6.1. Buddhist Terms: Dhamma

[Full title: Distinctive Issues of the Five Nikāyas and some Important Buddhist Terms Relating the Study; (1): Dhamma]

In the traditional Indian thought, no term is considered to be more important, more complex in the variety of its technical usage and hence treated as more difficult to translate or understand in the right perspective of dhamma.

Etymologically, the word dhamma, (Skt, dharma), is derived from the root dhṛ that means ‘to hold’, ‘to support’ or ‘to uphold’ and thus refers to the basic law which ‘upholds’ or ‘constitutes’ the universe.

The definition of the multiplex term dhamma in Buddhism is known to refer to three major meanings:

(i) referring to the natural order or universal law that underpins the operation of the universe in both the physical and moral spheres;

(ii) denoting totality of the Buddha’s teachings and known as the second of the ‘three jewels’ (tiratna) and the ‘three refuges’ (tisaraṇa) along with the Buddha as the first and the Saṅgha as the last;

(iii) being used in the Abhidhamma system of taxonomy to refer to the individual elements (dhammas) that cooperatively form the empirical world.

Some of these elements are external to the perceiver and others are internal psychological processes and traits of character. The term dhamma in this meaning is in plural.^[1]

In the English translated version The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Bhikkhu Bodhi in revising the Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli’s translation kept untranslated the word dhamma in the cases it is used to refer to the second meaning or in several cases to a rival teaching with which the Buddha’s is contrasted with as in the Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 11.13:

“Bhikkhus, in such a Dhamma and Discipline as that, it is plain that confidence in the Teacher is not rightly directed, that confidence in the Dhamma is not rightly directed, that fulfillment of the precepts is not rightly directed, and that the affection among companions in the Dhamma is not rightly directed. …”

And in the Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 104.2

“You do not understand this Dhamma and Discipline. I understand this Dhamma and Discipline. How could you understand this Dhamma and Discipline? Your way is wrong. My ways is righ.”

As the Buddha claims “Dhamma is our support” (Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 108), or “the Dhamma taught and the Discipline laid down by me will be your teacher,” and “He who sees Dhamma, Vakkali, sees me; he who sees me sees Dhamma. Truly seeing Dhamma, one sees me; seeing me one sees Dhamma” (Samyutta Nikāya, Sutta number 87), the term dhamma in these cases is understood as the Buddha’s teachings.

In its two remaining meanings, dhamma refers to a plural form or multiform uses, where it occurs as a term of general ontological reference in the Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 1.2; 2.5 to refer to delivered ‘things’. In the case it acquires a more technical nuance by the sense either of the phenomena of existence or of mental constituents, it has been rendered ‘states’ as in Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 64.9; 111.4.

In his translation ([1995] 2009: 54), Bhikkhu Bodhi points out that:

“This term must be divested of its overtone of staticity, dhammas being events within a dynamic process, and it must not be taken to refer to some persisting entity that undergoes the states, entities themselves being nothing but connected series of dhammas.”

And when dhamma appears as the fourth foundation of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna) and as the sixth external sense base (āyatana), it has been turned into ‘mind-objects’. “In still other contexts it has been also rendered as factors (Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 10.5), qualities (Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 15.3; 48.6) and teachings (Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta number 46.2; 47.3). When used as a suffix it gets the idiomatic sense of ‘to be subject to’, and so it has been translated, for example, vipariṇāmadhamma as ‘subject to change’” (Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli & Bhikkhu Bodhi 2009: 54).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

For more details of the Dhamma, see (i) T.W. Rhys Davids & William Stede. Pali-English Dictionary, pp. 335-9, and (ii) Damien Keown. 2003. Dictionary of Buddhism, pp. 74.