Dharmas and Non-Dharmas

In the Lankavatara Sutra, the Buddha said, "Lord of Lanka, the appearances of beings are like paintings; they are not conscious and not subject to karma.  The same is true of dharmas and non-dharmas."  Let's not be unclear about anything.  The appearances of beings are not conscious or subject to karma, but what does the Buddha mean by "dharmas" and "non-dharmas?"  

Earlier in the sutra, King Ravana asked the Buddha, "What constitutes a dharma, and what constitutes a non-dharma?"  You won't find this question, or its answer, in the edited version of D.T. Suzuki's translation, but it appears in Red Pine's version.

King Ravana certainly wasn't asking what the word "dharma" meant. It was a very common concept at that time, and the best translation of the Sanskrit word "dharma" that I've heard is "what one believes to be true or real."  The teachings of the Buddha are dharmas if one believes them to be true; beings and things are dharmas if one believes them to be real, and the appearances of beings and things are dharmas if one believes those to be real.  So King Ravana was asking exactly what it was that the Buddha said was just an illusion.

"A dharma," the Buddha answered, "is whatever ordinary people and followers of lesser and heterodox paths imagine.  Basically, they think a dharma has existence and substance and arises from causes.  Such things must be abandoned and avoided.  Don't engage in the projection of appearances or become attached to what are perceptions of your own mind.   The things people grasp, such as clay pots, lack any real substance.  To view dharmas like this is to abandon them,"

Dharmas aren't the problem, Red Pine points out.  The problem is attachment to the distinctions on which the dharmas are based.  

"And what, Lord of Lanka, is a non-dharma?," the Buddha continues. "This refers to what has no discernible body of its own, what has no distinguishable characteristics, what is not subject to causation, and what offers no basis for views of its existence or nonexistence."

"Non-dharmas are things like horns on a rabbit, an ass, a camel, or a horse, or the off-spring of a barren woman.  Such things lack any form or appearance and cannot be perceived.  They are merely names talked about according to convention.  They are not things that can be grasped, like a clay pot.  And just as what is discriminated as existing should be abandoned, what cannot be known by any form of consciousness should also be abandoned."