Listening to the Dharma
“It is through listening that your mind will turn with faith and devotion, and you will be able to cultivate joy within your mind and make your mind stable. It is through listening that you will be able to cultivate wisdom and be able to remove ignorance … Listening is like a torch that dispels the darkness of ignorance. And if you are able to make your mental continuum wealthy through listening, no one can steal that wealth. It is supreme wealth.” HH Dalai Lama XlV
Generally, Dharma teachings offer a feast for both intuition and intellect. The richness of the spiritual world offers a sumptuous banquet where sanity is honored. Even when a busy, malnourished intellect is warmly invited to relax and listen to the Dharma, it may balk, squirm, and resist, but it absorbs whatever nutrition it can.
The Dharma can never be accused of being stingy, elitist, biased, or bigoted. It has been said that if all you have is a spoon, you will leave with a spoonful. If you come with a cup, you leave with a cupful. If you back up your truck, and fill your pockets, you will leave with all you can carry! It is always a matter of one’s own capacity to hear. Of course, some come with leaky or contaminated containers and some hear better than others.
The true Dharma strikes with deep intuitive resonance. Even the most obvious, practical teachings strike chords that can leave a transcendental echo. The Dharma calls forth good manners. An otherwise arrogant and discursive mind often find itself caught, and suddenly dons an air of humility and respect. Often what is proclaimed is information or logic new to the audience, yet it seems so obviously true that it is accepted without question. Even though one might be hearing a teaching for the first time, the mind thinks to itself, “I already knew that!” while, all around, heads start nodding with recognition, agreement, and pensive smiling.
Listening to the Dharma brings a sense of connectedness and refreshment. It is unlike anything else in my experience. The words and ideas expressed usually seem surprisingly relevant, as if referring directly to a recent personal experience. People often remark that they feel an unnerving sense of nakedness and incredulity after a good Dharma talk, as if the teacher had been spying on their private thoughts. Yet, one senses an underlying kindness that intuitively supports one’s faith in the basic goodness of humanity.
Basically, the Dharma arouses what is known in Sanskrit as prajna, the best of intellect. Prajna offers us the opportunity to look into our own mind and appreciate its essential qualities. Studying Dharma should never be a matter of amassing historical or sociological facts or accumulating witty and interesting tidbits of knowledge to be served up at our next soiree. Rather, studying the Dharma is studying ourselves. Thus, awakening prajna is more like disrobing in front of a mirror, in that it gives us genuine, unbiased feedback.
Prajna points out our basic goodness, even while exposing layers of self-doubt, arrogance and avoidance. As neuroses are gradually peeled away, it allows us to step bravely into the light of primal awareness with confidence and dignity.
Prajna comes in many forms. It can be like sunlight thawing the frozen rigidity of long-held assumptions, or like a sword capable of penetrating whatever egoic filters present themselves. The more we listen, practice meditation and reflect wisely on the teachings, the more prajna is awakened. As discernment is sharpened and insight aroused, prajna is expressed in more and more situations and takes a wider variety of forms, leaving the practitioner fewer and fewer places to hide.
As prajna is aroused, the awakening process naturally begins to infiltrate daily life. If we are open and listening, insights can percolate within any mundane activity. It is common for a listener to start experiencing wakeful reflections in unexpected places and surprising ways, as his or her thinking mind is suddenly jolted out of its ordinary trance-like deceptions.
The development of prajna happens naturally, but also requires some discipline. Many people are reluctant to engage with the Dharma because, particularly in the beginning, the threat of having one’s trip exposed is intimidating. The efforts and habit patterns we construct to protect our vulnerability may seem essential and healthy, until they turn out to be painfully self-destructive.
But, that is precisely why we need the sword of prajna: to cut through self-deception. This sword is liberating and, when properly wielded, ultimately joyous. Imagine what it might be like to be freed of delusion, such that thinking mind and listening mind are freed to work together at their healthy best. It would be like discovering a fresh set of clear and inquisitive eyes that see beyond bias and confusion, a new set of ears that hear beyond distortion and fallacy, and a genuinely fresh, non-discursive mind, freed from the net of conceptualization. Imagine your mind at its finest, where precise and sincere immediacy and spacious, egoless awareness come together like two sides of a blade forming the finest razor’s edge.