Dhamma

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

sojourner at vt.edu writes:
> >I think Learned is Dharma.  Remember page 756 <more cut>

> I'd like to hear a working definition of dharma, as many people
> in my life currently have been revolving around a discussion
> of this.

Ok, here's a very `working' definition as culled from an introductory
text I have been reading recently (a great book, by the way, call The
World of Buddhism by Richard Gonbrich and Heinz Bechert). Forgive me
if I have got some of the details slightly askew, this being from
memory.

Dharma a.k.a. Dhamma - one of the three jewels, the Buddha, the Dhamma
and the Sangha. The Buddha being Sakyamuni, the enlightened sage from
North India who founded Buddhism. The Dhamma is his teaching, as
memorised and transmitted first orally then in written form (not
without some dispute and room for interpretation) by his followers who
form . . . The Sangha, strictly the community of monks whose role is
to preserve the Dhamma and thereby enable other Buddhas to profit by
it and attain release from the cycle of rebirth, although the term is
also used to include lay Buddhists who meditate, discuss and study the
Dhamma.

If the above trinity is not evidence enough of how inextricably
wisdom, magic and arithmetic are intertwined the Dhamma itself can be
summarised using two other magic numbers via the eightfold path and
the five hindrances. The former is a prescription for how to live and
die so as eventually to break the cycle of rebirth. It is a sequence
of steps starting with right vision, then right understanding, right
action and so on. The latter is a summary of the things which make
this so difficult. First and foremost in the list of hindrances is
attachment which leads to craving which leads to suffering (when you
cannot always get what you want) which leads to death which leads to
rebirth which brings us back to attachment again.


Andrew Dinn
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How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of pleasure clos'd by your senses five