07.01. What is Dhamma, and aDhamma?

👈🏼 previous note, 07. What the Buddha Taught

A turning point for me in cultivating saddhā was when I started discovering that the Buddha variously taught about how to appraise both his teachings and the teachings of others - famously, in the Kalama Sutta and also in the Caṅkī Sutta. In the Kalama Sutta, the requirement for taking a teaching as dhamma, not adhamma, is that the teaching reduces suffering through the abandonment of greed, hatred, and delusion.

So we have dhamma and adhamma, that which is not the dhamma. We also have ‘true dhamma’ (saddhamma) and ‘untrue dhamma’ (asaddhamma). There are also some good reference points in MN 60, the ‘Safe Bet’ Sutta, Buddha’s equivalent of Pascal’s Wager 🪾. In this sutta, the Buddha states explicitly that disbelief in rebirth is ‘untrue dhamma’, asaddhamma, and that such proponents are engaging in asaddhammasaññatti.

Important distinctions to make, obviously, but how? How do we get to the heart of what the Buddha taught, and how can we discern whether our contemporary understanding of the mind and reality are dhamma-aligned, or not, which is to say, dhamma or adhamma, saddhamma or asaddhamma ‘counterfeit’ dhamma.

An important part of understanding what constitutes dhamma and adhamma might also be framed as the questions, Can the dhamma save the world? 👉🏻 Of course I am not the only one to wonder about this, and there seems to be a whole sub-genre of suttas dedicated to one monk who was always asking about this too.

Essential Suttas

Two essential suttas for understanding how to discern the dhamma from the not-dhamma are the Kalama Sutta and the Caṅkī Sutta. These suttas also feature important references for contemplation of the Triple Gem.