Blog #2 The Overlooked Dharma

Ask any self-respecting spiritual type what “The Dharma” is, and you will be told that it is the teaching of the Buddha. Well that’s partially true. Dharma is not just the teachings of the Buddha; it is also a class of phenomena that the Buddha observed. And what is that classification? Things that are actually true; not imagined. Dharma means truth, law, norm, and what it directly points to is how things really are in our world, free of spin, e.g., the earth orbits around the sun; you were born of your mother’s womb; you will suffer in this life; your body will age; at some point you will die. These are indisputable truths. They are equally true for Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, conspiracy theorists, emperors and salamanders.

What the Buddha pointed us towards was the irrefutable truth of dharma; he made no claim to know all the dharmas—he couldn’t possibly—he didn’t live in every time, and he didn’t experience every individual’s life. He didn’t know the dharma of building Trump Towers—although he certainly knew the dharma of manifesting as a Trump. Dharmas can be mundane observations or cosmic principles—the dharma of an iPhone or the dharma of forgiveness. For sophisticated 21^st century beings who believe truth is just a relativistic term, the possibility that there can be a dharma—a truth that is free of culture, race, time and prejudice—is a gift to the world…and a very provocative one.

The Dharma of Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, also serves as a template for the remaining dharmas. For example, we can see that his Dharma wasn’t based on personal bias—it had to be unequivocally true. For instance, the Dharma does not include statements such as, “That guy down at the end of the bar—that one right there…he is a dick head.” Or, “Your attitude is entirely unacceptable and I don’t have time for you.” Or, “Some people are real downers…you’ve got to stay away from their negative energy.” These are not dharmas; they are our cherished opinions masquerading as non-negotiable truths.

If the Buddha ever made such statements, we would not have respect for him. He didn’t give opinions; he wasn’t ideological; he didn’t offer salvation for believers, nor did he offer eternal damnation for nonbelievers. He simply spoke of the Dharma of how-things-are; untainted by projection or exaggeration.

So what is this Overlooked Dharma? It is dharma that we mortals can experience—dharmas born of the wisdom, experience and clear seeing of our own inherent wakefulness. After all, wakefulness did not only happen in ancient times; there is much modern and ancient Dharma that was not disclosed by the Buddha. There is the Dharma that Jesus taught; the Dharma that Mohammed taught—there is even Dharma on Oprah.

I watched Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday and saw Brené Brown give an outstanding Dharma talk on the subject of trust. I was already familiar with her dharma teachings on shame, so I looked forward to her research and observations on this equally woolly subject. She unpacked the term, trust, and described its seven qualities. You can examine these for yourself if you’d like to do a search on the Internet; but the point is that she was teaching Dharma. She was teaching based on keen observations, not on speculation or opinion.

Another mother-lode of dharma was often expounded by my friend Tom. Tom was an Irishman who loved to tell stories—which always required some embellishing or BS, so he didn’t always speak the Dharma. But when he did, it came out like a sharp sword—inarguable and undeniable. Tom was a streetwise Dharma King. For Tom, who grew up poor and gang-afflicted in Brooklyn, being observant was an essential survival tool. Although Tom was unable to figure himself out at times, he could definitely figure out other people in a New York minute. He couldn’t always discriminate his own bullshit from the truth, but he could see through mine instantaneously—and to my great consternation and benefit, he was unable to keep it to himself.

Here are a couple of my favorite street-wise dharma observations from Tom: “If you are trying to figure out what to do in a difficult situation; first, look at the best thing that could happen, and then look at the worst thing that could happen. Now, make your decision based on that.” Or, “Everyone has positive attributes and everyone has negative attributes. You have more positive attributes than you have negative attributes; that’s why you're a friend.” Because I was willing to ride the angles of refraction off Tom’s insights, I absorbed many great insights and dharmas from him. When I went through my darkest times, I was always amazed that his street-smart observations were as valuable as those of therapists and buddhas.

Because students of the Buddha have such a brilliant example of someone who knew how to discern a dharma, and communicate it clearly, they can err and consider only the Buddha’s Dharma to be sacred. Because the Buddha was a dharma star, it is easy to forget that we, too, are supposed to learn how to discern a dharma for ourselves—not simply adhere to one sacrosanct set of dharmas. When we don’t understand that the spiritual journey is one of learning to discern the truth, we miss a lot of dharmas. We miss a lot of plain truths. We get hemmed in by our sectarian leanings and instead, stop doing the most important thing required of a so-called spiritual person, which is getting to know oneself fully, without recoiling from any uncomfortable truths that may arise.

What benefit is there when we gently and fearlessly know ourselves, and own what we do? We develop genuine compassion—the hallmark of all the world’s great religions and all enlightened human activity. Compassion is born of understanding ourselves, because without it, we cannot truly understand others.

This morning, while conversing with my best friend, we laughed at tales of my dear and wonderful dad who passed away a number of years ago. While being one of the finest people I’ve ever known, he—like the rest of us—had quirks and foibles that sprung loose at the oddest times. I recalled how he, like so many men of his generation, never really got to recognize or acknowledge how much work his spouse did to keep the household running. It wasn’t until my mom passed away that he finally had to come face-to-face with the dharma of how to to operate a wash machine. I remember how sweetly he expressed his long-overdue appreciation for her work, and how very humbling this was for him. I also recalled how my younger sister once had to teach him to actually look at his servers in a restaurant and speak to them like they were regular human beings.

Still, he was a very aware person, and I learned from him that we could reveal our seething irritations and blunders and laugh about how ridiculous we can be at times…like the time he purposely and repeatedly flopped his New York Times on the head of the airline passenger directly in front of him because the man tilted his seat back into my dad’s purported space…or the time we were at a drive-in restaurant, and upon receiving his handful of change, he put it in his mouth rather than putting the ice cream cone there.

We all have our moments where the dharma-of-what-is runs in high contrast to how we’d rather things were. We prefer not to acknowledge our actions at those times when we feel embarrassed about them or their unwanted consequences. (That we hide our embarrassing actions out of fear—that’s an overlooked dharma, too.) But to err is human—we've all had a foot or two in this boat of self-consciousness, trying to protect ourselves from being seen in an unforgiving light. We needn’t pretend things are otherwise.

A dharma occurs when we see the world as it is, free from projections, defensiveness and prejudice. One of the most potent repositories of Dharma is located in the back stacks of our personal library. There, the truth about ourselves is our passkey if we aspire to be fearless and own up to who we are. If we can’t embrace that aspiration, forget about religion, forget about your spiritual quest—none of it is going to flower until we really get to know ourselves.

None of it is going to happen until we fully appreciate our positive attributes, and stop ignoring our negative ones. Yes, it goes both ways—some of us hide from our goodness; some of us hide from our terrible badness. The key to become a genuine spiritual person is to stop lying to yourself about yourself. That’s the first Dharma…the primary Dharma. Without that, our Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Scientology, or secular humanism is just a screen-saver—a glossy and hypnotic diversion while our program rests on pause.

© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson