FIVE YEARS HAVE WHIZZED PAST.
JUST LIKE THAT.
The other side of fleeting time is eternity, defined so memorably by Ananda Coomaraswamy as “that unextended point of time which is Now.” So, while The Dharma Dispatch began exactly today five years ago, it has also begun Now. Or to cite a profound Upanishadic verse,
From Time flows forth all beings,
From Time, advances to their full growth,
And in Time, again, wins home —
Time is both the murti (the Formed) and Formless
Reminiscing about the past is always an exercise imbued with a haphazard mix of vanity, self-justification, joy, regret, and solace and we never know how the final broth tastes because someone else does the cooking. And because the past is not preordained, any wisdom that accrues to us is always the benefit of hindsight. The fortunate person picks joy, the fount of solace.
The five-year-long journey of The Dharma Dispatch has been exactly that: a perennial source of joy. Joy, which we hope we have been able to transmit to our readership — the mainstay that empowers and sustains our work. Vast numbers of named and anonymous readers have informed, educated, motivated, and ennobled our work. They have kept us vigilant and fuelled our hunger to offer more back to the global Sanatana community.
A MAJOR REALISATION on the sunrise of the fifth anniversary of The Dharma Dispatch has been the experience of savouring the vibrancy of the core Sanatana values that continue to throb in the global Hindu community. The same values which, for example, exhorted a 13th century businessman to give a loan to a scholar-poet after taking a letter in his name as mortgage. While these values have endured, their tangibility is not as pronounced in our contemporary social life as it used to be even half a century ago. This is akin to a beautiful garment that has been rent to its bare threads and has to be re-stitched all over again. These threads are actually microcosms embodying the Sanatana civilisational values that we have either forgotten or lost or both.
Over the last five years — and in the years to come — it has been our active quest to discover all such threads and by showing a glimpse of the microcosm, we hope to weave at least a handkerchief that might wipe a tear or weave a sweater that might warm a shivering soul. To what extent The Dharma Dispatch has succeeded in this endeavour is for our readers to judge.
Like each year, we reaffirm the core purpose and ideal that guides The Dharma Dispatch: it is a work of civilisational good as differentiated from public good. Our instructors are, to borrow Dr. David Frawley’s evocative book title, Gods, Sages and Kings. Because the Santana conception of Time is a continuum, the Gods, Sages and Kings guiding The Dharma Dispatch belong to the past, present and the future: from Deva-Rishis to D.V.G., from Kashyapa to P.V. Kane, from Sri Krishna to Krishnadevaraya, from Vasistha to Vidyaranya. Backed by this grade of the wealth of the eons, The Dharma Dispatch will remain untouched by spiritual and civilisational poverty.
To restate another core element of our ideal, The Dharma Dispatch does not chase page views or popularity or mass appeal. The pervasiveness of page views on the Internet has become so normalised that we have become blind to its ugliest outcome: coarsening of public discourse through compulsive dumbing down. Gravity, seriousness and concentration have been massacred: the sick acronym, TLDR is worn as a badge of pride. It is our conviction at The Dharma Dispatch that this phenomenon is a manifestation of the transient and has little intrinsic value, and has proven lethal in reality.
THE LAST FIVE YEARS have also shown us that our work has, in its own small way, resonated with the larger Sanatana community. The response, encouragement and above all, multifaceted support for The Dharma Dispatch has been truly humbling. And it continues to flow from a cross-section of the Hindu society. Primary schoolteachers in remote villages in Andhra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have taken printouts of our essays on Hindu culture and history and distributed copies to their students. Gurukulams, businessmen, Hindu parents, academics, students, et al, send heartfelt messages and good wishes blessing and encouraging The Dharma Dispatch. This is more a heartfelt tribute to the regard they all have for our work than an advertisement of The Dharma Dispatch.
Given this extent of unstinted affection and support, there is really little that The Dharma Dispatch can offer in return, except to reaffirm our lasting dedication to this sacred civilisational journey.
It is your support that has brought us this far from the cradle of The Dharma Dispatch’s inception five years ago. It is your love that propels us forward. And it is a sublime combination of all these that gives true meaning to our work and spurs us towards fruition.
And so, once again, on the fifth anniversary of The Dharma Dispatch, we offer our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has become inseparable companions of our journey.
As with every anniversary piece, The Dharma Dispatch continues to seek your contributions to help us offer more back to the Sanatana community. You can contribute in the following ways:
1. Visit the Support page
2. Contribute via Wallet, Card, etc., by clicking this link.
3. Support via UPI: dharmadispatch@axl
4. Support via QR Code below.
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