Date: 08/23/2025 08/24/2025
Location: Star Ocean Meditation Center
Teacher: Sara
Dharma Knowledge
The Spirit of Inclusiveness in the Dharma
Inclusiveness in the Dharma is not an emotional stance, nor a moral softness or compromise. It is the result of a clear understanding of causality, cognitive diversity, and conditional differences. It is not a matter of “choosing to be tolerant,” but of recognizing that exclusion has no rational basis once reality is understood correctly.
At its foundation, the Dharma does not treat “right versus wrong sides” as the basic structure of the world. Its concern is not ideological conflict, but whether cognition corresponds to reality. Differences in views, behaviors, and choices arise not from essential distinctions, but from varying conditions, experiences, habits, and levels of understanding. When this is seen clearly, the impulse to exclude loses its footing.
The Dharma’s treatment of views forms the theoretical basis of its inclusiveness. It acknowledges the existence of multiple perspectives, without claiming that all are equally valid. Views are understood as products of specific conditions and stages of understanding, not as enemies to be eliminated. Incorrect views require clarification and examination, not hostility or suppression.
In practice, the Dharma explicitly rejects the imposition of a single standard on all individuals. Throughout his teaching life, the Buddha adapted methods to different people, times, and circumstances. This was not strategic concession, but respect for cognitive diversity. To demand uniform understanding or identical practice from beings with different conditions would itself violate causal reasoning.
Inclusiveness in the Dharma is also evident in its openness to inquiry. The Dharma does not require belief prior to verification. Observation precedes judgment. Doubt, comparison, and repeated testing are not obstacles, but necessary instruments of understanding. Within this framework, disagreement is not a threat, but a means of cognitive correction.
It is crucial to note that inclusiveness in the Dharma is not moral relativism. The Dharma is uncompromising in its causal criteria: views that increase greed, hatred, and delusion inevitably produce suffering; practices that reduce attachment and increase clarity possess liberative value. Inclusiveness does not eliminate evaluation—it rejects evaluation based on identity, allegiance, or group boundaries.
On the social level, the Dharma’s inclusiveness does not arise from egalitarian slogans, but from insight into causal equality. Regardless of origin, status, gender, or culture, all beings operate within the same causal structures and possess the same potential for understanding and liberation. This is not an ethical declaration, but a factual assessment.
Thus, the spirit of inclusiveness in the Dharma is not an added virtue, but a natural consequence of accurate understanding. When one no longer absolutizes one’s own standpoint or treats difference as a threat, inclusiveness requires no deliberate cultivation. It is not a refined attitude, but an inevitable state following cognitive clarity.
