`dharma` is the term we buddhists use to designate the (sacred) teachings of Buddha. Would you use `Coran` or `Bible` to name your project? Probably not.
It would have been a good idea to take more time to reflect on your choice of name.
I'm also a Buddhist (a savaka, technically). I have no issues with the name. If the name causes one person to learn what the Dharma is and to stop harming themselves and others, that's a great thing.
The main things that give me pause are (a) unadorned use of the word out of context and (b) the general level of scamminess I associate with crypto projects.
I take all cryptocurrency projects case by case. This one appears straight up as it's proposing an actual protocol and the associated token actually addresses a problem. Being YC backed ups its cred too.
..or the name becomes so diluted by it's usage everywhere, where appropriate and not (like a name of lending platform), that it loses all meaning. Like word Zen by now.
The only reason people began using words like Zen, Dharma, Buddha, Nirvana for commercial products that had nothing to do with the meaning of these words is because these words had certain power to them that businesses wanted to capitalize on. Like a brand, if you will. That power was given to these words by countless compassionate acts and lives of many remarkable individuals, so that these words may guide someone who is seeking close to the answers.
Making a financial platform using that name is just disrespectful. It's like naming your dog with your mother-in-law's name. Not an end of the world, but still, pretty distasteful.
> The only reason people began using words like Zen, Dharma, Buddha, Nirvana for commercial products that had nothing to do with the meaning of these words is because these words had certain power to them that businesses wanted to capitalize on.
Or Karma. That one really has been beaten to death online (and offline too).
But in the end they're just words, they mean what we want them to mean and words were always fluid, you can't nail them down and expect them to remain nailed down over a long period of time.
Just a few more examples: gay, mouse, dial, heaven, respect and so on. That some people assign more value to some words than to others is the root cause of a lot of misery in the world.
The word dharma means one's duty according to their place in their cosmic order. Assigning it to sacred teachings of anyone is not correct. There is a word _dhammam_ in pali lang that is from around the area buddha lived, which has different meaning from dharma, is used to refer budhha's teachings.
I'm sorry but Dharma in its original context, that being India, is far more a broad term than simply a religious one. For example the conduct of the corporate form in Ancient, and Medieval India was often defined by certain publicly stated terms that the corporation/guild and its members had to follow, this was called "Sreni Dharma" (Sreni being the guild/corporation, and Dharma being the terms it must conduct itself by).
So Dharma is a very broad term, and quite apt in this case.
Thank you for voicing your uneasiness with the name. Dharma in Hinduism connotates ""right way of living". I am aghast that what is sacred to us reduced to a marketing tag line.
Couldn't these people look up wikepedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma , to realize this name for a crypo app is not going to go well ? Or are they intentionally tone deaf ?
The idea of Hinduism is nonexistent. What unifies all "religious" and scientific/mathematical theories in India, is the fundamental idea of Dharma. Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, and the various schools that are characterized as "Hinduism", all in one way or another layout vast theories about "Dharma" is, and give their own varying definitions of it.
Calling this a "Dharma Protocol" is more apt than people think, and I'm glad that you used the term.
The fundamental ideas of Sikhism , Jainism and Buddism are not equivalent and Dharma in in each of these religions means aderence to their idea of the righteous way.These ideas are distinct and practitioner of these religions would dissmiss your theory of unified dharma. There are several Sikh scholars that I know of who could help you with your understanding of Sikhism and how it is different from Hinduism. However, a visit to a Sikh temple would be a better idea.
>>idea of Hinduism is nonexistent
This assertion is breathtakingly arrogant . Granted that Hinduism does not fit neatly within the traditional Judeo Christian definition of religions but this is absurdly ignorant. The Brits and the Portugese tried tried very hard to erase Hinduism and failed.( The Portugese went so far to claim Hindus dont have souls -- but that is a discussions for another day). Please note that I do not speak for Hinduism but your assertions are too absurd to ignore.
To give you an analogy -- you are saying the idea of apples is nonexistent. There are RoyalDelicious, Gala, Honeycrisp etc etc, -- but there is no apple .
My initial objection was to crpto snake-oil salesmen using eastern sounding names to disguise their snake oil and sadly they will succeed until this baloon pops.
I never said that each were equivalent, I'm saying that they're using the same vocabulary to describe and translate their ideas. That's it.
That is to say there is no universal, central, or dogmatic theory of "dharma", nor perhaps a central agreed upon theory of Dharma, just a vague conception of what it is for each individual interpreter. Whether that interpreter be Buddha, Nanak, Shankaracarya, or the various other Indic philosophers is irrelevant. What unifies them simply is the technical language used to describe their philosophy, and define their own ideas.
So no. I'm not saying all religions in India are the same. All I'm saying is that the various philosophers within that geography used a similar set of vocabulary, and a similar set of ideas to construct their own thought structures in competition, opposition, or in general progression with each other.
So in that sense, there is at least something that makes them closer to each other than they are separate.
>> What unifies them simply is the technical language used to describe their philosophy, and define their own ideas
Nearly all religions use the same technical language to spread their ideas. Islam, Hinduism,Sikhism, Christianity -- all of them -- talk about God, meaning of life , yada yada yada. Does that make them closer and their philosophical differences trivial?
You had begun your argument by saying that the idea of Hinduism doesn't exist . Now you are claiming all religions are closer than they are separate. You are changing the subject.
Though I would agree that most adherents of any religion would not like their language to be used for selling Crypto hokum. If these guys had called themselves "Gospel protocol", almost everyone would see through them.
Here how about this. What do you think of the term "dharma" being used in the context of the corporate form/guilds in India? It is a well documented fact that Srenis would have to declare their Dharma by which they, and their members, had to abide by, and was sanctioned by the Monarch. This was simply called Sreni-Dharma.
Furthermore that's a false equivalence as they do not use the same vocabulary. I challenge you to find any of the Sanskrit based word in any other religions around the world other than the ones found in India, and no translations do not count. That is to say Indic religions have their own jargon.
So no. Not ALL religions are closer to each other. Just the ones in India. There's NOT a single unifying factor that united Indian religions. So yah. There's a great difference between Vaishnavs, Shaivites, Mimamska, Nyaya-kins, Shaivites in Kashmir, Tantrics of Himalayas, Lingayats, Arya-samaj, Bhakti, ISKON, etc. There's, I believe, literal thousands of philosophically nuanced schools of thought that are incredibly different from each other. So again, please tell me where Hindus are the same. Again the ONLY thing, remember, ONLY, is the vocabulary, ideas, etc. that these philosophically distinct ideas share. That's it.
>>It is a well documented fact that Srenis would have to declare their Dharma by which they, and their members, had to abide by, and was sanctioned by the Monarch. This was simply called Sreni-Dharma.
I am not sure as to how this is relevant. Shrenis were guilds and shrenidharma obviously refers to a code of conduct for members. This could have been relevant to use in this context except that it is clearly half assed attempt to use an ancient word. Dharma should have been used as suffix in this context; shrenidharma = guild + rules. Other exmaples of use are atithidharma, kuladharma etc... So not only are they appropriating "Dharma" to make themselves look cool, they are also using it incorrectly.
>>There's NOT a single unifying factor that united Indian religions...so again, please tell me where Hindus are the same
This is simply not true. Take tantra for example ( I am not sure about Himalayan Tantra ) Tantrik traditions and scriptures are derived from both Shaivites and and Vaishnavs, with neither schools laying exclusive claims on Tantrik tradtions. I am not alluding to Buddhist Mahayana 's tantrik traditions.
Arya Samaj grew as a reformation of the 19th century Hinduism. My grandfather was a Arya Samaji but not my grandmother who was a vaishnav. The one thing that western scholars of Hinduism often miss is the fluidity of devotion -- by that I mean Hindus are equally at ease in perfoming pujas of deities from diffent schools. In hindu households, you will find Rama, Shiva , Ganesha , Durga and Krishna and they would all be worshipped. The differences of interpretation of Geeta and Vedas are left to scholars to argue but to claim that they have nothing in common is just wild exaggeration.
Sikhs worship Shakti and Gurunanak makes references, even praises, "Hindu" gods, ideas, and symbols. Does that make them Hindus as well?
Furthermore, you do agree that Dharma isn't just a religious term. Right?
But I do agree with you on appropriation. Indians need to own the term, and define what it is, so that Sanskritic/Indic terms used in the west are well defined. In that sense a sort of sanskritization* of English can take place, just as there's a latinization of Indian languages.
Perhaps you are conflating the relationship between Sikhism and Hinduism with relationship between Vaishnavs and Shaivites. Sikhism categorically rejects Hinduism and I would respect their wishes. Vaishnavs, Shaivites, ISKON jostle/debate to be viewed as the true interpreters of the scriptures. They do not reject their relationship. And that makes them Hindus.
Another interesting semi-related one I remember about the Bible: the "Virgin" Mary was translated from the Hebrew "almah", which just means a young unmarried woman (not necessarily a virgin in the way we define it).
Interesting, I didn't know the origins of the words Koran or Dharma.
I don't know much about biblical hermeneutics, but wasn't the New Testament written in Greek? Also, based upon Church tradition and history, even if the word didn't explicitly mean virgin, it is certainly understood to mean it with relation to Mary.
It looks like the Greek version is the point where 'almah' got translated as 'parthenos', a word that more specifically means virgin.
It's definitely become a key part of the tradition. I'm now agnostic, but went to a Catholic school growing up, so I know well how much importance is placed on it. I've just always found it interesting how such a core belief of the most popular religion in history might (or might not) have been based on a simple mistranslation.
How would you feel about Bible.io being a company page for a crypto project promoting the Bible protocol? You have to admit it sounds a little confusing, no?
Sure, naming a cryptocurrency protocol "Bible" would be confusing at first. But if it was meant to be the Bible of protocols or the one protocol to use, I would understand the gist of its name.
