Dharma & True Freedom

Freedom, all of us want it, it’s protected once we think we have it, and it’s marketed to others who don’t have it, but are we truly free? What is true freedom? What would it take to achieve true freedom? What are the consequences of true freedom for us? What is the relationship between Dharma and true freedom? These are some of the questions we are going address in this two part series.
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The Last Thought

Whatever manifested aspect a man might think of at death, when he leaves the body — that, O Son of Kunti, he reaches, whose thoughts always conform to that particular life expression.
– The Bhagavad Gita (Translation by Nataraja Guru)

Death, the known eventuality we are all heading to, the destination where all perception ends, but what about thought, what is its state? Especially the last one you will ever have at the crossroads of life, death, and after-life.
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Life at the Atomic Level

If we were to see things at the atomic level, what would the world look like? I began to think about this, after reading “Flaws of Perception” by Deepak Chopra, where he sheds light on how we function at the atomic level. It’s an interesting perceptive, to think in terms of the atoms, it’s the karma of those gazillion little pieces that we live and breathe, but what I am curious about is what the world and universe looks like at that level.
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The Nirvana of Black Pepper

For me nirvana is not an ideal state that one reaches to escape the cycle of birth and death, rather a guarantee of survival of a species for as long as earth can sustain life. Black pepper, the King of Spices, is one such species that is, in my opinion, in a present state of Nirvana. To understand what I mean by that, we are going to dive into history a little, to follow the amazing story of this spice.

The Dharma of black pepper is to have a warming, sharp, hot and biting taste which appealed to human beings. Its discovery, over 4000 years back, in the forests of the Malabar cost in the southern state of Kerala in India, started a chain of events that has led to the way the world is today. This is the karma of black pepper. Arab traders, who frequented the Kerala coast, were responsible for introducing pepper to Europe. Early Greeks used pepper mostly in their medicines, but it was the Romans who integrated it into their food, and spread the use of pepper through out their vast empire.

Pepper was so precious back then, that it was even used as a substitute for currency and gold. The demand for it, and its high value, led to events such as Columbus and Vasco de Gama setting sail in opposite directs to find a sea route to India, in order to take the control of pepper away from the Arabs. These two monumental events in the timeline of our history, is the reason the world is the way it is today. If the karmic influence of pepper did not exist, then these two events would probably never have taken place when it did, and the present as we know it would have been something else.

All this eventually led to peppers value decreasing, even though demand has increased, and today it is common to see pepper on almost all dining tables around the world. By reaching this state, pepper has guaranteed its survival, for as long as we exist on this planet, and as long as the planet exists with us in it, all this by still maintaining it’s state as the King of Spices. Next time you use a pepper shaker or a pepper grinder, realize you are dealing with a spice that is the very reason for your existence, and the state of the world as it is, and a spice in a state of nirvana.

Read more about the fascinating history of pepper in The Encyclopedia of Spices.