Non-Dharmas

Non-dharmas, according to the Buddha, "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."

Just as dharmas are formed by discriminations of the mind - the mind separating specific "things" out of the formless substance of the universe - non-dharmas are pure fabrications of the mind, things imagined that are not even part of the formless universe to start with.  This includes not only the "pink elephants" the Buddha mentions (horns on a rabbit, etc.), but also abstract concepts such as patriotism, iambic pentameter, tax-exempt status, and (for you geologists out there) chronostratigraphy.

But even though they are imagined or abstract and have no concrete reality, non-dharmas, or imaginary dharmas as I prefer to call them, can cause us real joy and real suffering.  I once heard the Buddhist writer Stephen Bachelor provide a great example of how non-dharmas manifest themselves into our life.  Apparently, he and his wife Martine bought a house somewhere in France, but the house had a large barn in the back yard.  It blocked the sunlight most of the day, and obstructed the view of the surrounding countryside, but since the local feral cats were using it as a shelter at nights, they left the barn up for a while.  Finally, they decided it just wasn't worth it anymore, and had it demolished and hauled away, and immediately rejoiced over the brighter yard and the better views. They spent a lot of time in their backyard afterwards, enjoying the "no-barn."

As Bachelor cleverly points out, the "no-barn" was a non- or imaginary dharma.  If you or I visited their house for the first time after the demolition, we would not have seen a barn, but we would not have been aware of the "no-barn" that was giving them so much satisfaction.  The "no-barn" was a non-dharma that arose in their minds as a result of their past experiences, their memory, their desires, and their aspirations, and while we would not have seen a barn, without their past, we would not have seen their "no-barn" either.  The "no-barn" was an non-dharma that existed only in their mind.

I'm sure you could think of similar examples, as well as instances when non-dharmas have caused suffering instead of happiness.  But non-dharmas are not the problem, as Red Pine points out.  The problem is attachment to the distinctions on which the non-dharmas are based, as well as mistaking the non-dharmas for that which is real.