Topic Research: Dharma

Dharma Meme. Source: Img Flip

Dharma:

I really liked the idea of Dharma, and actually found a story that would go great with this topic in my reading this week. I liked the idea suggested that I could incorporate love stories into Dharma. So maybe I could also do a dharma story about love (i.e. what should/shouldn't a husband do).

•  Bharata Returns from "Indian Myth and Legend" by Donald A. Mackenzie.
• I read the story this week, and at the end of the story, I could not help but think of the term Dharam. Bharata showed Dharma in more than one way. "Bharata shows justice, custom, and duty in the fact of not wanting to take what was his brothers, but he also shows order and model in not allowing his mother to be killed for her wrong doings" (Reading B notes post).
• The Saint and the Scorpion. Source: Sanatan Society
• This story directly mentioned the word Dharma and actually gave a little insight to the meaning of the word. This would be a good story for an introduction post to a story book. You could retell it in the perspective of the disciple on the bank and he could define the meaning of the word to the end. This would help introduce the reader to the concept of Dharma. You could even make the disciple the narrator through the whole storybook, since he would be introducing it.
• Shakuntala-Dushyant tale. Source: The Holiday Spot
• This story appears in  Mahabharata, and I know I will read it in a couple of weeks, so I did not read the story yet. From the website, I thought this story would be good to incorporate the love dharma and I also saw that it had a curse in it, which would be a really cool to retell. I am not sure of the curse, but is causes Dushyant to acknowledge his wife. This would be a good story to retell in SHakuntala's perspective and describe how she felt. I could even make this a sort of couples therapy were Dushyant has to learn what he did wrong and how that applies in the concept of dharma.

Overall, I am leaning toward doing a storybook about Dharma. I still like the idea of showing each meaning with a different story. I feel like this topic would allow for the largest variety of stories. You can include or twist a story to include dharma, so this also allows for the greatest creativity.