Dhamma

[David Casseres]

Vaska sez

>Is it also not true that in "demotic" or everyday usage it primarily refers
>to something like one's social fate, the path and station one has
>predetermined and ordained for one during a lifetime?  And hence the social
>duties that go with it?  Often used to bolster the rigidities of the caste
>system, which Buddhism has hardly made a dent on in the Indian 
>subcontinent?  

Yes.  The definition I learned was that dharma means the law, or the 
(prescribed) way.  But like all other Buddhist terms, it expands into all 
conceivable elaborations of its root meaning.  Natural law, philosophical 
law, religious law, secular law etc. until it means The Whole Thing.

In Japanese Buddhism, the patriarch Bodhidharma (or Daruma) is credited 
with bringing the dharma to Japan -- but what that means is that he 
brought Buddhism.  Also, his very name indicates that he is himself the 
embodiment of dharma.  In popular Japanese culture he's represented by 
the comical "Daruma doll," a wooden figure shaped like a fat bowling pin, 
with a ferocious mustache painted on and a rounded bottom so that if you 
knock it down, it pops up again to show you how inevitable it is.  Dharma.


Cheers,
David