Whose Dharma Is This ?

Here, the vagueness of the genitive is deceitful and its investigation, provocative: ‘The Dharma of the Buddha’ doesn’t mean that the former belongs to the latter,
Nor that the latter has any paternity over the former.

Here, it is even less about some cosmic address: the Dharma of the Buddha, as one would say the bakery of the village.
Now, the provocation: the Dharma that the Buddha teaches (the Buddhadharma) is also the Dharma that other beings discover, and the Dharma that other beings teach.
I find a baguette in my village bakery, I also find a baguette in all the good town and village bakeries.
The confection is different, its quality, the authenticity, baked over a wood-fire here, or the packaging for frozen food there, but it is still a baguette.
Thus, the cultural flavors more or less happily embellish the teaching, but do not change its deepest nature.
Let’s go the other way now: the genuine teaching, from whatever mouth it comes out, is always the Dharma of the Buddha. Not that there is plagiarism, mimicry or anachronism, there is simply the universality of the Dharma, the universality of the Buddha.

©FJ April 2022
Groupe de Pratique
Recueils — Participations
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