's a selfish activity. You're doing it for you, but really, you're not doing it for you, you're doing it because it is you. There's a difference, right? You're the flower blooming in spring. It's not selfish, it's just being itself.
So, maybe this week, contemplate what could be your Dharma, what's something you want to do. A lot of times, like, I didn't know I could do mathematics as my Dharma for a long time, actually, even though I was doing it my whole life. Like, literally my whole life, I was doing mathematics.
But it never occurred to me that I could just sit down and do math. Pure math. That always seemed impractical to me. But it wasn't impractical at all, because that's exactly what I had to do.
I always had this tendency to think I needed to use math for something—to be an engineer, to make cool technology, to do something practical with it, right? But pure math has always been a joy for me. There are these higher-dimensional mathematical shapes you'll never see in the third dimension. Could they ever be used? Maybe. But that's Dharma for me. There's a lot of purity in the math.
So… what is your Dharma? Do it every day. And when you do it, try to make it a meditation. If you can do it in light, that's a very powerful thing. Can you do your Dharma in light? I remember when my teacher first suggested that, and I thought, whoa, that sounds so crazy. But now, it often happens to me. I close my eyes, I do math, and there's light.
Literally, I'm in Samadhi, with waves of soma washing through me, and I'm doing mathematics with my eyes closed. Sometimes, that brings me into a deeper meditative state than even meditating itself. Although it's a different thing—it's important to know that.
Becoming completely absorbed in source—you can't do your Dharma there. I should tell you that eventually. There's this back and forth: formal meditation, dharmic living, which can be infused throughout your whole life. You can make math everything, or dance everything. You're cooking dinner, you're dancing, right? You live it. It's your metaphors, it's everything. But you have the formal practice, too.
Eventually, that back and forth becomes one, and you enter into Sahaja Samadhi, which is a very rare state. It means the natural state. In Sahaja Samadhi, the waking state is full, deep nirvana samadhi. It's kind of unfathomable to talk about, but there's a state where meditation and flow merge so completely that there's no difference anymore.
There are maybe ten people in the world who can do this. It's very rare. I do think Rabindranath Tagore achieved that. I don't think Bruce Lee achieved the full integration, but he might have if he had lived longer. Yeah, that's a very special state. That's the highest samadhi.
I hope this was inspiring, and also encouraging to hold space for each of you. I think sometimes it's helpful to have somebody say that this is a reasonable and fair use of your time, right? Kind of give you permission. Somebody did that for me, so I want to do it for you. So, namaste.
There's something beautiful about the idea of an education system that recognizes and nurtures this in young children, instead of standardized conformity. What if our education system actually developed that inner genius, developed the potentiality of each of us? It could center on your Dharma, and then you could learn all the other things as a part of it. Like, history—I could have learned the history of mathematics. They never had a history of mathematics class in my school. Oh my god, I would have loved that! And then I could have learned the mathematics of, you know, main history.
Okay, I need to know the history of the United States. Well, let's look at it mathematically, statistically—things like that. That's just one example. Philosophy could have been… I mean, everything could have been centered on mathematics. It could have been writing, history, philosophy, PE, physics—all of those things could have been more mathematically focused for me.
But they didn't—it's not designed that way. It's designed like, okay, here's history, and it's centered on history. So, that's a great idea.
Sometimes, I find myself to have a love of many things, and so I can see multiple different paths that I could take, and I could go all the way with one path. But I don't really want to abandon the other paths. Maybe it's a conversation for another time, but one question is, how to kind of clarify, concentrate, refine your Dharmic path.
Perhaps it's about looking at an unfolding. What if you just looked at the arts itself? Like, I did my Dharma today. I picked a math concept that's been reverberating in my mind for some time now, and I coded it. And I learned it, and I understood it, and I learned some really new, interesting things. I didn't really ask, "What's the path?" I just followed my heart.
In fact, I had about five different things I was thinking of doing, and I kept thinking, oh, that could be cool, that could be cool. Then when I remembered this one, I thought, that's what I'm doing today. That's what happened. It just drew me in, and two or three hours went by, and I had just been doing that.
It was an autotelic activity—refinement, mastery, and expansion of my practice, my craft, my art. I wasn't saying, oh, I have all these things I can do. I asked, what does my heart want to do now?
Think of it as each moment—there's something your heart wants to do now. Not as an idea. That's actually Dharma; it means truth and duty. What is your duty now? It's always implicit in the current moment.
And that's that natural effort that's almost like you're still in meditation. You're here, it's happening, but you're also beyond. Because integrity is a constant, everything becomes a constant. There's no choice anymore. You see what I mean? That takes you beyond choice. Choice dissolves in integrity. There's no room for it. Then just love and integrity operate, and you get to see what happens.
Choice dissolves in integrity. There's always, in every moment, the right thing to do. Actually, to me, that's what the word righteousness means. It means, in every moment, there's a right thing to do, and it's always being true to yourself, with an expanded scope of identification with the whole.
It's always inspired, and it's not selfish, but it's also being what you are. Another little paradox there. You can be what you are on behalf of the whole. That's essentially it.
There's always—when there's a level of clarity and stillness in the mind, you just know what to do. Krishnamurti talks about this. He calls it choiceless awareness. It's kind of like unpremeditated action.
The nice thing is, you just follow your heart. What does my heart say? Oh, my heart knows exactly what to do. Every time you do it, your heart just gets fuller and fuller, expands, and you just live a life of being free, honest, and true to yourself, and one with everybody and everything.
And then—voila! Light. Sahaja Samadhi. Truth. All the things we seek. Love.
So, in light of this, being part of the Sangha, we can live our lives exactly the way we're meant to and grow towards enlightenment. It's enlightenment—not the short path, it's the middle way. It's not in the monastery; it's meeting life more beautifully, more completely, more happily.
Meditating for a certain amount of time, doing your Dharma formally for a certain amount of time, living in alignment and clarity for the rest of the time, and health. We're trying to bring all of that together, and I'd like to create a big group of us who are doing that, because a big group creates a support system and normalizes these practices.
It gives us the opportunity to connect over what we care about, to have friends who are doing what we're doing. If you get really into it, it's hard to be friends with people who are living a completely different life. You can be friends with them, but the connection's not as deep, because if something is deeply meaningful, we connect on the things that mean a great deal to us.
It takes courage to do your Dharma. And heart helps with that, so let's do a heart meditation—generating love in the heart center. That's really it. Just feel the heart center and generate from there. Sit down and generate love.
Really open the heart by feeling gentleness. Accept the moment. Gratitude. Just a couple minutes of silence.
Let's listen to the sounds. Focus into the light. Generate love. Submerge in the bliss of being. Feel the completeness from within. Invoke that. Namaste.
At what point can you just be content and not have to think about your Dharma? If I was much younger, maybe I would be struggling towards something, but I'm just content, so… does it just mean enjoying what you like to do sometimes, or you don't? I'm just suggesting that you can reserve some time in your day to do something artistic for yourself. That's really what I'm saying. Just something I enjoy. An activity, something you can grow in skill set. You might sit down and draw cartoons for an hour. I don't know, it could be anything. Something creative. It's not about becoming somebody. It's about the joy of giving yourself some time to be creative.
If it doesn't feel right for you, then it might not be right for you. If it doesn't feel right because you are limiting yourself, maybe you'll notice that if that's the case. Perhaps it's not, perhaps it is.
I do see a possibility for you to do something joyful for yourself. Like, you're such a good drawer, for example. Remember when you used to make those big signs? When was the last time you drew just for the joy of drawing, and sat down and gave yourself that? I think there'd be some peace in that. I think there'd be some contentment in that, actually.
Or perhaps… I mean, you're one of the most creative people I actually know, and yet, I don't see you spending time in creativity. I see you spending time in service, for sure, but not as much time in your own joy of doing something. I think it might be a little uncomfortable for you to do something just for the joy of it. I think that's probably quite common. You might say, I have lots of things to do, this is not my usual.
Well, no pressure. Just a suggestion, maybe feel into it.
When I reflect on my own journey, my teacher actually told me—believe it or not—he told me it was math. I didn't know. Can you believe that? I'd been doing math my whole life, but I always thought it was physics or engineering. But math was always the fundamental thing in what I did.
And then one day I realized—he told me, "You can do math for an hour a day." I was like, really? I felt like that was a waste of time. And he's like, "At least I have an excuse to do it now." I remember I said that to him, and he said, "That's what it is, see?" I needed the excuse to do the thing I wanted to do.
So maybe going forward… yeah, it could be all kinds of things. Like, what would you do if you could just have half an hour a day to play? Usually, it's something you can get better at. It's something you can achieve a degree of mastery in.
When you give yourself that time, you might find a sense of independence, a sense of light, and a sense of completeness that is rare in this world. And perhaps, in that, you find your own way to enlightenment.
Namaste.