Guided Meditation: Experiencing and living Dhamma; Dharmette: Dhamma is personally realized and it is impersonal

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Experiencing and living Dhamma; Dhamma is personally realized and it's impersonal. 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 27, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Experiencing and living Dhamma

A warm welcome, everybody. I'm quite happy to have spent this week with you, and now here this Friday morning in the Bay Area, California, where I am sitting from.

We have arrived at the last quality that we'll be going through amongst the six qualities, and this quality is said that the Dhamma is to be experienced personally by the practitioners. Dhamma is to be personally realized by the practitioners.

For me, it brings the Dhamma home to this life that's happening here and now, in this human being where the Dhamma is flowing. So today, I will share some reflections, but maybe more importantly, we are making space to allow the Dhamma to come alive in each of us so that each of us is experiencing the aliveness of the Dhamma in us.

And so with that as a very short reflection, we will flow into our meditation.

Now, maybe the sound of the bell signifies an ancient ritual that came down through centuries, from thousands of years ago. With the sound of the bell, we gather, collect into the refuges of the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha^[1]. Remembering, recollecting the Buddha, the Buddhānussati^[2]. This is a form of remembering the Buddha, the awakened being who has taught the Dhamma that is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, and who has explained the Dhamma completely and made it accessible and relevant in our lives here and now.

Arriving into here and now. This moment, there is a dignity in coming here, now, coming home. A kind of a Dhamma dignity. We know the significance of being present to our lives because we can feel and sense and know directly.

You feel awake, alive. Gently, generously allow this presence to deepen, to expand, mindfulness all around and centered.

We arrive in order to be present. We are present in order to see clearly. To see clearly in order to recognize suffering versus non-suffering. Recognizing suffering versus non-suffering in order to have insights and a realization, and having realization in order to know that we have choice. We can choose non-suffering. And choosing non-suffering matures little by little as the Dhamma unfolds. Such a wholesome chain. Wholesome unfolding.

This is a pithy teaching I received from one of my teachers, Phillip Moffitt^[3]. Let yourself feel this.

You be present because the Dhamma is directly visible here and now, being available. Being available to the Dhamma because Dhamma is immediate. It invites us to come and see, ehipassiko^[4]. You being aligned with the Dhamma, being attuned to the unfolding of the Dhamma. Because the Dhamma is naturally outwardly flowing. Letting go of a project, managing your meditation. Letting go of a project, managing your life. Let the Dhamma guide the way in silence. Quietly experiencing the Dhamma for yourself.

The nature of this body, mind, and heart. The flow of vibratory feelings in the body. Come, ever shifting, changing, not graspable. Anicca^[5], inconstancy, is felt, sensed, known. It's a personal experience, and yet it's impersonal in nature. Still and still moving.

The heart that doesn't reject, resist, demand. It's benevolent. It's natural for the benevolence to be present, experiencing the Dhamma for what it is in its simplicity, in its dimensionality, in its singularity, or in its diversity. However it may be known and seen, not limited by our ideas and beliefs.

It may manifest simply as a vibratory feeling of the sound from its beginning, the middle, and the end, or the flow of the breath, beginning, middle, and end. Or a thought begins, stays, and absence of grasping, clinging. So your life force can flow freely.

Let our experiences be what they are, just as they are. There may be tenderness arising in the heart. Our demand for things to be perfected, to be right or good, softens. Kindness naturally arises. What is experienced in its nature, it's impersonal even though it's personally experienced.

Let loose the boundaries, the walls, the divisions. So we can feel the deep connectedness of all the hearts, all the beings.

May the goodness of the Dhamma roll on from this heart and mind and this body to touch whoever you come in contact with. May it roll on. The goodness rolls on and on and on, into the whole world. May all beings know peace, well-being. May all beings experience freedom, unconditional love in this life just as it is.

Dharmette: Dhamma is personally realized and it is impersonal

So, we're coming to this last quality of the Dhamma that we've been sharing. It is a quality that is translated often as the Dhamma is to be personally experienced by the practitioners, by the wise ones, those who practice the Dhamma. We've been reflecting on how this natural unfolding comes into fruition in this way. I sometimes relate to this word "realize" as making real, allowing Dhamma to come alive in us. It becomes real in this life, in this being.

I liked that on Monday, David used this phrasing that as we practice Dhamma, Dhamma becomes a foundation of a skillful living, skillful action. In this way, Dhamma begins to flow live in our lives. As I was pointing out in our meditation this morning, when the nature of the Dhamma reveals itself, we can know for ourselves that our personal experience is an expression of something impersonal, much more universal.

The Dhamma qualities, the goodness of the Dhamma, they are not personal. They're not something that we take as a badge we put on our chest. They are not our possessions, or they're not something that defines us. But they begin to characterize how we engage in our lives, how we show up in our lives from a place of goodness, from a place of benevolence, presence, available and aligned with the Dhamma.

I'm very touched reading this particular quality each time because it brings the closeness of the Dhamma to us. It's not something outside of us. It's to be experienced by oneself, and it's not some other place to go, and it's not someone else to be. Often our perfectionism, our goal orientation, or destination orientation can mislead us to chase after something that is so close to us, so immediate, and so available to us, and so natural.

We can miss the small and ordinary moments of our lives when the taste of the Dhamma is right here. Maybe at the tip of the tongue, you know, it's that close. But when we're preoccupied and we're thinking it's elsewhere, we don't give ourselves a chance to touch in, to savor.

There is a Tibetan tradition that expresses this in a very exquisite kind of riddle. It has this description: "It's so close you can't see it. It's so profound you can't fathom it. It's so simple you can't believe it. It's so good you can't accept it." It has this kind of a flavor to it.

And yet, because of all the qualities, it is that immediate, that direct, that here and now, each of us through our wholehearted, sincere practice in the moments of our lives begin to have a hint of this possibility of being carried by the Dhamma in our living moments. Maybe it is simply in the moments when we're not caught up by our preoccupations, by our tasking mode, where we've got to get something done, or by being caught by what I wanted or what I don't want. There may be moments of freedom, contentment, peace, and wonder in the ordinary moments, like just picking up a cup, or a sip of a coffee, or simply tying a shoelace, or stepping your feet into warm slippers.

It's quite immediate, quite simple. Part of this practice is to begin to get out of the way to allow the simple moments to begin to come alive. This kind of freedom and well-being are not something that we make big claims about, and they are not I, me, mine.

I want to read a poem from Joseph Goldstein^[6] which I feel is reflecting a little bit of what we've been talking about in terms of allowing the Dhamma to come alive in the little moments of our lives. Here it is. This is from his poetry book, which I found to be quite beautiful and tender. This poem is called "Lazy Day at 76". I guess this is Joseph at 76.

Here it is:

Morning coffee and a first glimpse into the unknown day. Waiting for that pulse of life to push through the pale joy of the sitting. Doing nothing. Going for a walk is almost too much on this day of a questionable ease. Is it simply resting up to save the world or the faint glimmer of decline? I'll decide tomorrow if I awaken in the morning light.

I'm going to read it one more time. "Lazy Day at 76".

Morning coffee and the first glimpse into the unknown day. Waiting for that pulse of life to push through the pale joy of the sitting. Doing nothing. Going for a walk is almost too much on this day of questionable ease. Is it simply resting up to save the world or the faint glimmer of decline? I'll decide tomorrow if I awaken in the morning light.

Maybe finding moments in your day simply doing nothing. No need to decide, no need to figure out. The Dhamma awakes in us. Give it a chance.

Thank you, friends, for being here savoring the qualities of the Dhamma. I so enjoyed spending this week with you along with my dear Dhamma friend David. I hope all of us are carried by our practice, touching in with the Dhamma, and allow it to be the skillful foundation of skillful actions so that the whole world benefits from each of us and from the Dhamma. Thank you.