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merged. This cosmic Dhamma is reflected in the human mind as the aspiration for truth, spiritual beauty, and goodness; it is expressed in human conduct as wholesome bodily, verbal, and mental action. The Dhamma has institutional embodiments as well as expressions in the lives of individuals who look upon it as their source of guidance in the proper conduct of life. These embodiments are both secular and spiritual. Buddhist tradition sees the responsibility for upholding the Dhamma in the secular domain as falling to the legendary wheel-turning monarch (rājā cakkavattī). The wheel-turning monarch is the benevolent ruler who governs his kingdom in accordance with the highest ethical norms (dhammiko dhammarājā) and thereby peacefully unites the world under a reign of universal justice and prosperity. As Text IV,1(1) shows, within the spiritual domain, the Buddha is the counterpart of the wheel-turning monarch. Like the latter, the Buddha relies on the Dhamma and reveres the Dhamma, but whereas the wheel-turning monarch relies upon the Dhamma as principle of righteousness to rule his kingdom, the Buddha relies upon the Dhamma as ethical and spiritual norm to teach and transform human beings and guide them toward proper conduct of body, speech, and mind. Neither the wheel-turning monarch nor the Buddha creates the Dhamma they uphold, yet neither can perform their respective functions without it; for the Dhamma is the objective, impersonal, ever-existent principle of order that serves as the source and standard for their respective policies and promulgations.

As the king of the Dhamma, the Buddha takes up the task of promoting the true good, welfare, and happiness of the world. He does so by teaching the people of the world how to live in accordance with the Dhamma and behave in such a way that they can attain realization of the same liberating Dhamma that he realized through his enlightenment. The Pāli commentaries demonstrate the broad scope of the Dhamma by distinguishing three types of benefit that the Buddha’s teaching is intended to promote, graded hierarchically according to their relative merit:

1. welfare and happiness directly visible in this present life (dị̣hadhamma-hitasukha ), attained by fulfilling one’s moral commitments and social responsibilities;

2. welfare and happiness pertaining to the next life (sampar̄yikahitasukha ), attained by engaging in meritorious deeds;

3. the ultimate good or supreme goal (paramattha), Nibbāna, final release from the cycle of rebirths, attained by developing the Noble Eightfold Path.

While many Western writers on Early Buddhism have focused on this last aspect as almost exclusively representing the Buddha’s original teaching, a balanced presentation should give consideration to all three aspects. Therefore, in this chapter and those to follow, we will be exploring texts from the Nikāyas that illustrate each of these three facets of the Dhamma.

The present chapter includes a variety of texts on the Buddha’s teachings that pertain to the happiness directly visible in this present life. The most comprehensive Nikāya text in this genre is the Sigālaka Sutta (DN 31, also known as the Siṅgalovāda Sutta), sometimes called “The Layperson’s Code of Discipline.” The heart of this sutta is the section on “worshipping the six directions”—Text IV,1(2)—in which the Buddha freely reinterprets an ancient Indian ritual, infusing it with a new ethical meaning. The practice of “worshipping the six directions,” as explained by the Buddha, presupposes that society is sustained by a network of interlocking relationships that bring coherence to the social order when its members fulfill their reciprocal duties and responsibilities in a spirit of kindness, sympathy, and good will. The six basic social relationships that the Buddha draws upon to fill out his metaphor are: parents and children, teacher and pupils, husband and wife, friend and friend, employer and workers, lay follower and religious guides. Each is considered one of the six directions in relation to its counterpart.