Dhammas

[Otto]

Sue Hamilton in Identity and Experience defines dhamma as 'knowable', with good justification. I cannot recommend that book enough.

I'll have to examine that and other texts. Thank you.

[Saengnapha]

Whatever supports something puts it in its place if we are speaking about essential support. If one takes away some essential support, then whatever is essentially supported becomes amorphous. The support that is meant here is not different from an act of binding, such as when the law binds one to act in conformity.

I wouldn't say becomes amorphous, but rather it ceases and is replaced by something wholly different yet is still present as a part (a possibility) of something more general, i.e. further out on the horizon of meaning. Note: I think a distinction can be made between essential support and ontological support, i.e. while wholes vanish, parts linger -- thus enabling a more general thing to endure in its essence. Cf. thitassa aññathattam ('invariance under transformation') as a fundamental characteristic of a dhamma.

For example, my presence in this room is made up of an actual proprioceptive field in the foreground with a number of possible proprioceptive fields in the background, all of which "bind" together to bring about the whole of being in this room. Were I to step into another room, my being in this room would cease, i.e. vanish, absolutely and be replaced by my being in another room. Yet though I am now in another room, I am still in the house that constitutes the more general whole of all the rooms that it is made of, one of which I happen to be in.

I think you've just described how the dream of existence works. Subtract the 'I' and you subtract the subject and object dichotomy, yet one can still walk from room to room. Without a subject, there can be no object, hence, no dhammas can be identified. The identifier is gone and is neither subject to any fabrication of anything. Far-gone.