ABSTRACT
This chapter describes many meanings of the word dhamma or dharma. Now in the Sakyan message the man was thus "becoming in the Way", the man thus going was he who walked according to dhamma, dhammena; according, that is, to that hidden Divinity, Who, in virtue of his manhood, he was. There is nothing more solemnly deliberate in acts ascribed to Gotama, than his confessing worship of dhamma, as That under Whom he vowed to live. Again, dhamma is often translated, especially by men of Buddhist countries, by "law". Still less suitable is "doctrine", or "the Dhamma" suitable in the case of the very first five converts, who were after the Utterance of the Message, instructed and admonished in dhamma. The singular absence in the First Utterance of any reference to a supra-mundane mandate has often been commented on.
