Question 4:
What is dharma?
Simple questions from innocent disciples.
Bodhidharma says:
It was never produced, and will never be reduced; therefore, it is called dharma, the norm of the universe.
Dharma simply means the ultimate law that keeps the universe together, that keeps the universe in harmony, in accord, the norm that makes the universe a cosmos and not a chaos.
The definition of dharma is totally different from the definition of religion. Ordinarily religion is translated as dharma: dharma is translated as religion. Christianity is a religion, Hinduism is a religion, but what Buddha means by dharma is not a religion. It is not definable, containable in a creed. It is not a dogma. It is a very scientific truth.
It is like gravitation. You cannot make a religion out of gravitation. Nobody worships gravitation, nobody makes temples for gravitation – although gravitation has been doing so much for you. If there was no gravitation none of us would be here. We would simply fly upward. It is gravitation that keeps you tethered to the earth, otherwise you will be lost. Even mountains, even trees, will become uprooted with nothing to hold them to the earth. Earth itself would fall into fragments and the whole universe would simply be a chaos. There would be no order of any kind. And life is not possible without order. And consciousness is impossible unless there is something like an ultimate law which keeps everything together.
Dharma simply means the law. You cannot worship it, you can only understand it. You can live it, but you cannot worship it. That is the great contribution of Buddha to the world: religion, in his understanding, is law. You have to live it. You have to live according to the law, according to the norm of the universe. Whenever you go against it you are in misery, and whenever you are in tune with it you are in bliss.
His definition of bliss and misery is very simple. To be in tune with the ultimate law is bliss; that very harmony is bliss. And to be disharmonious, to go astray from the law, is misery. Hell is when you are running away from the universal law and heaven is when you are running toward it. And when you have become one with it, it is nirvana. It is the ultimate peak of bliss, of truth, of consciousness: sat-chit-anand.
One has to be very, very watchful to be aware of the ultimate law. Do you see the meditativeness of the trees surrounding you? Such stillness. Just as you are listening to me, they are listening to me, not even a leaf moving. The birds are singing. The whole universe is still and yet a song… Silent, yet musical. A tremendous harmony permeates everything. From the grass leaf to the greatest star it is the same law.
But you have to be a little more aware. And then the very earth you move on becomes sacred, then trees are gods, then birds are buddhas. Then each person you meet is a potential buddha. How can you hurt anybody? How can you be destructive to anybody, disrespectful to anybody? Impossible! Then it is not etiquette; then it is simple, natural understanding.
But people are so unaware that it is difficult for them to see the greatest thing that surrounds them within and without.
The owner of a big furniture store went to New York to buy some stock, and met a really beautiful girl in the hotel elevator. But she was French and they could not understand a word of each other’s language.
So he took out a pencil and notebook and drew a sketch of a taxi. She nodded her head and laughed, and they went for a ride in the park.
Then he drew a picture of a table in a restaurant with a question mark and she nodded, so they went to dinner.
After dinner he sketched two dancers and she was delighted. They went to a nightclub and danced and had a lovely evening.
At length she motioned for the pencil and drew a picture of a four-poster bed.
He was dumbfounded. He has never been able to figure out how she knew he was in the furniture business.
One has to be aware, otherwise you can miss the obvious! And dharma is the obvious, God is the obvious. It is not a complicated, complex thing. It is not far away, it is very close by. It is dharma that beats in your heart, it is dharma that pulsates in your blood. It is dharma that breathes, it is dharma that lives in you. It is dharma that you are made of: the very stuff that you are made of. And yet you are unaware of it.
- Osho, “The White Lotus, #1, Q4”