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Chapter 4 takes up Buddhist understandings of dhamma or dharma as they were developed in (or better, into) the three baskets of the early Buddhist canon, especially the Pāli canon of the Theravāda tradition. It takes the three baskets' extant collections to have historical implications for understanding how Buddhist dharma was formulated over time. The first section treats Sūtra/Sutta Basket dharma, concentrating on what the Buddha is represented as saying in these “sermons,” particularly in dialogues with Brahmins, highlighting in this respect the Ambaṭṭha Sutta. The second section on Abhidharma/Abhidhamma concentrates on Buddhist “dharma theory,” with its notion of “dharmas plural.” It looks at “dharmas plural” first in Sutta Basket usages and then in scholastic usages by the Theravāda, the influential Sarvāstivādin sect, and the early Mahāyāna. The third part examines Vinaya for its usage of dharmas as “rules,” its emphasis on consensus with respect to recitation of the Prātimokṣa/Pātimokkha code, possible correlations between Vinaya and the so‐called “little republics,” and the treatment of Vinaya rules in the “Buddhist Genesis” narrative of the emergence of householder life, celibacy, and kingship recounted in the Aggañña Sutta.

This chapter explores the didactic and soteriological function of classical Chinese poetics that take shape in Snyder's desire to transmit the Buddhist dharma, so that it may shed some light on how different notions of emptiness produce radically different poetic praxis. But by chasing the intertextual tail of emptiness through Snyder's work and theories of translation, this chapter shows how he transforms concepts of emptiness drawn from Zen and Yogācāran Buddhist discourses into a unique unifying grammar in his own poetic productions. Using Snyder's explicitly Buddhist body of work, this chapter argues that his writing reflects and reframes Zennist readings of classical Chinese poetry found in Dogen's Shōbōgenzō, the Zenrin kushu, along with Snyder's own Zennist reading of the Tang poet Han Shan. Lastly, this chapter maps the ways in which Snyder's Zen reading of classical Chinese poetry draws upon and further codifies specific Zennist interpretive habits.

An inscription on a Chinese statue of Amitabha dated 746 AD reads, “As a matter of general principle, the highest truth is devoid of any image. But if there were no image, there would be no possibility for truth to manifest itself. The highest principle is without words. But if there were no words, how could the principle be known?” From the point of view of an art historian and through the example of a short animated film proposal, this essay investigates the ways in which strategies specific to animation, such as narrativity, metaphorical potency, metamorphosis, and most importantly, the capacity to penetrate intangible dimensions, mitigate these challenges. The author argues that animation offers a more efficacious medium than static images and theory in evincing Buddhist dharma; namely, that in the process of depicting Buddhist thought and practice, both the activity and product of animation become sites of merit-making and means of spiritual transformation in themselves.