HE WHO SEES DHAMMA SEES DHAMMAS: DHAMMA IN EARLY BUDDHISM
The basic subject of the present article is the understanding of the concept of dharma in early Buddhist literature – in the Nik ayas/ Agamas and the early abhidhamma/abhidharma texts. As it is clear that early Buddhist texts were composed in some form of Middle Indic and as my main sources will be Pali texts I shall generally use the Pali Middle Indic form dhamma. 1 There are three basic problems that I think need to be considered in order to present a clear account of the distinctively Buddhist understanding of dhamma: (1) we need to establish the range of meanings found in early Buddhist literature; (2) we need to consider the relationship between those different meanings and how they evolved; (3) we need also to consider the relationship of the distinctively Buddhist usage of dhamma to the usage and understanding of dharma more generally in Indian literature and thought, and especially in early Brahmanical writings. These problems are, of course, not entirely separable. Clearly how we map out the different early Buddhist uses and their relationship will affect how we understand the Buddhist usage in relation to the non-Buddhist usage. But equally how we map out the different early Buddhist uses and their relationship in the first place, depends in part on how we understand the Buddhist usage in relation to the non-Buddhist usage. Moreover, the complexities and subtleties of the broader Brahmanical and ‘Hindu’ usage mean that there is hardly a scholarly consensus on how best to pick up and follow the trail of the elusive spirit of dharma beyond the field of Buddhist literature. In the present context, then, what I should like to do is devote some space first of all to a consideration of the range of meanings dhamma has in early Buddhist texts, and then move on to a consideration of the evolution and development of the distinctively Buddhist usage and how that might relate to Vedic and early Brahmanical usage
As one of the basic terms of Buddhist thought dhamma/dharma has been the subject of a number of studies and articles over the last century or so. Mostly scholars have focused on the first problem identified above – the range of meanings found in early Buddhist literature – although they have offered some observations and even theories about the development and evolution of its usage in Buddhist thought. Less, perhaps, has been said about the relationship between the distinctively Buddhist usage and the usage in Indian thought in general. Three books devoted to the subject of Buddhist dhamma/dharma deserve special mention as being representative not only of the information about dhamma/dharma that modern scholarship has presented on the basis of the study Buddhist textual sources, but also of somewhat different approaches and emphases in considering the significance of that information. The first is the pioneering study of Magdelene and Wilhelm Geiger, Pali Dhamma vornehmlich in der kanonischen Literatur, published in 1920.2 This is a comprehensive philological study divided into four main sections, each of which considers a distinctive set of meanings of the term dhamma. The basic method is one of cataloguing and grouping the different uses and meanings and providing illustrative quotations from the Pali canonical literature. The four sets of meanings centre around ‘law’ (Gesetz), ‘teaching’ (Lehre), ‘truth’ (Wahrheit) and ‘thing’ (Ding, Sache). This last meaning of dhamma refers to the use of the term dhamma in early Buddhist texts to characterize simple mental and physical sates and phenomena as dhammas. The Geigers regard this usage of dhamma as far removed from its original usage, and identify the issue of how dhamma comes to be used in this way as the principal question to be addressed in accounting for the development of the usage of the term in Buddhist texts.3 Three years later Stcherbatsky published his The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word ‘dharma’.4 Referring to the Geigers’ achievement in having ‘drawn up a concordance of nearly every case where the word dhamma occurs in Pali canonical literature’, and having ‘established a great variety of meanings’, he comments that among the various meanings, ‘there is, indeed, only one that really matters, that is the specifically Buddhistic technical term dharma.’5 This specifically Buddhist technical meaning of dharma Stcherbatsky expresses as ‘element of existence’, and he takes as a basis for its exposition not the literature of the Pali canon, but a fourth or fifth century CE work of Buddhist systematic thought, namely Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakos´a-bhas : ya. Rather than seeking to consider the various meanings of dharma/dhamma and their relationship, Stcherbatsky focuses on just one meaning, and attempts to provide a precise philosophical account of the Buddhist conception of a dharma as an ‘element of existence’. Just over half a century later John Ross Carter published another book-length study: Dhamma: Western Academic and Sinhalese Buddhist Interpretations. 6 If the Geigers’ focus was basically linguistic and philological, and Stcherbatsky’s philosophical, then Carter’s is more broadly religious. He begins with a survey of the account of dharma/dhamma given in modern scholarly studies, beginning with the work of Burnouf (1844), and taking into account writings by Spence Hardy, Childers, T.W. and C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, Beckh, the Geigers, Keith, Stcherbatsky, Glasenapp, Thomas, Horner, Lamotte, and Conze, among others. He then turns his attention to the understanding of dhamma in specifically the Therav ada Buddhist tradition, focusing not only on the Pali canonical texts, but also on the way dhamma has been understood in the Pali commentaries and exegetical works, as well as in later vernacular Sinhala literature. Carter states explicitly that the ‘dharma-theory’ and the role of dhammas in Buddhist systematic thought is not his main focus;7 his book instead seeks to explore and bring out the potency of dhamma as a religious concept: it is the teaching of a buddha – a fully awakened being; it is a path of religious practice, an object of devotion worthy of reverence whose qualities are to be recollected and pondered by the practitioner in order to inspire faith and engender calm; it is a transcendent reality and ‘salvific Truth’. What I have said so far has already introduced some of the principal meanings of dhamma/dharma that modern scholarship has identified in the early Buddhist usage. In fact, while different scholarly authors might identify fewer or more meanings, give more or less emphasis to a particular aspect of the early Buddhist understanding of dhamma, or present the relationship between the different meanings in different ways, there is a basic consensus in the range of meanings identified. While no particular writer presents the usage of the term dhamma in precisely the following terms, I think this consensus can be summed up by way of six basic meanings:8 (1) the ‘teaching’ of the Buddha; (2) ‘good conduct’ or ‘good behaviour’, in general, but also more specifically the putting into practice of the good conduct prescribed by the Buddha’s teaching and constituting the Buddhist path, namely keeping ethical precepts (s ıla), developing calm and concentration (samatha, samadhi , jhana ), and insight and knowledge (vipassana , pan˜n˜a , vijja ) through the practice of meditation; (3) the ‘truth’ realized by the practice of the Buddhist path; (4) any particular ‘nature’ or ‘quality’ that something possesses; (5) the underlying and objective ‘natural law or order’ of things which the Buddha has discerned; (6) a basic mental or physical ‘state’ or ‘thing’, a plurality of which, at least in the texts of the Abhidhamma, becomes explicitly to be conceived as in some sense constituting the ‘reality’ of the world or experience. While the order of presentation here is intended to be suggestive of a possible affinity between certain meanings, it is not intended to indicate a judgement about which meanings have priority, either in terms of normative usage or in terms of historical development. Having, with the help of the work of earlier scholars, identified and set out this range of basic meanings, what I should like to do now is to consider them more closely with specific reference to the Pali Nik ayas in order to illustrate and establish, at least provisionally, the extent to which they do indeed reflect the usage of the early texts.
To say that dhamma in certain Nik aya contexts means the ‘teaching’ of the Buddha is to say that it can refer to both the content of his teaching – what he taught, the collection of instructions and doctrines taught by the Buddha – and to the ‘texts’ that contain and set out those teachings. In the Nik aya period the latter are, of course, oral compositions rather than written texts and are often conceived as comprising nine ‘parts’ (anga _ ); but later they are referred to as consisting of the three ‘baskets’ (pit:aka) or collections of Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma. A clear example of this kind of usage would be the sentence: ‘a monk learns the teaching – the discourses, chants, analyses, verses, utterances, sayings, birth stories, marvels, and dialogues’.
A typical usage of the term dhamma in the broad sense of good, right or proper behaviour and conduct is in the context of the rule of kings: kings are described as ruling ‘righteously’ or ‘justly’ (dhammena rajjam: kareti ) 10 or as practicing ‘justice’ or ‘righteousness’ (dhammam: carati).11 More generally a person may acquire a possession ‘properly’ or ‘lawfully’ (dhammena), or he may acquire it ‘improperly’ or ‘unlawfully’ (adhammena).12 And while dhamma is characteristically used to refer to good, right and proper behaviour, we should note that it can be used more neutrally of conduct and behaviour, thus people indulge in the ‘practice’ of sexual intercourse (methunam: dhammam: pat:isevati).13 It is in the context of this use of dhamma in the sense of proper conduct and behaviour that we need to understand the extension of the use of the term dhamma to refer to the ‘practices’ taught by the Buddha for the benefit of gods and men: So, monks, those practices that I have taught to you for the purpose of higher knowledge – having properly grasped them, you should practise them, develop them, make them mature so that the spiritual life might continue and endure long; this will be for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, for the sake of compassion for the world, for the benefit, good and happiness of gods and men. And what are those practices ...? Just these – the four ways of establishing mindfulness, the four right endeavours, the four bases of success, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven factors of awakening, the noble eightfold path.14 The significant point about the use of dhamma in such as a passage as this, is that it is clear that at least the four ways of establishing mindfulness, the four right endeavours, the four bases of success and the noble eightfold path refer to things one does or practices; they are not ‘teachings’ or ‘texts’. Whether the five faculties, powers and factors of awakening can be so straightforwardly characterized as ‘practices’ perhaps needs further consideration. I shall return to this presently.
In certain contexts meanings such as ‘teaching’ or ‘practice’ seem not to fit; a meaning closer to ‘truth’ – the truth about the world or reality as directly realized and taught by the Buddha – seems to be required. Thus in a number of places in the Nik ayas it is described how the Buddha by means of step by step instruction (anupubb ı katha ) leads his listeners to a vision of the truth: he talks of giving, virtuous conduct, and heaven; he reveals the danger, vanity and impurity of sense desires, and the benefit of desirelessness; and when he sees that the hearts of his listeners are ready, open and without hindrance, are inspired and confident, then he reveals the teaching of the truth that is special to buddhas – suffering, its arising, its cessation, the path; and at the conclusion of such step by step instruction there arises in his listeners ‘the clear and spotless vision of the truth (dhamma-cakkhu) the listeners are now ‘ones who have seen the truth, gained the truth, known the truth, penetrated the truth, gone beyond doubt, removed their questioning, and acquired full confidence in what is taught by the Teacher without having to rely on others’.15 Taking dhamma as close to ‘truth’, as opposed to teaching or practice, would also seem to be appropriate in such statements as the well known ‘he who sees dhamma sees me, he who sees me sees dhamma’, or ‘he who sees dependent arising sees dhamma, he who sees dhamma sees dependent arising’.16 That dhamma in these statements means something like ‘truth’ is reinforced by the way in which in context they are illustrated by accounts of precisely the early Buddhist understanding of the truth about the way things are: physical form, feeling, recognition, volitions, consciousness are impermanent, suffering, and not to be taken as self; the five aggregates of attachment arise dependent on factors and conditions. Some scholars have suggested that dhamma in the sense of ‘truth’ becomes hypostasized as the highest metaphysical principle, equivalent to the atman-brahman of the Upanis: ads, almost personified.17 Such an interpretation is, of course, controversial and certainly problematic from the point of view the interpretations of traditional Therav ada Buddhism.
In the passages referred to in the previous paragraph, the particular vision of truth that the listeners are said to have at the end of the Buddha’s instruction is described in each case in the following terms: ‘the dhamma of everything whose dhamma it is to arise, is to cease’ (yam: kin˜ci samudaya-dhammam: sabbam: tam: nirodha-dhamman ti). The term dhamma used at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound in this manner has to mean something like ‘nature’ or ‘characteristic quality’: ‘the nature of everything whose nature it is to arise, is to cease’. Similarly, in the ‘Discourse on Establishing Mindfulness’ (Satipat:t:h ana Sutta) a monk is instructed to practice watching the nature of things to arise and fall away in the case of the body, feelings, and consciousness.18 The use of dhamma/dharma at the end of a compound in the sense of a particular nature or quality possessed by something is a common usage in both Pali and Sanskrit and is not a specifically Buddhist usage. We shall return to this usage later.
Given that the truth one sees when one sees dhamma is that ‘the nature of everything whose nature it is to arise, is to cease’, it might seem that the truth that is dhamma is understood as some kind of ‘law of the universe’. A number of modern scholars and interpreters have thus suggested that dhamma signifies the natural law or order which the world or reality conforms to. Thus T.W. Rhys Davids and William Stede in their dictionary article speak of the dhamma preached by the Buddha as ‘the order of the law of the universe, immanent, eternal, uncreated, not as interpreted by him only, much less invented or decreed by him, but intelligible to a mind of his range, and by him made so to mankind as bodhi: revelation, awakening’.19 Seeing dhamma as some form of eternal natural order or law would appear to be a more interpretative suggestion for the meaning of dhamma than those that we have so far considered, in that it is harder to cite passages where the translation ‘Natural Law’ or ‘Universal Law’ is clearly required by context and to be given preference over other translations. The kinds of passage referred to in order to illustrate this kind of understanding of dhamma are those which speak of the way things arise in dependence upon other things, or of how the mental and physical factors that make up the world (sam: khara ) are all impermanent, suffering and not self, and then refer to this fact as the dhamma-t:t:hitata , the dhamma-niyamat a that endures whether or not Buddhas arise in the world. Certainly these last two expressions might be translated ‘the constancy of nature’, ‘the law of nature’. And one could also suggest that the statement quoted above – ‘he who sees dependent arising sees dhamma’ – might be rendered as ‘he who sees dependent arising sees the law’. Yet it does not follow from such translations that we should necessarily hypostasize dhamma and conceive of it as some form of ‘immanent, eternal, uncreated’ law of the universe.20 Possibly these two expressions should be interpreted as the constancy and law of dhammas, plural, rather than dhamma, singular,21 and this brings us to the sixth sense of dhamma.
We come now to the use of the term dhamma in a manner that is at once the most distinctively Buddhist and the hardest to offer a suitable translation for. Before considering the question of the appropriateness or not of particular translations, let us consider some examples of this usage. Completely secluded from sense desires and unwholesome dhammas, a monk attains and remains in the joy and happiness of the first meditation.22 A monk ... endeavours so that bad, unwholesome dhammas that have not arisen, do not arise; ... he endeavours so that bad, unwholesome dhammas that have arisen are abandoned; ... he endeavours so that wholesome dhammas that have not arisen, arise; ... he endeavours so that wholesome dhammas that have arisen, are constant, not lost, increase, grow, develop, are complete.23 A monk ... dwells watching dhammas as dhammas ...24 Quite clearly to understand and translate dhammas as teachings, truths, laws – whether of nature or otherwise – simply will not do in the above contexts; ‘practices’ just might work in the first passage, but to think of ‘practices’ as things that have ‘arisen’ or ‘not arisen’, as such a translation would demand in the second passage, must rule it out. And when we read the full exposition of what watching dhammas as dhammas involves, such a conclusion is only reinforced. A monk dwells watching dhammas as dhammas in terms of: (1) the five hindrances – sensual desire, aversion, sleepiness and tiredness, excitement and depression, doubt – knowing whether each is present in him or not, how each arises and is abandoned such that it will not arise again; (2) the five aggregates of attachment – physical form, feeling, recognition, volitional formations, consciousness – how each arises and disappears; (3) the six senses and their respective objective fields, knowing the fetters that arise dependent on the two, how these fetters arise and are abandoned such that they will not arise again; (4) the seven constituents of awakening – mindfulness, dhamma-investigation, vigour, joy, tranquillity, concentration, equanimity – knowing whether each is present in him or not, how each arises and is brought to full development; (5) the four noble truths, knowing what suffering is, what the arising of suffering is, what the cessation of suffering is, what the way leading to the cessation of suffering is. Clearly if watching dhammas involves watching the hindrances, the aggregates, the senses and their objects, and the constituents of awakening, then dhammas are not teachings, practices, truths, or laws. And while it might be possible in some contexts to take the Nik ayas as presenting the ‘four noble truths’ as four doctrinal propositions – ‘suffering is the five aggregates of attachment’ – the kind of usage above challenges such a notion. Suffering, its arising, its cessation, the way leading to its cessation are here not ‘truths’ in the sense of doctrinal propositions, but realities that have to be understood. So what are dhammas? In many ways it is the usage of dhamma at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound in the sense of a particular nature or quality possessed by something that seems the best fit in the present context, only here the particular natures or qualities are not possessed by anything, they are natural qualities in their own right, which the meditating monk watches arising and disappearing, some of which he strives to stop arising, and some of which he strives to keep arising. We can define dhammas in this final sense as basic qualities, both mental and physical. When we consider this particular understanding of what a dhamma is alongside the defining of the world or experience in its entirety (sabbam: ) in terms of the five aggregates or the twelve spheres of sense, then we can go one step further and say that dhammas are the basic qualities, both mental and physical, that in some sense constitute experience or reality in its entirety.25 What I think is undeniable is that, whether or not one accepts this as something the Buddha himself taught, this sense and basic understanding of a dhamma is firmly established and imbedded in the Nik ayas. Indeed, I think it not unreasonable to suggest that it is the prevalent usage of the word dhamma in the Nik ayas. It is, of course, a usage that approximates to the one found in the Abhidhamma/Abhidharma, and the question of the relationship of this Nik aya usage to the more technically precise Abhidhamma/Abhidharma usage is something that I shall return to below. But before doing that I wish first to consider how the Pali commentaries approach the issue of the different senses of the word dhamma in the Nik ayas.
Obviously the commentaries offer a rather more developed understanding of dhamma than that found in the Nik ayas and early Abhidhamma. Nevertheless, their understanding represents a tradition of interpretation that is still relatively close to the earlier texts, and provides us with important points of references for plotting the development of the usage of the term in early Buddhist thought. A number of scholars have paid some attention to the traditional expositions of dhamma presented in the Pali commentaries. The Geigers and PED, for example, both begin their accounts by citing lists of meanings for dhamma found in the commentaries to the D ıgha Nikaya , Dhammapada and Dhammasangan _ : ı. 26 But it is John Ross Carter’s work that provides the fullest account of the understanding of dhamma found in the Pali commentaries.27 Drawing on especially Carter’s work, I wish to highlight what seem to me the most signifi- cant aspects of the way the early Buddhist exegetical tradition approaches the notion of dhamma. Some six passages from the Pali commentaries explicitly explain that in the canonical texts the word dhamma can have various meanings which they then go on to list The number of meanings listed ranges from 4 to 11, although each list is explicitly open ended; in aggregate 18 different possible meanings are suggested. Having listed the possible meanings, the commentaries proceed by citing illustrative passages from the canonical texts – mostly the Nik ayas and Abhidhamma. These 18 meanings can, I think, be grouped and understood by way of five principal meanings that broadly correspond to the six meanings identified above: (1) teaching or text, (2) good qualities or conduct more generally, (3) truth, (4) the natural condition of something, (5) a mental or physical quality in a technical Abhidhamma sense . Let me comment briefly on these in turn. The first meaning is straightforward: dhamma can mean the teaching of the Buddha and the texts that contain those teachings, defined as ‘the word of the Buddha contained in the Three Baskets’ (tepit:akam: buddha-vacanam: ).29 I have grouped the next set of meanings together in that they all take dhamma in the sense either of the general good qualities and conduct (gun: a, pun˜n˜a) promoted by Buddhist practice or are specific examples of those qualities and conduct (samadhi , pan˜n˜a ). I have also grouped with these an example of dhamma in a more general sense of practice: in the Vinaya dhamma is used to refer to the various categories of ‘offence’ (apatti ), as in ‘four offences involving defeat’ (cattaro p ar ajik a dhamm a ).30 What I have listed as the third meaning of dhamma identified by the commentaries is again straightforward: in certain contexts dhamma should be taken as meaning the truth or, more specifically, the four truths, more or less in the same way that I have already outlined above. The fourth meaning of ‘natural condition’ is once again unproblematic in that it corresponds straightforwardly to a meaning that we have already noted: dhamma as the last member of a compound means the natural condition (pakati) possessed by something, thus to describe someone as jati-dhamma or jara-dhamma means that birth and old age are his ‘natural condition’ (pakati).31 An alternative term used by the commentaries here is vikara in the sense of disposition.
Under the fifth heading I have grouped eight distinct meanings that all relate in various ways to the technical Abhidhamma understanding of a dhamma as a basic ‘mental or physical quality’. These eight meanings fall into four subsets . As I have suggested above, the word dhamma is quite clearly already used in the Nik ayas in the sense of a basic quality, both mental and physical, a plurality of which in some sense constitutes experience or reality in its entirety. A dhamma in the sense of one of these basic qualities may be defined in the commentaries as a ‘a particular nature’ (sabhava ). The canonical passage referred to for the meaning of dhamma in the sense of sabhava is the Abhidhamma matrix of triplets (tika-matik a ) that is set out at the beginning of the Dhammasangan _ : ı and is used as a basis of exposition in that text, the Vibhanga _ , Dhatukath a , and Pat:t:hana ; it begins ‘wholesome qualities, unwholesome qualities, undetermined qualities’ (kusala dhamm a akusala dhamm a avy akat a dhamm a ).33 I shall return to the Abhidhamma understanding of sabhava below. We next have three terms – having no essence (nissattata ), being lifeless (nijj ıvata ), being empty (sun˜n˜ata ) – that are perhaps best understood as relating the understanding of dhammas as basic qualities to the notion of ‘not-self’ (anattan). As illustrative of dhamma in these senses, the commentaries consistently cite two passages.34 The first is a section from the Dhammasangan _ : ı explicitly called ‘the section on emptiness’ in the text (sun˜n˜ata-vara ), which occurs after the various mental dhammas or qualities that arise together constituting an instance of consciousness have been set out and defined in detail. The section states simply that ‘at that time there are dhammas, there are aggregates, there are sense-spheres ...’ 35 What the commentaries seem to be suggesting is that in stating this the Dhammasangan _ : ı emphasises that these dhammas constituting an instance of consciousness are nothing but evanescent and insubstantial non-entities that have no real essence or life of their own. The second passage cited by the commentaries in this context is one I have already referred to above, the passage describing the fourth way of establishing mindfulness by watching dhammas as dhammas. In other words, when the meditator watches dhammas as dhammas in the manner described in the Satipat:t:hana Sutta , what the commentaries are suggesting is that what he is watching is the arising and disappearance of nothing but evanescent and insubstantial non-entities that have no real essence or life of their own. This ties in with the way Buddhaghosa later alludes to a number of images and similes from the Nik ayas in order to illustrate the manner in which dhammas that are not lasting or solid but rather things that vanish almost as soon as they appear – like dew drops at sunrise, like a bubble on water, like a line drawn on water, like a mustard-seed placed on the point of an awl, like a flash of lightning; things that lack substance and always elude one’s grasp – like a mirage, a conjuring trick, a dream, the circle formed by a whirling fire brand, a fairy city, foam, or the trunk of a banana tree.36 The third subset comprises three terms each of which brings out the manner in which a dhamma is understood as a causal condition itself (hetu, paccaya)and as something that has arisen as a result of causal conditions (paccayuppanna). Seeing dhammas in this way, while not perhaps explicit in the Nik ayas, is none the less certainly implicit. Thus again the description of how the meditator is to watch dhammas as dhammas focuses in particular on the conditions which lead to the arising and abandoning of particular dhammas. As the commentaries put it in the context of dependent arising: nothing arises from a single cause, and all causes have multiple effects.37 Finally we have two terms that focus on dhammas as objects of consciousness: dhammas are ‘things that can be known’ (n˜eyya), and they are concepts (pan˜n˜atti). This last meaning of dhamma relates to the way dhammas are presented in the list of the six senses – eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind – and their corresponding objective fields – visible forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible sensations, dhammas. As Geiger and Carter noted, in trying to evaluate the lists of terms offered as possible meanings of dhamma by such commentarial passages, we should not forget that they end with an ‘etc.’ (adi ) and are thus explicitly open ended. In fact, it is clear that such lists of meanings do not exhaust the commentarial and exegetical understanding of dhamma. There are two particular aspects of the commentarial understanding of dhamma that Carter has drawn attention to and which I should like to pick up on.38 The first concerns the understanding of dhamma in terms of ‘nine transcendent dhammas’ (nava lokuttaradhamma , navavidha-lokuttara-dhamma), the second is the understanding in terms of a threefold division by way of texts (pariyatti), practice (pat:ipatti), and realization (pat:ivedha) or attainment (adhigama). At the beginning of his discussion of the meditation practice (kamma-t:t:hana ) of recollecting dhamma (dhammanussati ), Buddhaghosa makes a distinction between dhamma as the texts (pariyatti) containing the teaching of the Buddha on the one hand and transcendent dhamma on the other.39 The latter is ninefold and comprises the four paths of stream entry, once-return, non-return, and arahatship, the four corresponding fruits, and nibbana itself. Carter notes, citing some 40 examples, that the Pali commentaries frequently suggest that dhamma in the Nik ayas is to be understood as referring to the nine transcendent dhammas. 40 In the technical understanding of the commentaries, this refers to the four kinds of consciousness (citta) that arise as the attainment of the four ‘paths’ (magga), the four kinds of consciousness that arise as the attainment of the ‘fruits’ (phala) of those ‘paths’, and lastly nibbana as the ‘unconditioned element’ (asam: khata-dhatu ), ‘object’ (aramm an : a) of those classes of consciousness.41 In other words transcendent dhamma consists of the mind that knows and sees nibbana at the moment of awakening (bodhi), and also of what is known and seen at that moment. Such a usage, in fact corresponds more or less to the usage of a word like ‘knowledge’ in English, which can denote both the act of knowing as well as what is known. In several places in early Buddhist texts a list of five mental ‘waste lands’ (ceto-khila) is itemized and explained. The second of these consists in having doubts about dhamma. 42 The commentaries take it that this means having doubts either about Buddhist texts (pariyatti) – that the word of the Buddha consists of 84,000 sections – or about realization (pat:ivedha) – that the path is achieved by insight, the fruit by the path and that nibbana represents the stilling of all volitional formations.43 The understanding of dhamma as ‘realization’ relates closely to its understanding as knowledge of nibbana . Elsewhere, in explanation of the expression ‘the true/good dhamma’ (sad-dhamma), this twofold understanding of dhamma is expanded to a threefold one: texts (pariyatti), practice (pat:ipatti), attainment (adhigama), with ‘practice’ taken as referring to Buddhist practice in its entirety – ascetic practices, precepts, concentration, insight – and attainment to the nine transcendent dhammas. 44 While the technical specificity of the commentarial explanations of dhamma is often out of place in a Nik aya context, nevertheless the general meanings suggested by the commentaries are more or less consonant with the range of meanings offered by modern scholars. One meaning, however, that is brought out by modern scholars, but is not highlighted by the commentators is that of ‘natural law’. Nevertheless, as we have seen, some such meaning is certainly implicit in certain contexts.
I noted above that the Geigers regard the usage of dhamma in the sense of ‘thing’ (or ‘basic quality’) as somewhat removed from its original usage, and they identify the issue of how dhamma comes to be used in this way as the principal question to be addressed in accounting for the development of the usage of the term in Buddhist texts. They go on to offer some brief comments on the development of this usage. They point out that the meaning of ‘thing’ is associated particularly with the plural usage, and that in this plural usage dhammas refers to the things that constitute the world of experience as perceived by the mind. It is in these things or ‘norms’ that the dhamma – the law of the world and nature consisting in the arising and disappearance, the fleetingness and emptiness of reality – becomes manifest.45 Thus the Geigers wish to see dhamma in the sense of the ‘law’ of the world – or, perhaps, ultimate ‘truth’ about reality – as basic. And the ‘things’ that constitute reality, eventually come to be designated ‘laws’ or ‘truths’ because seeing them, one sees the Law, the Truth. While I think this account certainly resonates with the early Buddhist understanding of dhamma, I do not think it adequately explains the semantic development of the word and I shall suggest an alternative model presently. More recently Richard Gombrich has offered a somewhat different account.46 Gombrich offers his account of the history of the way the word dhamma is used as a way of tracing the development of a Buddhist ontology. His starting point is that ‘the Dharma’ of the Buddha is both the Buddha’s account describing his ‘experience’ and a message prescribing what to do about it. The basic Buddhist understanding of dhamma and the basic brahmanical understanding of dharma are thus alike, in so far as they at once describe the nature of reality and prescribe how to act. They thus both ‘obliterate’ the fact-value distinction. Turning to the usage of dhamma in the plural to denote ‘noeta’, ‘phenomena’ or ‘things’ as the objects of consciousness, Gombrich finds the key to this development in meaning in the passage from the Satipat:t:h ana Sutta describing the practice of watching dhammas as dhammas: First he learns to observe physical processes in his own and other people’s bodies; then he learns to be similarly aware of feelings; then of states of mind. Finally he learns to be aware of dhamma (plural). This has been rendered as ‘his thoughts’. But the dhamma that the text spells out are in fact the teachings of the Buddha, such as the four noble truths. The meditator moves from thinking about those teachings to thinking with them: he learns (to use an anachronistic metaphor) to see the world through Buddhist spectacles. The Buddha’s teachings come to be the same as (any) objects of thought, because anything else is (for Buddhists) unthinkable. Thus the dhamma are the elements of reality as understood by the Buddha. Gombrich concludes by suggesting that it is from this specific context of meditation that the usage of dhammas in the plural has become generalized. If I have understood him correctly Gombrich’s theory is, then, that watching (anupassati) dhammas as dhammas originally signified contemplating (as anupassati is often rendered) or thinking about the teachings of the Buddha. And because thinking about those teachings involves seeing the world in the Buddha’s way, what you see when you think through (in both senses) those teachings are the teachings, which have come to represent experience in its entirety for
the meditator. While, once again, I think the way this account ties together different senses of the word dhamma has genuine resonances with the early Buddhist understanding of dhamma, I do not think it works as an account of the history of the way the word dhamma is used – for two reasons. First, because I think taking dhamma in the sense of the teaching of the Buddha as the starting point for the history of its usage is problematic. Secondly, because, as we saw above, apart from the four truths the dhammas that the text spells out as objects of contemplation are not in fact the teachings of the Buddha as such; certainly the Buddha of the Nik ayas teaches about the hindrances, the aggregates, the senses and their objects, etc., but these things are not actual teachings; moreover if we were to understand dhammas here in the sense of teachings about the hindrances, etc., we would be left with the problem of explaining why the watching of body as body, feelings as feelings, and consciousness as consciousness is not also included here under the heading of watching dhammas as dhammas. In fact I think there is a much simpler way of approaching the development of the Buddhist usage of dhamma in the sense of ‘noeta’, ‘phenomena’ or ‘things’. In order to begin to consider the question of the relationship of the various meanings of dhamma in early Buddhist literature, and the question of the development of the specifically Buddhist notion of a dhamma as a basic mental or physical quality (the Buddhist theory of dhammas), we need first of all to consider what notion and understanding of dharma Buddhist thought inherited and thus started with. This, however, must remain a problematic and even controversial issue, both because of the problems in dating particular understandings of dharma in relation to Buddhist developments, and because of the problems in agreeing the contours of the ‘Hindu’ understanding of dharma. 47 Nevertheless, I think it is possible to map out some general lines of development. The beginnings of the Indian concept of dharma go back to the usage of the noun dharman and various verb forms derived from the root dhr: in the R: g Veda. A well known example occurs at the close of the ‘Hymn of the Man’ (Purus: asukta): With the sacrifice the gods sacrificed to the sacrifice. These were the first ritual laws. 48 In his discussion of the Vedic usage of dharman Halbfass emphasises that the plural usage is the norm, commenting that ‘only later did an essentially singular use as a ‘‘complex’’ or ‘‘totality of binding norms’’
gain in prominence’.49 The precise meaning of dharman in the R: g Veda is perhaps unclear. In the verse just quoted, O’Flaherty uses ‘ritual laws’, explaining in a note that these are ‘archetypal patterns of behaviour established during this first sacrifice to serve as the model for all future sacrifices’.50 In his study of dharman in the R: g Veda in the present volume, Joel Brereton emphasises the sense of ‘foundation’ – a sense which straightforwardly reflects its etymology and form – as the meaning common to the various contexts in which it is used. He translates: With the sacrifice the gods sacrificed the sacrifice: these were its foundations. He goes on to comment that these first ‘foundations’ can thus be understood as ‘the model sacrifice instituted by the gods and replicated in human performance’; or, as he puts it later, ‘they are the ritual precedents which the present rituals follow’. Halbfass likewise stresses the importance of the sense of the underlying root dhr:: dharmas are thus things that ‘support’, ‘uphold’, ‘maintain’; and referring to the work of Schayer, he characterises dharma in the Br ahman: as as ‘the continuous maintaining of the social and cosmic order and norm which is achieved by the Aryan through the performance of his Vedic rites and traditional duties’. A.K. Warder too considers the primary sense of dharman/dhr: in the R: g Veda as closely connected with the idea of maintaining.51 Whatever the precise connotations of dharman in its earliest usage it seems clear that among its earliest uses is the use in the plural to refer to certain practices – primarily sacrificial rites – as maintaining and supporting things – the cosmic and social order. The underlying assumption is, of course, that maintaining and supporting the cosmic and social order is a good thing; dharmans are therefore prescribed practices. Another dharman or ‘foundation’ that the R: g Veda identifies is, suggests Brereton, the foundational authority especially of Varun: a and Mitra; this authority consists in the commandments of Varun: a and the alliances governed by Mitra. This sense of authority is one that Patrick Olivelle’s contribution to the present volume shows being taken up in the Br ahman: as, where dharma is understood as the social order founded on the authority of especially the king. And if these are the sources for the Brahmanical and general ‘Hindu’ understanding of dharma, so too are they for the Buddhist. I take it then that the plural usage of dhamma is something that early Buddhism inherited from earlier pre-Buddhist usage, and that for early Buddhist thought
dhammas are in the first place the practices, the kinds of behaviour, prescribed and recommended on the authority of the Buddha. That dhamma subsequently comes to refer to the Buddha’s teaching or, in the plural, teachings is then a straightforward development, just as the English word ‘prescription’ can denote both the act of prescribing and what is prescribed. Indeed, ‘prescription’ can also denote a piece of paper handed to one by a doctor, so we have an analogous development for the way in which dhamma comes to mean the texts that contain the teachings of the Buddha. In fact all this ties in precisely with the general tendency of early Buddhist thought to appropriate brahmanical terminology and reinterpret it in its own terms: the true brahman : a, the true arya , is not someone who is born as such and performs the duties and rites – the dharmas – laid down in the Vedas, the real ariya-puggala or ‘noble person’ is the one who takes up the practices – the dhammas – recommended by the Buddha and roots out greed, hatred and delusion. Though, as Patrick Olivelle points out, again in his contribution to this volume, the relationship between the Buddhist and brahmanical understanding may be more complex: while the Buddhists take over the basics of the Vedic and brahmanical understanding of dharma, the manner in which the notion of dhamma functions as a pervasive concept of religious, philosophical and ethical discourse is perhaps characteristically Buddhist; and dharma is developed as the central concept of Hindu thought only subsequently as a reaction to Buddhist and especially As´okan usage. Be that as it may, the use of dharman/dharma in Vedic literature in the senses of ‘foundational rituals’ and ‘foundational authority’ is sufficient to account for the development of early Buddhist dhamma in its normative and prescriptive senses, but what of its descriptive sense, what of dhamma as the truth about the ways things are? In the course of his discussion of dharma in Hinduism, Halbfass comments: Since ancient times dharma has also possessed a meaning which may be rendered as ‘property’, ‘characteristic attribute’, ‘essential feature’, or more generally as ‘defining factor’ or ‘predicate’. Evidence of this is available since the time of the S´ atapatha Brahman : a. In classical Hindu philosophy, and most clearly in the Ny aya and Vais´es:ika, dharma functions as ‘attribute’ or ‘property’ in the broadest sense and is used to characterize anything that is inherent in, or predicable of, an identifiable substratum (dharmin).52 In fact this usage of dharma in the sense of ‘property’ or ‘characteristic attribute’ would seem to derive directly from the Vedic usage of dharman to refer to ‘the foundational nature of a deity’, while there are also several places in the Br ahman: as and Upanis: ads where dharma appears to be used in a sense close to ‘qualities’, ‘attributes’ or even just ‘things’.53 The passage of the S´ atapatha Brahman : a that Halbfass cites (14.7.3.15) is one in which dharman occurs as the last member of a bahuvr ıhi compound; the same passage is also found in the Br: hadaran : yaka Upanis: ad: ‘This self, you see, is imperishable; it has an indestructible nature.’54 The linking of the technical philosophical usage of dharma in the sense of an attribute belonging to an underlying substratum (dharmin) to its usage as the last member of a bahuvr ıhi compound is crucial. We have already noted that this kind of usage is common in early Buddhist texts, and again it would seem that it is a common usage inherited from earlier usage. So, to expand on Halbfass’s remarks, to describe y as x-dharma, is to say that y is something that possesses the dharma – the attribute, the quality – that is x; and in philosophical, as opposed to purely grammatical, terms, the ‘something’ that possesses an attribute (dharmin) is an underlying substance. As Halbfass points out, this understanding of dharma and dharmin as attribute and substance respectively involves the use of dharma in terms of a passive derivation: a dharma is what is ‘supported’ or ‘maintained’ (dhriyate) by the underlying substance (dharmin). I think we can see a precisely parallel development of the usage of dhamma in Buddhist thought. In fact I have already suggested that the early Buddhist understanding of dhammas as the basic mental and physical qualities that constitute experience or reality is to be related to the usage of dhamma at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound in the sense of a particular nature or quality possessed by something. To this extent the basic qualities of early Buddhist thought and the attributes of Ny ayaVais´es:ika are the same things. The crucial difference, however, is that instead of understanding these particular natures or qualities as attributes that belong to some underlying substance, early Buddhist thought takes them as natural qualities in their own right, emphasising how they arise dependent on other qualities rather than on a substratum that is somehow more real than they are.55 Seeing the development of the Buddhist understanding of dhammas in this way also casts a somewhat different light on some of the remarks made about dhammas in the Pali commentaries, which are perhaps often viewed too much in the light of later controversies about the precise ontological status of dharmas and the Madhyamaka critique of the notion of svabhava in the sense of ‘inherent existence’. John Ross Carter has drawn attention to the way in which the Pali commentaries later come to gloss dhamma at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound both by pakati and sabhava . 56 It follows from this that when the commentaries define dhammas as sabhavas this is not a statement about their ontological status and that sabhava should not be translated as ‘inherent existence’, but is merely a gloss stating that dhammas are ‘particular natures’ or ‘particular qualities’. Moreover when the commentators say that dhammas are so-called ‘because they maintain (dharenti ) their own particular natures, or because they are maintained (dhar ıyanti) by causal conditions’,57 this should be understood, I think, as a direct and deliberate counter to the idea of dharmas as ‘particular natures’ that are ‘maintained’ by an underlying substance (dharmin) distinct from themselves; it is not intended to define dhammas as ontologically irreducible entities.58 This gives us two basic meanings of dhamma in early Buddhist texts: the practices recommended by the Buddha and the basic qualities that constitute reality. The first takes dhamma as something normative and prescriptive, the second as something descriptive and factual. Both of these meanings essentially derive from pre-Buddhist usage but are adapted to the specifics of Buddhist thought. The question of how the prescriptive and descriptive meanings of dharma are related is a general one and not specific to Buddhist thought. Halbfass refers to the work of Paul Hacker, who sees the self-conscious and deliberate linking of dharma in its prescriptive and descriptive senses as essentially modern and a feature of Neo-Hinduism.59 The point here appears to be that in ancient Indian thought there was no explicit attempt to derive dharma in its prescriptive sense from dharma in its descriptive sense: there was no explicit suggestion that it is because your nature (dharma) is such, your duty (dharma) is such. While this may be so, it is not clear to me that such an understanding is not implicit in early Indian thought. Indeed without the latent idea that there is some sort of link between nature and norm, the way things are and the way we should behave, it seems to me difficult to explain the usage of dharma in these two senses – unless, that is, one regards it as some sort of semantic accident or coincidence. In this context the observations of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre seem pertinent.60 MacIntyre argues that eighteenth century European thinking about morality involved the disappearance of a hitherto taken for granted connection between the precepts of morality and the facts of human nature, such that moral philosophers, like Hume and Kant, begin to assert for the first time that moral laws cannot be derived from factual statements, an ‘ought’ cannot be derived from an ‘is’. MacIntyre goes on to point out that this is problematic: a statement that someone is a sea-captain suggests that he ought to do what a sea-captain ought to do. This is because a ‘sea-captain’ is a ‘functional’ concept: being a sea-captain involves functioning as a sea-captain. What MacIntyre suggests is that in the classical tradition right through to the Enlightenment the concepts used in discussions of ‘morality’ – how one should behave – were functional: thus for Aristotle a man’s living well is precisely analogous to a harpist’s playing well (Nicomachean Ethics 1095a 16). The relevance of this in the present context is that, if the distinction between nature and norm is not made in the first place, because a deep connection between the two is assumed, then there can be no explicit argument that attempts to link the two. And thus that the explicit argument that derives dharma as duty directly from dharma as nature is modern – in part a reflection, perhaps, of the conceptual framework of modern European philosophy – is hardly surprising. In fact it seems clear that dharman/dharma is from the very beginning itself a functional concept: it is a foundation, and a foundation that fails to perform the functions of supporting and maintaining is not much of a foundation: for something to be a dharma/dhamma it must maintain and support. Thus, in the present volume, Brereton suggests that in the R: g Veda there is a deep connection between the foundational nature of the Adityas and their foundational authority such that they are one and the same thing. And certainly in the case of brahmanical dharma it seems hard to deny a deep connection between being a member of a particular class (varn: a) at a particular stage of life (as ´rama) and acting accordingly – fulfilling one’s dharma. And when the Pali commentaries come to define the ‘particular natures’ that are dhammas, they define them by what they do: it is contact (phassa) because it contacts (phusati), it is will (cetana ) because it wills (cetayati), it is concentration (samadhi ) because it places (adhiyati ) the mind evenly (samam: ) on the object; it is trust (saddha ) because it trusts (saddahati), it is memory (sati) because it remembers (sarati)
Halbfass refers to ‘a certain elusive coherence’ in the various meanings and functions of dharma in the different traditions of Hinduism,Buddhism, and Jainism.62 This article has largely been an attempt to seek out that elusive coherence in the case of early Buddhist thought. I should like now to attempt to sum up by returning to the description of the practice of watching dhammas as dhammas found in the (Mah a-) Satipat:t:h ana Sutta and by offering a paraphrase of it as a final attempt at capturing that elusive coherence. Among the dhammas (practices) the Buddha prescribes is this practice of watching dhammas (mental and physical qualities) as dhammas; to watch these truly as dhammas involves watching how they arise and disappear, how the particular qualities that one wants to abandon can be abandoned, and how the particular qualities that one wants to develop can be developed. Watching dhammas in this way one begins to understand how they work, and in understanding how they work one begins to understand certain truths (sacca) – four to be exact – about these dhammas: their relation to suffering, its arising, its ceasing and the way to its ceasing. And in seeing these four truths one realizes the ultimate truth – dhamma – about the world, the extinguishing (nibbana ) of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion. This reading of the (Mah a-) Satipat:t:h ana Sutta reveals the underlying equivalence between seeing dhammas (that is, understanding the way mental and physical qualities arise and disappear) and seeing the dhamma or the truth. In the Mah ahatthipadopama Sutta S ariputta attributes the saying to the Buddha: ‘He who sees dependent arising sees dhamma; he who sees dhamma sees dependent arising.’63 The text goes on to explain that the five aggregates of attachment have arisen dependently (pat:icca-samuppanna). The commentary glosses the Buddha’s saying as ‘he who sees causal conditions, sees dependently arisen dhammas’.64 My suggestion is that this should be read in part as a quite deliberate play on the meaning of dhamma, a play, moreover, that is entirely consonant with the Nik ayas. As we have seen, dhammas are mental and physical qualities, and seeing these dhammas as dhammas – seeing how they arise and disappear, seeing how they are dependently arisen – one sees the ultimate truth: he who sees dhammas sees dhamma. Lest I should be misunderstood, I am not trying to impute a specific technical abhidhamma/abhidharma understanding to the Nik ayas, I am not suggesting that dhamma is used in early Buddhist thought in the sense of an irreducible element. The use of dhamma in the general sense of a mental or physical quality is quite distinct from the question of the metaphysical and ontological status of those qualities. That dhammas are mental and physical qualities is one thing; in what precise sense those mental and physical qualities should be said to exist is quite another. Thus the issue of what precisely dhammas/dharmas are is one that is debated and discussed by the later schools – the Vibhajjav ada, the Sarv astiv ada, the Madhyamaka.65 Nevertheless, alongside the use of dhamma in the Nik ayas in the senses of the practices, truths and teachings that are recommended on the authority of the Buddha, there is a further usage already firmly embedded in the Nik ayas: dhammas are the fundamental qualities, both mental and physical, that in some sense constitute – or better, support and maintain – experience or reality in its entirety. In many ways it might be the English word quality in its range of uses in both the singular and plural that provides the single best fit for dhamma in early Buddhism.66 Yet while it might be capable of carrying a wider range of appropriate meanings than some other term such as ‘truth’, it clearly falls short of conveying the full range of meanings. Often translators have resorted to ‘teaching’, ‘law’, ‘doctrine’, yet in addition to the problem of conveying the semantic range of dhamma such translations highlight the problem of evoking its religious and emotional power. That the precise understanding and translation of dhamma in early Buddhist thought should remain elusive and hard to pin down is perhaps fitting. It is, after all, profound, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful, sublime, beyond the sphere of mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise – something that the buddhas of the past, present and future honour and to which they pay respect
As one of the basic terms of Buddhist thought dhamma/dharma has been the subject of a number of studies and articles over the last century or so. Mostly scholars have focused on the first problem identified above – the range of meanings found in early Buddhist literature – although they have offered some observations and even theories about the development and evolution of its usage in Buddhist thought. Less, perhaps, has been said about the relationship between the distinctively Buddhist usage and the usage in Indian thought in general. Three books devoted to the subject of Buddhist dhamma/dharma deserve special mention as being representative not only of the information about dhamma/dharma that modern scholarship has presented on the basis of the study Buddhist textual sources, but also of somewhat different approaches and emphases in considering the significance of that information. The first is the pioneering study of Magdelene and Wilhelm Geiger, Pali Dhamma vornehmlich in der kanonischen Literatur, published in 1920.2 This is a comprehensive philological study divided into four main sections, each of which considers a distinctive set of meanings of the term dhamma. The basic method is one of cataloguing and grouping the different uses and meanings and providing illustrative quotations from the Pali canonical literature. The four sets of meanings centre around ‘law’ (Gesetz), ‘teaching’ (Lehre), ‘truth’ (Wahrheit) and ‘thing’ (Ding, Sache). This last meaning of dhamma refers to the use of the term dhamma in early Buddhist texts to characterize simple mental and physical sates and phenomena as dhammas. The Geigers regard this usage of dhamma as far removed from its original usage, and identify the issue of how dhamma comes to be used in this way as the principal question to be addressed in accounting for the development of the usage of the term in Buddhist texts.3 Three years later Stcherbatsky published his The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word ‘dharma’.4 Referring to the Geigers’ achievement in having ‘drawn up a concordance of nearly every case where the word dhamma occurs in Pali canonical literature’, and having ‘established a great variety of meanings’, he comments that among the various meanings, ‘there is, indeed, only one that really matters, that is the specifically Buddhistic technical term dharma.’5 This specifically Buddhist technical meaning of dharma Stcherbatsky expresses as ‘element of existence’, and he takes as a basis for its exposition not the literature of the Pali canon, but a fourth or fifth century CE work of Buddhist systematic thought, namely Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakos´a-bhas : ya. Rather than seeking to consider the various meanings of dharma/dhamma and their relationship, Stcherbatsky focuses on just one meaning, and attempts to provide a precise philosophical account of the Buddhist conception of a dharma as an ‘element of existence’. Just over half a century later John Ross Carter published another book-length study: Dhamma: Western Academic and Sinhalese Buddhist Interpretations. 6 If the Geigers’ focus was basically linguistic and philological, and Stcherbatsky’s philosophical, then Carter’s is more broadly religious. He begins with a survey of the account of dharma/dhamma given in modern scholarly studies, beginning with the work of Burnouf (1844), and taking into account writings by Spence Hardy, Childers, T.W. and C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, Beckh, the Geigers, Keith, Stcherbatsky, Glasenapp, Thomas, Horner, Lamotte, and Conze, among others. He then turns his attention to the understanding of dhamma in specifically the Therav ada Buddhist tradition, focusing not only on the Pali canonical texts, but also on the way dhamma has been understood in the Pali commentaries and exegetical works, as well as in later vernacular Sinhala literature. Carter states explicitly that the ‘dharma-theory’ and the role of dhammas in Buddhist systematic thought is not his main focus;7 his book instead seeks to explore and bring out the potency of dhamma as a religious concept: it is the teaching of a buddha – a fully awakened being; it is a path of religious practice, an object of devotion worthy of reverence whose qualities are to be recollected and pondered by the practitioner in order to inspire faith and engender calm; it is a transcendent reality and ‘salvific Truth’. What I have said so far has already introduced some of the principal meanings of dhamma/dharma that modern scholarship has identified in the early Buddhist usage. In fact, while different scholarly authors might identify fewer or more meanings, give more or less emphasis to a particular aspect of the early Buddhist understanding of dhamma, or present the relationship between the different meanings in different ways, there is a basic consensus in the range of meanings identified. While no particular writer presents the usage of the term dhamma in precisely the following terms, I think this consensus can be summed up by way of six basic meanings:8 (1) the ‘teaching’ of the Buddha; (2) ‘good conduct’ or ‘good behaviour’, in general, but also more specifically the putting into practice of the good conduct prescribed by the Buddha’s teaching and constituting the Buddhist path, namely keeping ethical precepts (s ıla), developing calm and concentration (samatha, samadhi , jhana ), and insight and knowledge (vipassana , pan˜n˜a , vijja ) through the practice of meditation; (3) the ‘truth’ realized by the practice of the Buddhist path; (4) any particular ‘nature’ or ‘quality’ that something possesses; (5) the underlying and objective ‘natural law or order’ of things which the Buddha has discerned; (6) a basic mental or physical ‘state’ or ‘thing’, a plurality of which, at least in the texts of the Abhidhamma, becomes explicitly to be conceived as in some sense constituting the ‘reality’ of the world or experience. While the order of presentation here is intended to be suggestive of a possible affinity between certain meanings, it is not intended to indicate a judgement about which meanings have priority, either in terms of normative usage or in terms of historical development. Having, with the help of the work of earlier scholars, identified and set out this range of basic meanings, what I should like to do now is to consider them more closely with specific reference to the Pali Nik ayas in order to illustrate and establish, at least provisionally, the extent to which they do indeed reflect the usage of the early texts.
To say that dhamma in certain Nik aya contexts means the ‘teaching’ of the Buddha is to say that it can refer to both the content of his teaching – what he taught, the collection of instructions and doctrines taught by the Buddha – and to the ‘texts’ that contain and set out those teachings. In the Nik aya period the latter are, of course, oral compositions rather than written texts and are often conceived as comprising nine ‘parts’ (anga _ ); but later they are referred to as consisting of the three ‘baskets’ (pit:aka) or collections of Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma. A clear example of this kind of usage would be the sentence: ‘a monk learns the teaching – the discourses, chants, analyses, verses, utterances, sayings, birth stories, marvels, and dialogues’.
A typical usage of the term dhamma in the broad sense of good, right or proper behaviour and conduct is in the context of the rule of kings: kings are described as ruling ‘righteously’ or ‘justly’ (dhammena rajjam: kareti ) 10 or as practicing ‘justice’ or ‘righteousness’ (dhammam: carati).11 More generally a person may acquire a possession ‘properly’ or ‘lawfully’ (dhammena), or he may acquire it ‘improperly’ or ‘unlawfully’ (adhammena).12 And while dhamma is characteristically used to refer to good, right and proper behaviour, we should note that it can be used more neutrally of conduct and behaviour, thus people indulge in the ‘practice’ of sexual intercourse (methunam: dhammam: pat:isevati).13 It is in the context of this use of dhamma in the sense of proper conduct and behaviour that we need to understand the extension of the use of the term dhamma to refer to the ‘practices’ taught by the Buddha for the benefit of gods and men: So, monks, those practices that I have taught to you for the purpose of higher knowledge – having properly grasped them, you should practise them, develop them, make them mature so that the spiritual life might continue and endure long; this will be for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, for the sake of compassion for the world, for the benefit, good and happiness of gods and men. And what are those practices ...? Just these – the four ways of establishing mindfulness, the four right endeavours, the four bases of success, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven factors of awakening, the noble eightfold path.14 The significant point about the use of dhamma in such as a passage as this, is that it is clear that at least the four ways of establishing mindfulness, the four right endeavours, the four bases of success and the noble eightfold path refer to things one does or practices; they are not ‘teachings’ or ‘texts’. Whether the five faculties, powers and factors of awakening can be so straightforwardly characterized as ‘practices’ perhaps needs further consideration. I shall return to this presently.
In certain contexts meanings such as ‘teaching’ or ‘practice’ seem not to fit; a meaning closer to ‘truth’ – the truth about the world or reality as directly realized and taught by the Buddha – seems to be required. Thus in a number of places in the Nik ayas it is described how the Buddha by means of step by step instruction (anupubb ı katha ) leads his listeners to a vision of the truth: he talks of giving, virtuous conduct, and heaven; he reveals the danger, vanity and impurity of sense desires, and the benefit of desirelessness; and when he sees that the hearts of his listeners are ready, open and without hindrance, are inspired and confident, then he reveals the teaching of the truth that is special to buddhas – suffering, its arising, its cessation, the path; and at the conclusion of such step by step instruction there arises in his listeners ‘the clear and spotless vision of the truth (dhamma-cakkhu) the listeners are now ‘ones who have seen the truth, gained the truth, known the truth, penetrated the truth, gone beyond doubt, removed their questioning, and acquired full confidence in what is taught by the Teacher without having to rely on others’.15 Taking dhamma as close to ‘truth’, as opposed to teaching or practice, would also seem to be appropriate in such statements as the well known ‘he who sees dhamma sees me, he who sees me sees dhamma’, or ‘he who sees dependent arising sees dhamma, he who sees dhamma sees dependent arising’.16 That dhamma in these statements means something like ‘truth’ is reinforced by the way in which in context they are illustrated by accounts of precisely the early Buddhist understanding of the truth about the way things are: physical form, feeling, recognition, volitions, consciousness are impermanent, suffering, and not to be taken as self; the five aggregates of attachment arise dependent on factors and conditions. Some scholars have suggested that dhamma in the sense of ‘truth’ becomes hypostasized as the highest metaphysical principle, equivalent to the atman-brahman of the Upanis: ads, almost personified.17 Such an interpretation is, of course, controversial and certainly problematic from the point of view the interpretations of traditional Therav ada Buddhism.
In the passages referred to in the previous paragraph, the particular vision of truth that the listeners are said to have at the end of the Buddha’s instruction is described in each case in the following terms: ‘the dhamma of everything whose dhamma it is to arise, is to cease’ (yam: kin˜ci samudaya-dhammam: sabbam: tam: nirodha-dhamman ti). The term dhamma used at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound in this manner has to mean something like ‘nature’ or ‘characteristic quality’: ‘the nature of everything whose nature it is to arise, is to cease’. Similarly, in the ‘Discourse on Establishing Mindfulness’ (Satipat:t:h ana Sutta) a monk is instructed to practice watching the nature of things to arise and fall away in the case of the body, feelings, and consciousness.18 The use of dhamma/dharma at the end of a compound in the sense of a particular nature or quality possessed by something is a common usage in both Pali and Sanskrit and is not a specifically Buddhist usage. We shall return to this usage later.
Given that the truth one sees when one sees dhamma is that ‘the nature of everything whose nature it is to arise, is to cease’, it might seem that the truth that is dhamma is understood as some kind of ‘law of the universe’. A number of modern scholars and interpreters have thus suggested that dhamma signifies the natural law or order which the world or reality conforms to. Thus T.W. Rhys Davids and William Stede in their dictionary article speak of the dhamma preached by the Buddha as ‘the order of the law of the universe, immanent, eternal, uncreated, not as interpreted by him only, much less invented or decreed by him, but intelligible to a mind of his range, and by him made so to mankind as bodhi: revelation, awakening’.19 Seeing dhamma as some form of eternal natural order or law would appear to be a more interpretative suggestion for the meaning of dhamma than those that we have so far considered, in that it is harder to cite passages where the translation ‘Natural Law’ or ‘Universal Law’ is clearly required by context and to be given preference over other translations. The kinds of passage referred to in order to illustrate this kind of understanding of dhamma are those which speak of the way things arise in dependence upon other things, or of how the mental and physical factors that make up the world (sam: khara ) are all impermanent, suffering and not self, and then refer to this fact as the dhamma-t:t:hitata , the dhamma-niyamat a that endures whether or not Buddhas arise in the world. Certainly these last two expressions might be translated ‘the constancy of nature’, ‘the law of nature’. And one could also suggest that the statement quoted above – ‘he who sees dependent arising sees dhamma’ – might be rendered as ‘he who sees dependent arising sees the law’. Yet it does not follow from such translations that we should necessarily hypostasize dhamma and conceive of it as some form of ‘immanent, eternal, uncreated’ law of the universe.20 Possibly these two expressions should be interpreted as the constancy and law of dhammas, plural, rather than dhamma, singular,21 and this brings us to the sixth sense of dhamma.
We come now to the use of the term dhamma in a manner that is at once the most distinctively Buddhist and the hardest to offer a suitable translation for. Before considering the question of the appropriateness or not of particular translations, let us consider some examples of this usage. Completely secluded from sense desires and unwholesome dhammas, a monk attains and remains in the joy and happiness of the first meditation.22 A monk ... endeavours so that bad, unwholesome dhammas that have not arisen, do not arise; ... he endeavours so that bad, unwholesome dhammas that have arisen are abandoned; ... he endeavours so that wholesome dhammas that have not arisen, arise; ... he endeavours so that wholesome dhammas that have arisen, are constant, not lost, increase, grow, develop, are complete.23 A monk ... dwells watching dhammas as dhammas ...24 Quite clearly to understand and translate dhammas as teachings, truths, laws – whether of nature or otherwise – simply will not do in the above contexts; ‘practices’ just might work in the first passage, but to think of ‘practices’ as things that have ‘arisen’ or ‘not arisen’, as such a translation would demand in the second passage, must rule it out. And when we read the full exposition of what watching dhammas as dhammas involves, such a conclusion is only reinforced. A monk dwells watching dhammas as dhammas in terms of: (1) the five hindrances – sensual desire, aversion, sleepiness and tiredness, excitement and depression, doubt – knowing whether each is present in him or not, how each arises and is abandoned such that it will not arise again; (2) the five aggregates of attachment – physical form, feeling, recognition, volitional formations, consciousness – how each arises and disappears; (3) the six senses and their respective objective fields, knowing the fetters that arise dependent on the two, how these fetters arise and are abandoned such that they will not arise again; (4) the seven constituents of awakening – mindfulness, dhamma-investigation, vigour, joy, tranquillity, concentration, equanimity – knowing whether each is present in him or not, how each arises and is brought to full development; (5) the four noble truths, knowing what suffering is, what the arising of suffering is, what the cessation of suffering is, what the way leading to the cessation of suffering is. Clearly if watching dhammas involves watching the hindrances, the aggregates, the senses and their objects, and the constituents of awakening, then dhammas are not teachings, practices, truths, or laws. And while it might be possible in some contexts to take the Nik ayas as presenting the ‘four noble truths’ as four doctrinal propositions – ‘suffering is the five aggregates of attachment’ – the kind of usage above challenges such a notion. Suffering, its arising, its cessation, the way leading to its cessation are here not ‘truths’ in the sense of doctrinal propositions, but realities that have to be understood. So what are dhammas? In many ways it is the usage of dhamma at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound in the sense of a particular nature or quality possessed by something that seems the best fit in the present context, only here the particular natures or qualities are not possessed by anything, they are natural qualities in their own right, which the meditating monk watches arising and disappearing, some of which he strives to stop arising, and some of which he strives to keep arising. We can define dhammas in this final sense as basic qualities, both mental and physical. When we consider this particular understanding of what a dhamma is alongside the defining of the world or experience in its entirety (sabbam: ) in terms of the five aggregates or the twelve spheres of sense, then we can go one step further and say that dhammas are the basic qualities, both mental and physical, that in some sense constitute experience or reality in its entirety.25 What I think is undeniable is that, whether or not one accepts this as something the Buddha himself taught, this sense and basic understanding of a dhamma is firmly established and imbedded in the Nik ayas. Indeed, I think it not unreasonable to suggest that it is the prevalent usage of the word dhamma in the Nik ayas. It is, of course, a usage that approximates to the one found in the Abhidhamma/Abhidharma, and the question of the relationship of this Nik aya usage to the more technically precise Abhidhamma/Abhidharma usage is something that I shall return to below. But before doing that I wish first to consider how the Pali commentaries approach the issue of the different senses of the word dhamma in the Nik ayas.
Obviously the commentaries offer a rather more developed understanding of dhamma than that found in the Nik ayas and early Abhidhamma. Nevertheless, their understanding represents a tradition of interpretation that is still relatively close to the earlier texts, and provides us with important points of references for plotting the development of the usage of the term in early Buddhist thought. A number of scholars have paid some attention to the traditional expositions of dhamma presented in the Pali commentaries. The Geigers and PED, for example, both begin their accounts by citing lists of meanings for dhamma found in the commentaries to the D ıgha Nikaya , Dhammapada and Dhammasangan _ : ı. 26 But it is John Ross Carter’s work that provides the fullest account of the understanding of dhamma found in the Pali commentaries.27 Drawing on especially Carter’s work, I wish to highlight what seem to me the most signifi- cant aspects of the way the early Buddhist exegetical tradition approaches the notion of dhamma. Some six passages from the Pali commentaries explicitly explain that in the canonical texts the word dhamma can have various meanings which they then go on to list The number of meanings listed ranges from 4 to 11, although each list is explicitly open ended; in aggregate 18 different possible meanings are suggested. Having listed the possible meanings, the commentaries proceed by citing illustrative passages from the canonical texts – mostly the Nik ayas and Abhidhamma. These 18 meanings can, I think, be grouped and understood by way of five principal meanings that broadly correspond to the six meanings identified above: (1) teaching or text, (2) good qualities or conduct more generally, (3) truth, (4) the natural condition of something, (5) a mental or physical quality in a technical Abhidhamma sense . Let me comment briefly on these in turn. The first meaning is straightforward: dhamma can mean the teaching of the Buddha and the texts that contain those teachings, defined as ‘the word of the Buddha contained in the Three Baskets’ (tepit:akam: buddha-vacanam: ).29 I have grouped the next set of meanings together in that they all take dhamma in the sense either of the general good qualities and conduct (gun: a, pun˜n˜a) promoted by Buddhist practice or are specific examples of those qualities and conduct (samadhi , pan˜n˜a ). I have also grouped with these an example of dhamma in a more general sense of practice: in the Vinaya dhamma is used to refer to the various categories of ‘offence’ (apatti ), as in ‘four offences involving defeat’ (cattaro p ar ajik a dhamm a ).30 What I have listed as the third meaning of dhamma identified by the commentaries is again straightforward: in certain contexts dhamma should be taken as meaning the truth or, more specifically, the four truths, more or less in the same way that I have already outlined above. The fourth meaning of ‘natural condition’ is once again unproblematic in that it corresponds straightforwardly to a meaning that we have already noted: dhamma as the last member of a compound means the natural condition (pakati) possessed by something, thus to describe someone as jati-dhamma or jara-dhamma means that birth and old age are his ‘natural condition’ (pakati).31 An alternative term used by the commentaries here is vikara in the sense of disposition.
Under the fifth heading I have grouped eight distinct meanings that all relate in various ways to the technical Abhidhamma understanding of a dhamma as a basic ‘mental or physical quality’. These eight meanings fall into four subsets . As I have suggested above, the word dhamma is quite clearly already used in the Nik ayas in the sense of a basic quality, both mental and physical, a plurality of which in some sense constitutes experience or reality in its entirety. A dhamma in the sense of one of these basic qualities may be defined in the commentaries as a ‘a particular nature’ (sabhava ). The canonical passage referred to for the meaning of dhamma in the sense of sabhava is the Abhidhamma matrix of triplets (tika-matik a ) that is set out at the beginning of the Dhammasangan _ : ı and is used as a basis of exposition in that text, the Vibhanga _ , Dhatukath a , and Pat:t:hana ; it begins ‘wholesome qualities, unwholesome qualities, undetermined qualities’ (kusala dhamm a akusala dhamm a avy akat a dhamm a ).33 I shall return to the Abhidhamma understanding of sabhava below. We next have three terms – having no essence (nissattata ), being lifeless (nijj ıvata ), being empty (sun˜n˜ata ) – that are perhaps best understood as relating the understanding of dhammas as basic qualities to the notion of ‘not-self’ (anattan). As illustrative of dhamma in these senses, the commentaries consistently cite two passages.34 The first is a section from the Dhammasangan _ : ı explicitly called ‘the section on emptiness’ in the text (sun˜n˜ata-vara ), which occurs after the various mental dhammas or qualities that arise together constituting an instance of consciousness have been set out and defined in detail. The section states simply that ‘at that time there are dhammas, there are aggregates, there are sense-spheres ...’ 35 What the commentaries seem to be suggesting is that in stating this the Dhammasangan _ : ı emphasises that these dhammas constituting an instance of consciousness are nothing but evanescent and insubstantial non-entities that have no real essence or life of their own. The second passage cited by the commentaries in this context is one I have already referred to above, the passage describing the fourth way of establishing mindfulness by watching dhammas as dhammas. In other words, when the meditator watches dhammas as dhammas in the manner described in the Satipat:t:hana Sutta , what the commentaries are suggesting is that what he is watching is the arising and disappearance of nothing but evanescent and insubstantial non-entities that have no real essence or life of their own. This ties in with the way Buddhaghosa later alludes to a number of images and similes from the Nik ayas in order to illustrate the manner in which dhammas that are not lasting or solid but rather things that vanish almost as soon as they appear – like dew drops at sunrise, like a bubble on water, like a line drawn on water, like a mustard-seed placed on the point of an awl, like a flash of lightning; things that lack substance and always elude one’s grasp – like a mirage, a conjuring trick, a dream, the circle formed by a whirling fire brand, a fairy city, foam, or the trunk of a banana tree.36 The third subset comprises three terms each of which brings out the manner in which a dhamma is understood as a causal condition itself (hetu, paccaya)and as something that has arisen as a result of causal conditions (paccayuppanna). Seeing dhammas in this way, while not perhaps explicit in the Nik ayas, is none the less certainly implicit. Thus again the description of how the meditator is to watch dhammas as dhammas focuses in particular on the conditions which lead to the arising and abandoning of particular dhammas. As the commentaries put it in the context of dependent arising: nothing arises from a single cause, and all causes have multiple effects.37 Finally we have two terms that focus on dhammas as objects of consciousness: dhammas are ‘things that can be known’ (n˜eyya), and they are concepts (pan˜n˜atti). This last meaning of dhamma relates to the way dhammas are presented in the list of the six senses – eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind – and their corresponding objective fields – visible forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible sensations, dhammas. As Geiger and Carter noted, in trying to evaluate the lists of terms offered as possible meanings of dhamma by such commentarial passages, we should not forget that they end with an ‘etc.’ (adi ) and are thus explicitly open ended. In fact, it is clear that such lists of meanings do not exhaust the commentarial and exegetical understanding of dhamma. There are two particular aspects of the commentarial understanding of dhamma that Carter has drawn attention to and which I should like to pick up on.38 The first concerns the understanding of dhamma in terms of ‘nine transcendent dhammas’ (nava lokuttaradhamma , navavidha-lokuttara-dhamma), the second is the understanding in terms of a threefold division by way of texts (pariyatti), practice (pat:ipatti), and realization (pat:ivedha) or attainment (adhigama). At the beginning of his discussion of the meditation practice (kamma-t:t:hana ) of recollecting dhamma (dhammanussati ), Buddhaghosa makes a distinction between dhamma as the texts (pariyatti) containing the teaching of the Buddha on the one hand and transcendent dhamma on the other.39 The latter is ninefold and comprises the four paths of stream entry, once-return, non-return, and arahatship, the four corresponding fruits, and nibbana itself. Carter notes, citing some 40 examples, that the Pali commentaries frequently suggest that dhamma in the Nik ayas is to be understood as referring to the nine transcendent dhammas. 40 In the technical understanding of the commentaries, this refers to the four kinds of consciousness (citta) that arise as the attainment of the four ‘paths’ (magga), the four kinds of consciousness that arise as the attainment of the ‘fruits’ (phala) of those ‘paths’, and lastly nibbana as the ‘unconditioned element’ (asam: khata-dhatu ), ‘object’ (aramm an : a) of those classes of consciousness.41 In other words transcendent dhamma consists of the mind that knows and sees nibbana at the moment of awakening (bodhi), and also of what is known and seen at that moment. Such a usage, in fact corresponds more or less to the usage of a word like ‘knowledge’ in English, which can denote both the act of knowing as well as what is known. In several places in early Buddhist texts a list of five mental ‘waste lands’ (ceto-khila) is itemized and explained. The second of these consists in having doubts about dhamma. 42 The commentaries take it that this means having doubts either about Buddhist texts (pariyatti) – that the word of the Buddha consists of 84,000 sections – or about realization (pat:ivedha) – that the path is achieved by insight, the fruit by the path and that nibbana represents the stilling of all volitional formations.43 The understanding of dhamma as ‘realization’ relates closely to its understanding as knowledge of nibbana . Elsewhere, in explanation of the expression ‘the true/good dhamma’ (sad-dhamma), this twofold understanding of dhamma is expanded to a threefold one: texts (pariyatti), practice (pat:ipatti), attainment (adhigama), with ‘practice’ taken as referring to Buddhist practice in its entirety – ascetic practices, precepts, concentration, insight – and attainment to the nine transcendent dhammas. 44 While the technical specificity of the commentarial explanations of dhamma is often out of place in a Nik aya context, nevertheless the general meanings suggested by the commentaries are more or less consonant with the range of meanings offered by modern scholars. One meaning, however, that is brought out by modern scholars, but is not highlighted by the commentators is that of ‘natural law’. Nevertheless, as we have seen, some such meaning is certainly implicit in certain contexts.
I noted above that the Geigers regard the usage of dhamma in the sense of ‘thing’ (or ‘basic quality’) as somewhat removed from its original usage, and they identify the issue of how dhamma comes to be used in this way as the principal question to be addressed in accounting for the development of the usage of the term in Buddhist texts. They go on to offer some brief comments on the development of this usage. They point out that the meaning of ‘thing’ is associated particularly with the plural usage, and that in this plural usage dhammas refers to the things that constitute the world of experience as perceived by the mind. It is in these things or ‘norms’ that the dhamma – the law of the world and nature consisting in the arising and disappearance, the fleetingness and emptiness of reality – becomes manifest.45 Thus the Geigers wish to see dhamma in the sense of the ‘law’ of the world – or, perhaps, ultimate ‘truth’ about reality – as basic. And the ‘things’ that constitute reality, eventually come to be designated ‘laws’ or ‘truths’ because seeing them, one sees the Law, the Truth. While I think this account certainly resonates with the early Buddhist understanding of dhamma, I do not think it adequately explains the semantic development of the word and I shall suggest an alternative model presently. More recently Richard Gombrich has offered a somewhat different account.46 Gombrich offers his account of the history of the way the word dhamma is used as a way of tracing the development of a Buddhist ontology. His starting point is that ‘the Dharma’ of the Buddha is both the Buddha’s account describing his ‘experience’ and a message prescribing what to do about it. The basic Buddhist understanding of dhamma and the basic brahmanical understanding of dharma are thus alike, in so far as they at once describe the nature of reality and prescribe how to act. They thus both ‘obliterate’ the fact-value distinction. Turning to the usage of dhamma in the plural to denote ‘noeta’, ‘phenomena’ or ‘things’ as the objects of consciousness, Gombrich finds the key to this development in meaning in the passage from the Satipat:t:h ana Sutta describing the practice of watching dhammas as dhammas: First he learns to observe physical processes in his own and other people’s bodies; then he learns to be similarly aware of feelings; then of states of mind. Finally he learns to be aware of dhamma (plural). This has been rendered as ‘his thoughts’. But the dhamma that the text spells out are in fact the teachings of the Buddha, such as the four noble truths. The meditator moves from thinking about those teachings to thinking with them: he learns (to use an anachronistic metaphor) to see the world through Buddhist spectacles. The Buddha’s teachings come to be the same as (any) objects of thought, because anything else is (for Buddhists) unthinkable. Thus the dhamma are the elements of reality as understood by the Buddha. Gombrich concludes by suggesting that it is from this specific context of meditation that the usage of dhammas in the plural has become generalized. If I have understood him correctly Gombrich’s theory is, then, that watching (anupassati) dhammas as dhammas originally signified contemplating (as anupassati is often rendered) or thinking about the teachings of the Buddha. And because thinking about those teachings involves seeing the world in the Buddha’s way, what you see when you think through (in both senses) those teachings are the teachings, which have come to represent experience in its entirety for
the meditator. While, once again, I think the way this account ties together different senses of the word dhamma has genuine resonances with the early Buddhist understanding of dhamma, I do not think it works as an account of the history of the way the word dhamma is used – for two reasons. First, because I think taking dhamma in the sense of the teaching of the Buddha as the starting point for the history of its usage is problematic. Secondly, because, as we saw above, apart from the four truths the dhammas that the text spells out as objects of contemplation are not in fact the teachings of the Buddha as such; certainly the Buddha of the Nik ayas teaches about the hindrances, the aggregates, the senses and their objects, etc., but these things are not actual teachings; moreover if we were to understand dhammas here in the sense of teachings about the hindrances, etc., we would be left with the problem of explaining why the watching of body as body, feelings as feelings, and consciousness as consciousness is not also included here under the heading of watching dhammas as dhammas. In fact I think there is a much simpler way of approaching the development of the Buddhist usage of dhamma in the sense of ‘noeta’, ‘phenomena’ or ‘things’. In order to begin to consider the question of the relationship of the various meanings of dhamma in early Buddhist literature, and the question of the development of the specifically Buddhist notion of a dhamma as a basic mental or physical quality (the Buddhist theory of dhammas), we need first of all to consider what notion and understanding of dharma Buddhist thought inherited and thus started with. This, however, must remain a problematic and even controversial issue, both because of the problems in dating particular understandings of dharma in relation to Buddhist developments, and because of the problems in agreeing the contours of the ‘Hindu’ understanding of dharma. 47 Nevertheless, I think it is possible to map out some general lines of development. The beginnings of the Indian concept of dharma go back to the usage of the noun dharman and various verb forms derived from the root dhr: in the R: g Veda. A well known example occurs at the close of the ‘Hymn of the Man’ (Purus: asukta): With the sacrifice the gods sacrificed to the sacrifice. These were the first ritual laws. 48 In his discussion of the Vedic usage of dharman Halbfass emphasises that the plural usage is the norm, commenting that ‘only later did an essentially singular use as a ‘‘complex’’ or ‘‘totality of binding norms’’
gain in prominence’.49 The precise meaning of dharman in the R: g Veda is perhaps unclear. In the verse just quoted, O’Flaherty uses ‘ritual laws’, explaining in a note that these are ‘archetypal patterns of behaviour established during this first sacrifice to serve as the model for all future sacrifices’.50 In his study of dharman in the R: g Veda in the present volume, Joel Brereton emphasises the sense of ‘foundation’ – a sense which straightforwardly reflects its etymology and form – as the meaning common to the various contexts in which it is used. He translates: With the sacrifice the gods sacrificed the sacrifice: these were its foundations. He goes on to comment that these first ‘foundations’ can thus be understood as ‘the model sacrifice instituted by the gods and replicated in human performance’; or, as he puts it later, ‘they are the ritual precedents which the present rituals follow’. Halbfass likewise stresses the importance of the sense of the underlying root dhr:: dharmas are thus things that ‘support’, ‘uphold’, ‘maintain’; and referring to the work of Schayer, he characterises dharma in the Br ahman: as as ‘the continuous maintaining of the social and cosmic order and norm which is achieved by the Aryan through the performance of his Vedic rites and traditional duties’. A.K. Warder too considers the primary sense of dharman/dhr: in the R: g Veda as closely connected with the idea of maintaining.51 Whatever the precise connotations of dharman in its earliest usage it seems clear that among its earliest uses is the use in the plural to refer to certain practices – primarily sacrificial rites – as maintaining and supporting things – the cosmic and social order. The underlying assumption is, of course, that maintaining and supporting the cosmic and social order is a good thing; dharmans are therefore prescribed practices. Another dharman or ‘foundation’ that the R: g Veda identifies is, suggests Brereton, the foundational authority especially of Varun: a and Mitra; this authority consists in the commandments of Varun: a and the alliances governed by Mitra. This sense of authority is one that Patrick Olivelle’s contribution to the present volume shows being taken up in the Br ahman: as, where dharma is understood as the social order founded on the authority of especially the king. And if these are the sources for the Brahmanical and general ‘Hindu’ understanding of dharma, so too are they for the Buddhist. I take it then that the plural usage of dhamma is something that early Buddhism inherited from earlier pre-Buddhist usage, and that for early Buddhist thought
dhammas are in the first place the practices, the kinds of behaviour, prescribed and recommended on the authority of the Buddha. That dhamma subsequently comes to refer to the Buddha’s teaching or, in the plural, teachings is then a straightforward development, just as the English word ‘prescription’ can denote both the act of prescribing and what is prescribed. Indeed, ‘prescription’ can also denote a piece of paper handed to one by a doctor, so we have an analogous development for the way in which dhamma comes to mean the texts that contain the teachings of the Buddha. In fact all this ties in precisely with the general tendency of early Buddhist thought to appropriate brahmanical terminology and reinterpret it in its own terms: the true brahman : a, the true arya , is not someone who is born as such and performs the duties and rites – the dharmas – laid down in the Vedas, the real ariya-puggala or ‘noble person’ is the one who takes up the practices – the dhammas – recommended by the Buddha and roots out greed, hatred and delusion. Though, as Patrick Olivelle points out, again in his contribution to this volume, the relationship between the Buddhist and brahmanical understanding may be more complex: while the Buddhists take over the basics of the Vedic and brahmanical understanding of dharma, the manner in which the notion of dhamma functions as a pervasive concept of religious, philosophical and ethical discourse is perhaps characteristically Buddhist; and dharma is developed as the central concept of Hindu thought only subsequently as a reaction to Buddhist and especially As´okan usage. Be that as it may, the use of dharman/dharma in Vedic literature in the senses of ‘foundational rituals’ and ‘foundational authority’ is sufficient to account for the development of early Buddhist dhamma in its normative and prescriptive senses, but what of its descriptive sense, what of dhamma as the truth about the ways things are? In the course of his discussion of dharma in Hinduism, Halbfass comments: Since ancient times dharma has also possessed a meaning which may be rendered as ‘property’, ‘characteristic attribute’, ‘essential feature’, or more generally as ‘defining factor’ or ‘predicate’. Evidence of this is available since the time of the S´ atapatha Brahman : a. In classical Hindu philosophy, and most clearly in the Ny aya and Vais´es:ika, dharma functions as ‘attribute’ or ‘property’ in the broadest sense and is used to characterize anything that is inherent in, or predicable of, an identifiable substratum (dharmin).52 In fact this usage of dharma in the sense of ‘property’ or ‘characteristic attribute’ would seem to derive directly from the Vedic usage of dharman to refer to ‘the foundational nature of a deity’, while there are also several places in the Br ahman: as and Upanis: ads where dharma appears to be used in a sense close to ‘qualities’, ‘attributes’ or even just ‘things’.53 The passage of the S´ atapatha Brahman : a that Halbfass cites (14.7.3.15) is one in which dharman occurs as the last member of a bahuvr ıhi compound; the same passage is also found in the Br: hadaran : yaka Upanis: ad: ‘This self, you see, is imperishable; it has an indestructible nature.’54 The linking of the technical philosophical usage of dharma in the sense of an attribute belonging to an underlying substratum (dharmin) to its usage as the last member of a bahuvr ıhi compound is crucial. We have already noted that this kind of usage is common in early Buddhist texts, and again it would seem that it is a common usage inherited from earlier usage. So, to expand on Halbfass’s remarks, to describe y as x-dharma, is to say that y is something that possesses the dharma – the attribute, the quality – that is x; and in philosophical, as opposed to purely grammatical, terms, the ‘something’ that possesses an attribute (dharmin) is an underlying substance. As Halbfass points out, this understanding of dharma and dharmin as attribute and substance respectively involves the use of dharma in terms of a passive derivation: a dharma is what is ‘supported’ or ‘maintained’ (dhriyate) by the underlying substance (dharmin). I think we can see a precisely parallel development of the usage of dhamma in Buddhist thought. In fact I have already suggested that the early Buddhist understanding of dhammas as the basic mental and physical qualities that constitute experience or reality is to be related to the usage of dhamma at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound in the sense of a particular nature or quality possessed by something. To this extent the basic qualities of early Buddhist thought and the attributes of Ny ayaVais´es:ika are the same things. The crucial difference, however, is that instead of understanding these particular natures or qualities as attributes that belong to some underlying substance, early Buddhist thought takes them as natural qualities in their own right, emphasising how they arise dependent on other qualities rather than on a substratum that is somehow more real than they are.55 Seeing the development of the Buddhist understanding of dhammas in this way also casts a somewhat different light on some of the remarks made about dhammas in the Pali commentaries, which are perhaps often viewed too much in the light of later controversies about the precise ontological status of dharmas and the Madhyamaka critique of the notion of svabhava in the sense of ‘inherent existence’. John Ross Carter has drawn attention to the way in which the Pali commentaries later come to gloss dhamma at the end of a bahuvr ıhi compound both by pakati and sabhava . 56 It follows from this that when the commentaries define dhammas as sabhavas this is not a statement about their ontological status and that sabhava should not be translated as ‘inherent existence’, but is merely a gloss stating that dhammas are ‘particular natures’ or ‘particular qualities’. Moreover when the commentators say that dhammas are so-called ‘because they maintain (dharenti ) their own particular natures, or because they are maintained (dhar ıyanti) by causal conditions’,57 this should be understood, I think, as a direct and deliberate counter to the idea of dharmas as ‘particular natures’ that are ‘maintained’ by an underlying substance (dharmin) distinct from themselves; it is not intended to define dhammas as ontologically irreducible entities.58 This gives us two basic meanings of dhamma in early Buddhist texts: the practices recommended by the Buddha and the basic qualities that constitute reality. The first takes dhamma as something normative and prescriptive, the second as something descriptive and factual. Both of these meanings essentially derive from pre-Buddhist usage but are adapted to the specifics of Buddhist thought. The question of how the prescriptive and descriptive meanings of dharma are related is a general one and not specific to Buddhist thought. Halbfass refers to the work of Paul Hacker, who sees the self-conscious and deliberate linking of dharma in its prescriptive and descriptive senses as essentially modern and a feature of Neo-Hinduism.59 The point here appears to be that in ancient Indian thought there was no explicit attempt to derive dharma in its prescriptive sense from dharma in its descriptive sense: there was no explicit suggestion that it is because your nature (dharma) is such, your duty (dharma) is such. While this may be so, it is not clear to me that such an understanding is not implicit in early Indian thought. Indeed without the latent idea that there is some sort of link between nature and norm, the way things are and the way we should behave, it seems to me difficult to explain the usage of dharma in these two senses – unless, that is, one regards it as some sort of semantic accident or coincidence. In this context the observations of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre seem pertinent.60 MacIntyre argues that eighteenth century European thinking about morality involved the disappearance of a hitherto taken for granted connection between the precepts of morality and the facts of human nature, such that moral philosophers, like Hume and Kant, begin to assert for the first time that moral laws cannot be derived from factual statements, an ‘ought’ cannot be derived from an ‘is’. MacIntyre goes on to point out that this is problematic: a statement that someone is a sea-captain suggests that he ought to do what a sea-captain ought to do. This is because a ‘sea-captain’ is a ‘functional’ concept: being a sea-captain involves functioning as a sea-captain. What MacIntyre suggests is that in the classical tradition right through to the Enlightenment the concepts used in discussions of ‘morality’ – how one should behave – were functional: thus for Aristotle a man’s living well is precisely analogous to a harpist’s playing well (Nicomachean Ethics 1095a 16). The relevance of this in the present context is that, if the distinction between nature and norm is not made in the first place, because a deep connection between the two is assumed, then there can be no explicit argument that attempts to link the two. And thus that the explicit argument that derives dharma as duty directly from dharma as nature is modern – in part a reflection, perhaps, of the conceptual framework of modern European philosophy – is hardly surprising. In fact it seems clear that dharman/dharma is from the very beginning itself a functional concept: it is a foundation, and a foundation that fails to perform the functions of supporting and maintaining is not much of a foundation: for something to be a dharma/dhamma it must maintain and support. Thus, in the present volume, Brereton suggests that in the R: g Veda there is a deep connection between the foundational nature of the Adityas and their foundational authority such that they are one and the same thing. And certainly in the case of brahmanical dharma it seems hard to deny a deep connection between being a member of a particular class (varn: a) at a particular stage of life (as ´rama) and acting accordingly – fulfilling one’s dharma. And when the Pali commentaries come to define the ‘particular natures’ that are dhammas, they define them by what they do: it is contact (phassa) because it contacts (phusati), it is will (cetana ) because it wills (cetayati), it is concentration (samadhi ) because it places (adhiyati ) the mind evenly (samam: ) on the object; it is trust (saddha ) because it trusts (saddahati), it is memory (sati) because it remembers (sarati)
Halbfass refers to ‘a certain elusive coherence’ in the various meanings and functions of dharma in the different traditions of Hinduism,Buddhism, and Jainism.62 This article has largely been an attempt to seek out that elusive coherence in the case of early Buddhist thought. I should like now to attempt to sum up by returning to the description of the practice of watching dhammas as dhammas found in the (Mah a-) Satipat:t:h ana Sutta and by offering a paraphrase of it as a final attempt at capturing that elusive coherence. Among the dhammas (practices) the Buddha prescribes is this practice of watching dhammas (mental and physical qualities) as dhammas; to watch these truly as dhammas involves watching how they arise and disappear, how the particular qualities that one wants to abandon can be abandoned, and how the particular qualities that one wants to develop can be developed. Watching dhammas in this way one begins to understand how they work, and in understanding how they work one begins to understand certain truths (sacca) – four to be exact – about these dhammas: their relation to suffering, its arising, its ceasing and the way to its ceasing. And in seeing these four truths one realizes the ultimate truth – dhamma – about the world, the extinguishing (nibbana ) of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion. This reading of the (Mah a-) Satipat:t:h ana Sutta reveals the underlying equivalence between seeing dhammas (that is, understanding the way mental and physical qualities arise and disappear) and seeing the dhamma or the truth. In the Mah ahatthipadopama Sutta S ariputta attributes the saying to the Buddha: ‘He who sees dependent arising sees dhamma; he who sees dhamma sees dependent arising.’63 The text goes on to explain that the five aggregates of attachment have arisen dependently (pat:icca-samuppanna). The commentary glosses the Buddha’s saying as ‘he who sees causal conditions, sees dependently arisen dhammas’.64 My suggestion is that this should be read in part as a quite deliberate play on the meaning of dhamma, a play, moreover, that is entirely consonant with the Nik ayas. As we have seen, dhammas are mental and physical qualities, and seeing these dhammas as dhammas – seeing how they arise and disappear, seeing how they are dependently arisen – one sees the ultimate truth: he who sees dhammas sees dhamma. Lest I should be misunderstood, I am not trying to impute a specific technical abhidhamma/abhidharma understanding to the Nik ayas, I am not suggesting that dhamma is used in early Buddhist thought in the sense of an irreducible element. The use of dhamma in the general sense of a mental or physical quality is quite distinct from the question of the metaphysical and ontological status of those qualities. That dhammas are mental and physical qualities is one thing; in what precise sense those mental and physical qualities should be said to exist is quite another. Thus the issue of what precisely dhammas/dharmas are is one that is debated and discussed by the later schools – the Vibhajjav ada, the Sarv astiv ada, the Madhyamaka.65 Nevertheless, alongside the use of dhamma in the Nik ayas in the senses of the practices, truths and teachings that are recommended on the authority of the Buddha, there is a further usage already firmly embedded in the Nik ayas: dhammas are the fundamental qualities, both mental and physical, that in some sense constitute – or better, support and maintain – experience or reality in its entirety. In many ways it might be the English word quality in its range of uses in both the singular and plural that provides the single best fit for dhamma in early Buddhism.66 Yet while it might be capable of carrying a wider range of appropriate meanings than some other term such as ‘truth’, it clearly falls short of conveying the full range of meanings. Often translators have resorted to ‘teaching’, ‘law’, ‘doctrine’, yet in addition to the problem of conveying the semantic range of dhamma such translations highlight the problem of evoking its religious and emotional power. That the precise understanding and translation of dhamma in early Buddhist thought should remain elusive and hard to pin down is perhaps fitting. It is, after all, profound, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful, sublime, beyond the sphere of mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise – something that the buddhas of the past, present and future honour and to which they pay respect
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