Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Doctrines

Dharma

Also Known As DhammaOriginal Term dharma (Sanskrit, that which upholds)
Action, Rebirth and Consequence

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Origin 300 BCE to 500 CE

Dharma is what upholds. Beyond that any single English rendering fails, and the failures are informative.

In Hindu usage it covers the order of the cosmos, the moral law, the duty appropriate to a person's station and stage of life, and righteousness in general. The specifically Hindu development is that duty is not uniform: what is required depends on who one is, and the tradition is emphatic that performing one's own duty imperfectly is better than performing another's well. The entire occasion of the Bhagavad Gita is a man refusing to do his caste duty because it is monstrous, and being told to do it anyway, which is a fair indication that this is a demanding and contested idea rather than a comfortable one.

In Buddhism the word does two quite different jobs. Capitalised, it is the Buddha's teaching, the second of the three refuges. In the technical vocabulary of the Abhidhamma, dhammas in the plural are the constituent factors of experience into which analysis resolves a person and a world. These senses are related historically and are not interchangeable, and a reader who takes Buddhist dharma to mean the Hindu one has already gone wrong.

The self-description of Hinduism as sanatana dharma, the eternal way, deserves a note. The phrase is old, but its use as the proper name of a religion is substantially a development of the nineteenth century, when Hindu reform movements needed a term for the tradition as a whole in the face of missionary pressure and colonial census categories. It carries a claim, that this is the perennial order rather than one religion among others, and the claim is part of what the phrase was adopted to make.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
300 BCE to 500 CE 1
Held By
Hinduism; Buddhism; Jainism; Sikhism 1
Origin Period
The term is Vedic and older than its codification 1
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 1Tradition: Hinduism
The received account of duty and cosmic order, codified in the Dharmasastra
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Hindu tradition reads dharma as varying by caste, stage of life and circumstance, a relative and contextual duty; Buddhist usage instead centres dharma on the Buddha's teaching itself, the truth he taught rather than social duty. 2
Position Profile
Key Text
The Dharmashastras, particularly the Laws of Manu, are the classical Hindu codification of dharma; the Dhammapada is a central Buddhist statement of dharma as teaching. 2
The Claim
The Claim
A term covering both cosmic order and an individual's or a community's proper duty within it, so that to act rightly is to act in accordance with dharma. 2
Learn More
The Word That Will Not Translate

Dharma is among the least translatable words in the study of religion, rendered as order, law, duty, righteousness, teaching or the way things are, depending on the tradition and the sentence. It derives from a Sanskrit root meaning "to hold" or "to support", dharma is what upholds, whether the cosmic order, the social order, or the individual life lived rightly.

In its classical Hindu use, dharma names both the universal order that keeps the world coherent and the particular duty that falls to a person by birth, stage of life and circumstance, svadharma, one's own duty. The Bhagavad Gita gives this its most quoted expression: "Better one's own dharma imperfectly performed than another's dharma performed well" (3.35), a defence of acting according to one's proper station rather than borrowing another's. Dharma in this sense is not a single code but a web of obligations indexed to who and where one is, which is why the same word can mean "righteousness" in one line and "caste duty" in the next.

One Word, Four Religions

The atlas keeps a single entry because the traditions share the word, and notes that they do not share its meaning. In Hinduism dharma is cosmic-and-social order and duty, sometimes named sanatana dharma, the "eternal order," a phrase modern Hindus often use for the tradition itself. In Buddhism the same word carries two loads: capitalised, the Dharma is the Buddha's teaching and the truth it discloses, one of the Three Jewels in which a Buddhist takes refuge; in the plural and lower case, dharmas are the momentary factors or phenomena into which Buddhist analysis breaks down experience. In Jainism dharma includes, alongside righteous conduct, a strikingly technical sense: it is the name of a substance, the medium that makes motion possible, one of the basic constituents of the Jain cosmos. In Sikhism, dharam is righteous living and moral duty, the arena in which a human life is to be justified.

The result is that "dharma" cannot be treated as one concept wearing four costumes. It is a family of concepts held together by a root idea, that which sustains and is to be sustained, and pulled in different directions by each tradition's wider system.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Affirmed By

Reconciliation: affirmed Belief -> contested Doctrine concept (Dharma).

Belongs to Tradition

Buddhism, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Hinduism, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Jainism, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Sikhism, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Depicted In

Depicts the exact narrative event Buddhist tradition names as the origin of the dharma itself, the Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath, rather than a generic seated Buddha image.

Derived from This

Hindu Dharma Ethics is the specifically Hindu ethical application of the wider pan Indic dharma concept that Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism each develop differently.

Source History of Dharmasastra, Volume VP. V. Kane

Positions on This Question

Dharma is held in Advaita, with ritual and duty belonging to the level of practice that prepares the mind for knowledge rather than producing liberation themselves.

Dharma is held in Dvaita.

Dharma is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and the tradition places devotion above the ordinary duties as the eternal function of the soul.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Gelug, Denominations

Dharma is held in the Gelug school in the Mahayana sense, with the tantras counted among the Buddha's word.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Dharma is held in ISKCON, with devotional service presented as the eternal function of the soul and the ordinary duties as secondary to it.

Source Hare Krishna TransformedE. Burke Rochford Jr.

Dharma is held in Jodo Shinshu.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Jonang, Denominations

Dharma is held in the Jonang school in the Mahayana sense.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Kagyu, Denominations

Dharma is held in the Kagyu school in the Mahayana sense, with the tantras counted among the Buddha's word.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Dharma is held in the Karma Kagyu school in the Mahayana sense.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Dharma is held in Kashmir Shaivism.

Dharma is held in Lingayatism, and the tradition recast it around work: labour honestly done and shared is treated as worship rather than as a lesser alternative to it.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Dharma is held in Madhyamaka in the Mahayana sense, and the school's technical work is done on dharmas in the plural, the constituents it argues have no own-being.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Dharma in Mahayana carries the double sense the earlier tradition gave it, the teaching and the order of things, alongside the technical use of dharmas as the constituents whose emptiness the tradition argues for.

Dharma is held in the Nath tradition, with the renunciant's discipline standing above the householder's obligations.

Dharma is held in Nichiren Buddhism, and the school's claim is about which part of it is efficacious now: the Lotus Sutra alone, in the age the school holds the world to be in.

Dharma is held in Nichiren Shoshu, with the Lotus Sutra as the only efficacious teaching for the present age and Nichiren's own writings read as its authoritative interpretation.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Nyingma, Denominations

Dharma is held in the Nyingma school in the Mahayana sense, and the school's ninefold arrangement of vehicles is its own account of how the whole of it fits together.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Dharma is held in the Pure Land schools, and the tradition's claim is about which part of it remains practicable now rather than about what it contains.

Source The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless LightLuis O. Gomez (translator and editor)

The Mimamsa Sutra opens by naming this its whole subject: athato dharma jijnasa.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyEdward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.)
Rinzai, Denominations

Dharma is held in the Rinzai school, together with the Zen claim that it passes mind to mind rather than through formulation alone.

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin
Sakya, Denominations

Dharma is held in the Sakya school in the Mahayana sense.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Samkhya, Denominations

Dharma is held in Samkhya as one of the dispositions of the intellect, alongside its opposite, and so as a property of nature rather than of the self.

Dharma is held across the Shaiva schools.

Source An Introduction to HinduismGavin Flood

Dharma is held across the Shakta traditions.

Shingon, Denominations

Dharma is held in Shingon, and Kukai's ranking of the teachings places the esoteric teaching above the exoteric as the dharma preached by the cosmic Buddha in his own person rather than adapted to an audience.

Dharma is held in Shri Vidya, and the tradition has been carried largely by householders observing brahminical practice alongside it.

Dharma is central in Smartism, which takes its name from the remembered texts that set out household and ritual duty.

Source An Introduction to HinduismGavin Flood

Dharma is held in Soka Gakkai, with the Lotus Sutra as the teaching for the present age and Nichiren's writings as its interpretation.

Soto, Denominations

Dharma is held in the Soto school, and Dogen's writing is unusual among Zen literature for the weight it places on doctrinal exposition alongside the claim of a transmission outside the scriptures.

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin

Dharma is held in Sri Vaishnavism, and ritual obligation remains binding on the qualified rather than being superseded by devotion.

Tendai, Denominations

Dharma is held in Tendai, and the school inherits the Tiantai classification of the teachings as one dharma delivered in stages.

Dhamma in Theravada names both the Buddha's teaching and the order of things that teaching describes, and the Pali canon is the tradition's record of it.

Source The Foundations of BuddhismRupert Gethin
Tiantai, Denominations

Dharma is held in Tiantai, and the school's classification of the teachings is an account of how the whole of it is one dharma delivered in stages.

Dharma is held across the Tibetan schools in the Mahayana sense, with the tantras counted among the Buddha's word.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Dharma is held across the Vaishnava schools, and the Bhagavad Gita's treatment of duty performed without attachment to its fruits is the current's most widely quoted statement of it.

Source Bhagavad GitaTraditionally attributed to Vyasa

Dharma is held in Vajrayana in the Mahayana sense, with the tantras counted among the Buddha's word rather than beside it.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Dharma is held in Vishishtadvaita, and the school keeps ritual obligation binding on the qualified rather than superseding it.

Zen, Denominations

Zen holds the dharma and holds with it that the dharma is not finally captured in doctrinal formulation. The school's self-description as a transmission outside the scriptures is itself a claim about what the dharma is and how it passes, not a refusal to make claims.

Related To

Rta, Doctrines

Within India the work of rta passed gradually to dharma, which carried cosmic order into law and personal duty

Source The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of IndiaStephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton
Sources
1. History of Dharmasastra, Volume V
P. V. Kane, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1958View the Source
2. An Introduction to Hinduism
Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press, 1996View the Source
Bhagavad Gita
Traditionally attributed to Vyasa, Trubner & Co., 18853.35 and 18.47, on one's own dutyView the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
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