Dharma (the teaching)

Dharma (Sanskrit dharma, Pali dhamma) is one of the most important and many-sided words in Buddhism. In its central religious sense it means the Buddha's teaching, the whole body of guidance he gave about suffering and the way out of it. But it carries a second, deeper sense at the same time: the truth or natural order that the teaching points to, the way things actually are. The teaching and the reality it describes share one name because Buddhists understand the teaching to be an accurate map of the actual territory of existence, not a set of arbitrary doctrines.

Dharma is one of the "Three Jewels" that define Buddhist commitment, alongside the Buddha (the awakened teacher) and the Sangha (the community of practitioners). When Buddhists "go for refuge" to these three, taking refuge in the Dharma means relying on this teaching-and-truth as a trustworthy guide out of confusion and suffering.

The word is used flexibly. Sometimes it means the natural law or order of things in general; in some technical contexts (the same word in the plural, dharmas) it even means the basic momentary building-blocks of experience that some Buddhist analysts identified. But for most people, on most occasions, "the Dharma" simply means the Buddha's path and the liberating truth it conveys, something to be studied, practiced, and tested in one's own life rather than merely believed. A useful first definition is: the Dharma is reality as it is, together with the teaching that helps us see it.