Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s4.11

c8.s4.11

By a natural development of meaning Dhamma comes to be selected as the description of the Buddha’s doctrine, but equally it can be applied to the views of other teachers; in the first use it is often qualified as the good law, or the noble (ariya) law, a term in which it is unwise to see any ethnical consciousness, or the law of the good man. In the compound Dhamma-vinaya we have an expression for dogma and disciplinary regulation, or, as one idea, the teaching in its complete form, for the order is as essential an element of Buddhism or most of the rival faiths as the doctrine itself. The essence of the Buddha’s Dhamma is variously given, though the result is the same; it embraces the four noble truths, or their equivalent, the knowledge of the true character of the empiric world (*sakāya*); the chain of causation; the nature of the aggregates (*khandha*) which constitute the individual as impermanent, of the six senses, and of the six elements including consciousness.