All the teachings of the Buddha can be summed up in one word: dhamma. There is no term in Buddhist terminology wider than dhamma. This is so, because everything “inside and outside” the universe, conditioned or unconditioned, good or bad, relative or absolute, Samsara or Nibbana is included in this term. Dhamma or Dharma in Sanskrit includes everything, Reality itself. Once Buddha was asked:

What do you teach?

I teach Dhamma, he said. This Dhamma I teach,

is unlike anything that the world has ever seen,

beyond all imagination. 

Dhamma is the liberating law discovered and proclaimed by the Buddha, summed up in the Four Noble Truths.

Why is Dhamma so important to teach? Because it leads to direct knowledge, to complete elimination of suffering and to Nibbana: the deathless element, the highest happiness, the absolute non-arising, the absolute peace. Because Dhamma, the Teaching of the Buddha, is the highest purpose of life, the only accurate map of the world and existence, physical and mental! Because only Dhamma is able to free people from Samsara!

How can we be so sure?

We can be so sure only by personal experience. “Come and see for yourself”, Buddha said. Then and only then we are beyond religion, beyond philosophy, beyond science, beyond anything because we have direct experience. Then we don’t have to believe, we don’t have to ask anybody, we don’t have to agree or disagree because we Know! and this absolute Knowledge, pañña, is based upon direct experience, often called “insight”.

The way to experience Truth is the Noble Eightfold Path.

This Noble Eightfold Path is the Rule of Dhamma.

Nowadays we have a complete chaos of religions, directions, gurus, philosophical views, theories, legends … After many gurus and teachings when one listens to the Dhamma, one realizes that Dhamma is the only adequate teaching, the only foundation, security and protection one can find. How is that? That is so, because things suddenly come into place, arrange themselves into perfect order, and build a reasonable, rational, and accurate structure. This indisputedly correct and unsurpassable Teaching is what we have been looking for, not knowing what it was.

Listening to the Dhamma, teaching it, reciting it, and examining its meaning is an occasion for entering the irreversible path to Nibbana, but one has to listen properly – with a respectful, focused and open mind, because Dhamma is enumeration and analysis of all phenomena and processes, showing and explaining the conditional relations between them.

After that, with practice, one experiences exactly as it is said or written in the books and then one knows for sure that what was written is True. The belief of the correctness of the Buddha and his teaching, Dhamma, grows and deepens and one becomes absolutely confident that Nibbana is possible, “something” that can be attained. This is so because Dhamma is true, realistic, and going the right direction; because if one follows it and lives by it, he or she will take exactly the same journey to Nibbana the Buddha did!

So take Dhamma seriously as

only Dhamma is to take us out of all Suffering!

What then is dhamma?