Dharmaparyāya

dharmaparyāya (P. dhammapariyāya; T. chos kyi rnam grangs; C. fa men; J. hōmon; K. pŏmmun 法門). Translated as "dharma teaching," "dharma discourse," etc.

The 84000 editors state:

The Sanskrit word paryāya regularly has the sense of “method,” “procedure,” and “approach,” but here it means simply “Dharma teaching,” “Dharma discourse,” or, more literally, “approach to the Dharma.” The Chinese 法門 fa men (lit. “door to the Dharma”) conveys the sense of “access/approach” and, by extension, “teaching.” The Tibetan rnam grangs can be misread as having something to do with “enumeration.”

The Princeton Dictionary states:

As implied in the Pāli interpretation of the term as “an explanation of one thing that stands for many,” these dharmaparyāya may entail types of discourse (P. kathā) that are both indirect (P. sapariyāya), and thus not meant to be taken literally, as when the Buddha refers to a person (P. puggala; S. pudgala) or a self (P. atta; S. ātman); and direct (P. nippariyāya), and thus able to be construed literally and without interpretation. Since the term involves ways of framing the instruction to fit the needs of the target audience, dharmaparyāya has close connections to upāyakauśalya, “skill in means,” or “stratagems.”

Jaehee Han states:

According to Skilling (Skilling 2014–2015, p. 49n1; 2021, pp. 37–38), the term dharmaparyāya (P. dhammapariyāya, T. chos kyi rnam grangs) is the earliest term used for the titles of Buddhist texts, the surviving evidence of which can be found in King Aśoka’s “Bairāṭ-Calcutta” inscription. It is probably used to indicate “a self-contained sermon of the Buddha or others, which is described internally, in the very text itself, by the Buddha or others (email from Peter Skilling, 13 July 2021).”

It is also likely that the term dharmaparyāya or just paryāya was later replaced by editors with the well-known term sutra (P. sutta, G. sutra, Tib. mdo) to give authority to them as legitimate buddhavacana in the process of compilation, or rather “canonization,” of Buddhist texts.

Sources

• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 
• Jaehee Han (2020), The Sky as a Mahāyāna Symbol of Emptiness and Generous Fullness, A Study and Translation of the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā Volumes 1 and 2, Phd dissertation, University of Oslo; available at: https://dongguk.academia.edu/JaeheeHan