The Tao, The Dharma, and Life Itself

 I've been encountering the word "Dharma" a lot in the book I've been reading on Bodhichitta. This shouldn't be surprising. "Dharma" is a Sanskrit word (the Pali cognate being "Dhamma"), and is a key term in Buddhism. Within that belief system, it is used much like the term "Gospel" is within Christianity, and it's usually used to refer to the teachings of the Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha, which can guide one to enlightenment.

Initially, I thought it meant something like "truth" or "teaching" in Sanskrit, but today I decided to look it up. It turns out that the actual meaning of the word is a little more complicated than this, and there is no one word in English which can actually express its full meaning. According to the Wikipedia, there are at least twenty different ways in which this word is translated into English from the Sanskrit in different writings. “Truth” is one possibility, along with “right way of living,” “law,” “duty,” “justice,” “virtue,” and more than a dozen others.

Why so many variations? Well, it has to do with the concept which the word is trying to convey. According to the Wikipedia article, Dharma means "behaviours that are considered to be in accord with Ṛta, the order that makes life and universe possible, and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘right way of living’” (“Darma,” Wikipedia.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma). Finding this interesting, my curiosity was piqued, and I similarly looked up Ṛta. According to the Wikipedia, Ṛta is “the principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it” (“Ṛta,” Wikipedia.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ṛta). This caught my attention, because it sounded very familiar to another Greek word I know. Very familiar.

It sounds like the meaning of the word “logos” in Greek. Logos is a very interesting word in its own right. Technically it means “word,” but like the word “dharma” this is really only a fragment of the concept it actually expresses, and it usually isn’t used when referring to an actual fragment of speech (“lexis” or “rhema” is usually used in these cases). “Logos” as such has a long history as an ancient Greek philosophical and theological concept. The Stoics, beginning in 300 BCE identified the Logos as “the active reason pervading and animating the Universe” (“Logos,” Wikipedia.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos). They identified it with “the God” (not the God of the Bible of course, but as an aspect of a kind of Zeus centered monotheism which began to develop). In the early 1st century CE, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo described the Logos as “the first-born of God” and said, "the Logos of the living God is the bond of everything, holding all things together and binding all the parts, and prevents them from being dissolved and separated" (Philo, De Profugis, cited in Gerald Friedlander, Hellenism and Christianity, P. Vallentine, 1912, pp. 114–15.). And in the Gospel of John, “Logos” is the word used in John 1:1 where he writes, “At the start was the Logos, and the Logos was next to God, and the Logos was God.” It is this same Logos that John writes of when he writes, “And the Logos became flesh and camped out among us…” The Logos is who we refer to as God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, who chose to incarnate, being joined to human flesh in the only recorded instance of human parthenogenesis in the human person of Jesus Christ.

So, returning to the subject of Dharma, when we speak of Dharma, it is just as correct from a Christian perspective to say that Dharma can be defined as behaviors which are in accordance with Jesus Christ, the Logos of God the Father. Everything He taught and practiced is in fact, Dharma for the Christian. Furthermore, as He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” in that He is “the Truth” one could make the case that Jesus Himself is also Dharma in the truest sense of the word. So then, Jesus Christ is both Dharma, and the primal source of all Dharma. He is the standard by which all Dharma is to be held against. 

Another word which has tremendous difficulty in being fully comprehended is the Chinese word “Tao”. Technically, it means “way, road, or path,” but like the word “Logos” in Greek, and the word “Dharma” in Sanskrit, it is pregnant with philosophical and theological meaning which is difficult to translate. According to the Wikipedia,  “The Tao can be roughly thought of as the flow of the Universe, or as some essence or pattern behind the natural world that keeps the Universe balanced and ordered.” And also “In all its uses, the Tao is considered to have ineffable qualities that prevent it from being defined or expressed in words. It can, however, be known or experienced, and its principles (which can be discerned by observing Nature) can be followed or practiced.” (“Tao,” Wikipedia.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao). This last point, that the Tao can be discerned by observing Nature is reminiscent of what Paul wrote in Romans 1:20 where he says, “For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.”(WEB) There is a kinship in the concept of the Tao with both the concept of the Logos and the Dharma.

Finally, as we are looking at what He said about Himself in these two sentences from John’s Gospel, He begins it in Greek with, “Ego eimi,” literally, “I am.” Thing of it is, He really didn’t need to use both words where the Greek is concerned. It’s more common to see just “ego” or “eimi” when someone is describing themselves. Generally, and especially in John’s Gospel, you really only see this combination “Ego eimi” when Jesus is using the Greek translation of the divine name YHVH, “I Am,” to drive home who He is.

With this understanding, we could rightly render from the Greek what He said in John 14:6 as, “I Am the Tao, the Dharma, and Life itself. No one come to the Father if they don’t come through Me.” In these two sentences, He is describing Himself as the indescribable principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it, the first born of God who is the bond of everything, holding all things together and binding all the parts, and prevents them from being dissolved and separated, the God who spoke to Moses on Sinai and all the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the source of all life and order in existence, and no one is able to come to God the Father if they don’t go through Him.