Dharma Vs Religion

I have often experienced during my Train journeys that Indians have tendency to know person's religion or Dharma to have easy acquaintance with that person. They have prejudices against each religion. If they meet a person of same religion they share their views and they restrain if he/she is from different Dharma.

The problem is ,what we call Dharma in our daily life and what Dharma actually is ? We often mean Dharma same as religion but both are actually different. What is Dharma than and how it is different from a religion ??

Dharma is a philosophy of Moral duties and obligations and a religion is the way to perform those moral duties. Let me put some of the moral obligations which is expected out off any person including atheists also.

1) Always speak truth.
2) Never steal.
3) Love humanity.
4) Have compassion for poor and do charity.
5) Educate your child.
6) Be faithful to your relationships
7) Universal Harmony
8) Love nature and so on...

After reading these, you will find that all religions either it is Hinduism , Islam , Christanity etc. , they all preach same things but in different ways. These different ways of articulating same thoughts are religions. This is related to the human psychology. Human always love diversity and choices, they are against any uniformity in any thing. It is something like someone likes Vanilla flavor and other chocolate one ? Similarly some one likes Hindu way of life and other Islamic way. Hinduism is not Dharma but a polytheist variety of religion and monotheist varieties are like Islam and Christanity. Atheism is also a no-theist variety of religion.

Religion when started were simple in structure and beliefs, not complex what it is today. Religions, initially were in mutual harmony because simplicity of them had made easy for a person to understand the core but now they have become more and more contentious with the more and more proliferation of myths, rituals and traditions into the religion which has made religions so complex that a person remains confused for his whole life and could not able understand underlying core thereby could not able to seek universal harmony. Rituals and Traditions have actually undermined the core "Dharma" and have become the source of fight for dominance and power.

Lets imagine a sphere which has a core and a periphery. Here core is "Dharma" and periphery is "religion" . We have divided the periphery and fighting and adjusting in that periphery. We are actually trying to adjust ourselves in the periphery rather then penetrating into the core. If every religion starts from the surface and move along its diameter, they all will reach the commmon centre. It clearly proves that all religion have common Dharma. Dharma is universal and eternal.


So Dharma should be one "Sanatan or universal Dharma" but religion can be XYZ..