Dharmette: Qualities of the Dharma (4 of 5) Onward Leading
AudioDharma - www.audiodharma.org
In this episode of AudioDharma's 'Dharmette' series, the speaker explores the fourth quality of the Dharma: its onward-leading nature. Drawi
Key takeaways
- The Dharma operates as an innate, non-intentional intelligence that arises from the meeting of sensation and awareness.
- Human life inherently moves in two directions: toward wholeness and growth or toward contraction and separation; the Dharma helps discern which path is unfolding.
Main topics
- The fourth quality of the Dharma: onward leading
- Intuitive intelligence beyond conscious thought
Notable quotes
The Dharma is that which guides us to what is wholesome, guides us to the growth, guides us to the letting go, guides us back together into the whole.
It's work to be partial. It's work to be separated from ourselves.
Conclusion
The episode concludes with a call to practice mindful awareness throughout daily life—pausing briefly, closing one's
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit our website at audiodharma.org. Hello Speaker 1 (0:12) and welcome to this series on the qualities, characteristics of the Dharma. There are five of them and today I'll do the fourth one. The first is that whatever the Dharma is, it's something that's perceivable in your perceptions. You can feel it, see it. The second is that it's, so that puts it here. Only in the present can you really perceive things. That's where our senses are operating, here. The second is that it's immediate. It's not in the future, it's not in the past. In a sense, it's not tied to time, it's just the full present here. That's where it's found. And then it calls our attention. Here, look here, look here. Speaker 1 (1:18) Reality calls for attention. The reality inside of us, our body, hearts, and mind. If you're very sensitive, you can feel what wants attention, what wants to be cared for, attended to, or what messages need to be listened to. Speaker 1 (1:35) And then, for today, the Dharma, whatever it is, it's onward leading. And whatever it is that I'm suggesting this week, it's a form of intelligence. It's a deep intelligence which is not our ordinary mental intelligence that we identify as being smart, capable in a kind of conscious way. It belongs something to a deeper level of our human existence, human processing. that is closer to the sensation level of experience. It's closer to the way, the coordinated way in which all our senses operate in unison in a sense, or in cooperation with each other, to provide a kind of deeper intelligence, an intelligence which is deeper than the conscious mind. Speaker 1 (2:27) And one that we can't really control or claim for ourselves or we can't really engineer. We have to kind of tune into it and be in harmony with it, listen to it, go along with it. And this is the intelligence that's onward leading. And it's onward leading to two big ways. Being a human being is constantly something in process. There are developmental models of human growth that continue right up until we die. All along the whole life we're developing and changing in all kinds of ways. And sometimes the changes we go through are deleterious. We get caught and stuck in certain things, in resentments. We get caught in certain mindsets of self-criticism. certain mindsets of somehow caught