Manifestation & Dharma

The word dharma is used in many ways. For our purposes here, dharma is a way of being unique to an individual. It’s uncovered through steady attention - moving through layers of conditioning that cling like barnacles, to find what’s underneath it all.

There’s a beautiful story of the Zen monk Ryokan that illustrates dharma. Ryokan’s nephew was spending a lot of money on prostitutes, and the rest of his family became concerned or scandalised, so they asked Ryokan to come down from his hermitage to set his nephew straight. Ryokan spent some time with the nephew and never once wagged his finger at him or told him to change his ways. When the visit was over, the nephew bent to lace up his uncle’s sandals. As he did, he felt a warm drop of moisture fall and looked up to see the old master’s eyes full of tears. On seeing these tears - so the story goes - the nephew decided to give up his brothel habit.

But why? One answer would be: because Ryokan embodied his dharma with his nephew - his deep Self-knowing. And whenever this happens, the depth and care and blessings of the world become more available in the experience of beings. It’s likely that anything that Ryokan could have done to teach or correct his nephew would have accomplished nothing. Regardless, this kind of doing - telling someone they should act differently - was not part of Ryokan’s way. His way - his dharma - reflected the compassion that runs deep in consciousness: compassion which is blind to judgement of good or bad behaviour and surges to self-expression for anyone in pain. So this was part of Ryokan’s dharma - to embody compassion in this way, as part of his being. And being in compassion - not judgement - was what the nephew most needed.

So we could say one’s dharma participates in the layer of reality present in all beings which reflexively and naturally cares for the world beyond the self. Here self-actualisation (or soul-actualisation) might be a kind of side-effect. In this sense, dharma might be understood as the gift(s) that life wants to offer through us. It involves knowing the wilderness realm of the self that stands outside the ego. What qualities of Life want to move through you to benefit the world? Some of these qualities can be so nuanced that they barely have names. Yet still: they can be felt. Often, the sense of dharma involves some version of qualities respected in spiritual tradition: healing, protection, compassion, insight and so on. Only - those qualities making their particular home in you - expressing through you in an unique way.

Dharma is recognised from within. But it is also understood as a kind of alignment with the Divine Order of the Universe. In Chinese tradition, the word Te reflects something of the quality of dharma. Te is the virtue of manifesting the will of the universe - whether in exorcising a demon or buying an orange. Like Dharma, Te is in part knowable by all the things it’s not. It’s not being centering one’s life and motives around fear, the need to prove oneself, duty, self-hatred or the desire for comfort or pleasure. It is in some ways what remains as a motivating force when these and many others don’t hold an spasming grip on the mind.

What is a wish made with reference to one’s dharma. The point people often make is that such wishes are made for the benefit of others. But this idea can create tension where a person tries to wilfully ignore their own needs for that of the larger world. A dharma wish is one where the nourishment of the world and nourishment of the wisher are one and the same. The wish has no quality of greed, no grasping sense of “I want this for me”. But neither does it push away the abundance which we all take part in by being part of the world.

In part a dharma-wish is recognisable through what it is not. It doesn’t include, for example, a sense of proving oneself. Other peoples’ positive or negative regard is irrelevant to dharma, as is any strategy to build a sense of worth through others’ validation. What’s left may be involve wishing for the opportunity for the deepest part of oneself to express and know itself in ways it longs for: with beings and landscapes, stillness and silence. Dharma knows itself and its instinct is not to lay dormant, but to be and express in the world. Even if that expression is simply a gleam in the eyes or a tear falling on sandals.