Dhamma

[SHUBHA GHOSH]

Dharma has a meaning that is rooted in the Vedas which predate Buddhism by
several centuries.  Dharma means very broadly civilization, culture,
religion, similar to Weltanschaung but encompassing more than just
worldview or outlook.  You can think about Dharma as including 
spiritual, material and epistemic dimensions.  In the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, many Indians (Tagore comes to mind first) used Dharma
in a way similar to Mathew Arnold's use of the world culture which is an
unfortunate Victorian influence since Dharma is more profound than
anything Arnold could come up with.

On Wed, 17 Sep 1997 andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:

> 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
> -----------
> 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
>