Guided Meditation: Opening to the natural flow of Dhamma; Dharmette: Dhamma is naturally flowing towards freedom

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Opening to the natural flow of Dhamma;Dhamma is naturally flowing towards freedom. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 26, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Opening to the natural flow of Dhamma

Good morning, good day everyone, and good to be with you all again. Thank you for the chat messages and warm greetings. I am happy to be here from the Bay Area, California, the land of the Ohlone^[1] people.

As we get started for today, throughout this whole week we've been unfolding the six qualities of the Dharma. I want to do a short recap, and then we'll do our meditation together.

The qualities start with reverential recognition of the Buddha, who taught the Dharma very well—complete and accessible. Quoting David again, who started this week for us, what flows out are the qualities of the Dharma: it is visible here and now, direct, immediate, and inviting for one to come and see for oneself.

In our guided meditations, we've been using this arriving sequence that I learned from one of my teachers as a part of a broader practice method called "naturally arising clarity and samādhi^[2]." I think this dovetails very well with the particular quality that I will bring in today: the naturally unfolding, onwardly leading nature of the Dharma. It flows onward like a stream or a river flowing towards the ocean.

In this meditation, we'll do our arriving sequence, but then I'll point out a little bit of this natural flow of the Dharma that may become available to us. Let's sit together.

As the sound of the bell fades away... arriving.

Arriving into sati^[3]. Sati that we can feel and sense in the quiet sense of being present. When we're present, we can know what arises in the present moment, and what passes away in the present moment. And when we're present, there is a felt sense of coming alive to meet the lived moments that are here and now. Maybe something inside has a little bit of a lit-up feeling. Maybe the mind is bright.

Arriving into the here and now, because the Dharma is directly visible here and now. Mindfulness front and center. Mindfulness all around. Let the mindfulness become big, so the sense gates contact can be received by sati. You feel the immediacy of the sense contact in a raw way. You're settling inside the experience to know them.

There is a felt sense of being available—available to life. And we're not randomly available to the pursuits of the grasping mind. We know our hearts and minds are aligned with the Buddhadharma. Choosing to align with the qualities of the Dharma starts the weather of goodness of the Dharma. Well taught by the Buddha, the Dharma is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.

As we align with the Buddhadharma, notice the effects in the body here and now. Maybe the body can settle, rest down. The heart is at ease. There may be an uplift in the torso. Present, available, and aligned. Let yourself feel the goodness of this.

There may be a grounded feeling—gathered and collected. Sati is established as sammā sati^[4], a wholesome presence, open to receive the felt sense in the body. Maybe resting your attention with the movements of the breath, sensations in the body. Let the breath flow naturally. Relaxing the doing energy. Resting in the knowing, letting things be.

So the nature of the mind can reveal itself without the selfing trying to tinker with it. There are natural capacities in the Dharma that can know, can recognize, and discern. Let the Dharma reveal itself naturally.

Might you notice the inevitability of the pain and the heartaches of being human? And there is a natural responsiveness that is free of resistance or demand. Kindness and compassion naturally spring up.

It's clear that our judgments, our blames, and our shame about what may be unpleasant that's happening—that's the second arrow^[5]. When it is seen, the second arrow falls away on its own. This is the nature of the Dharma: seeing clearly. Choosing non-suffering over suffering is a natural choice.

The Dharma is onwardly leading towards freedom, when what blocks the flow vanishes.

Grateful for the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha^[6]. Grateful for a practice and a path that's made available to us. And of course, there will be many moments of our lives when we lose our touch with the natural flow of the Dharma. This is why we choose to practice—practicing as best as we're able in the midst of our lives, as it is.

Right here and now, we are stepping into the stream again and again. May the flow of the Dharma benefit this heart, this mind, and this body. May the flow of Dharma flow onwardly to touch all beings everywhere. May all beings be happy, washed by the goodness of the Dharma. May all beings be peaceful, nourished by the goodness of the Dharma. And may all beings be free, onwardly flowing to the vast ocean.

Dharmette: Dhamma is naturally flowing towards freedom

Thank you, dear friends, for practicing together.

As I mentioned earlier in this week, we've been exploring the six qualities of the Dharma. I mentioned at the beginning of our sit that these six qualities have a relationship to them. One way to see these six qualities is like streams weaving together into a river flowing. There are six aspects, and they can also be seen as a mandala^[7]. They are different facets of the mandala, interconnected and weaving together in support of the possibility of freedom and well-being.

Another way to see these qualities is that they are like a natural unfolding process of the Dharma. It unfolds itself like a flowing stream. This is the quality that I will be exploring today, called the natural flow of the Dharma. It is opanayiko^[8], and that's what follows what we've been exploring in the Pali Canon suttas.

There are many suttas that illustrate this kind of flow, and I want to read just a couple of them to share this perspective.

Buddhānussati: Recollection of the Buddha

The first one is from the Anguttara Nikaya 6.10, and it starts with an actual practice called Buddhānussati^[9]. This is a recollection of the qualities of the Buddha as a way to inspire and uplift the heart, kind of like what we did in our meditation—aligning ourselves in this bigger directional way with the Buddhadharma.

It has an effect on us. It uplifts us, calms us, and brings joy. I like to read this because in monastic settings, even to this day, almost daily the monastics will chant the recollection of the Buddha's qualities to begin the day. I'm going to read these passages for you, and maybe you can get a sense of how this Dharma naturally unfolds:

"The Blessed One is perfected, a fully awakened Buddha, accomplished in knowledge and conduct, holy, knower of the world, supreme guide for those fit for training, teacher of gods and humans, awakened, blessed."

These are called the nine qualities of the Buddha. When a practitioner recollects the Buddha, their mind is not full of greed, hatred, and delusion. At that time, their mind is quite unswerving^[10] based on the Buddha. A practitioner whose mind is unswerving finds inspiration in the meaning and the teaching, and finds joy connected with the teaching.

When they are joyful, rapture springs up. When the mind is full of rapture, the body becomes tranquil. When the body is tranquil, they are happy. And when they are happy, the mind is immersed in samādhi.

This is called a practitioner who lives in balance among people who are unbalanced, and lives untroubled among people who are troubled. They've entered the stream of the Dharma and developed the recollection of the Buddha.

Can you feel that natural flow in this teaching? There's very little that we have to huff and puff and do. Rather, by recollecting the wholesome qualities, it uplifts our heart, and there is this natural unfolding of joy and the gathered collectedness of our mind. And when this happens, there is a natural clarity that begins to reveal itself for us to discern what is dukkha^[11] and what is freedom from dukkha.

The Buddha's Own Exploration

In another sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 19^[12], the Buddha recounted his own experience exploring this kind of natural unfolding before his awakening. He didn't have anyone giving him a cooked map, so he had to navigate on his own.

This is how he did it, pointing to how we are practicing today. He first established sati—mindfulness, here and now, keen and alert to the experience that's unfolding in him. Then he began to see patterns of thoughts that happened in his mind. There is a pattern related to sensual desire, ill will, and cruelty. And then there is a pattern of thought that is renunciation from sensual desire, non-ill will, and non-cruelty.

He reflected on this, paying attention to the effects. He noticed, "When I'm meditating resolutely, when I saw sensual desire arise in me, I know this causes harm." (I'm paraphrasing this.) "This has caused harm for myself and for others, or both."

When this is known so clearly right there in the moment, the sensual desire went away. You see that he was not beating it down and squashing it. Rather, through this clear seeing and clear knowing, it's the nature of the Dharma that this sorts itself out. It went away. It's like we don't want to hold onto a hot coal when we know it's burning us. It's like that.

He also recognized that when a thought of non-ill will or a thought of kindness arose, being present for it and seeing the effect of it, he noticed: "Oh, this thought does not lead to harm. It does not lead to harming myself or others. So I can be present for this, and in fact, this leads to my mind getting calm and peaceful. Thinking in this way, I'm not going to be afraid of this kind of thought."

But he didn't stop there; he kept staying with this as well. At some point, he recognized the natural revealing nature of the Dharma. He noticed, "If I keep thinking those good thoughts—'May I be kind, may I be happy,' for example—at some point that can also be a little tiring. I can let go of actively holding the thoughts in my mind, knowing that this is already in me."

So he dropped the active holding of the thought. The mind becomes stilled, unified, and samādhi gathers. It is so natural. He followed this path through, and as he gathered and collected in samādhi, things became even clearer. There was a deepening, liberating insights began to become available, and freedom was realized.

In this way, when we get out of the way of tinkering with our experiences and instead are present in the here and now—available and aligned—this naturally revealing quality begins to come forth. May we be guided by the natural flow of the Dharma to flow onwardly towards well-being and freedom.

Thank you, everyone, for your attention. Have a wonderful day, and let yourself feel into how the Dharma may be flowing in you throughout the day. I'll see you tomorrow.