---
ai_generation_date: '2026-09-29'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
    - date: '2020-07-19'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/11743/20200719-Kim_Allen-IMC-the_four_bases_of_dharma_power.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: Kim Allen
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/4
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: The Four Bases of Dharma Power
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11743
      video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: SIhxd7SUiy4
  imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04'
  title: The Four Bases of Dharma Power
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIhxd7SUiy4
---

# The Four Bases of Dharma Power - [Kim Allen](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/4)

_This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._

## [The Four Bases of Dharma Power](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11743)

Good morning. It's nice to see that we have quite a few folks here, some not from this area.

I'll begin by bringing up two scenarios. One is that when people go on retreat, often at the end of the retreat they'll say something like, "How can I take this back into my regular life? How can I make what I felt here on retreat more a part of my daily living?" This is a very natural and healthy question that people have. I think we sense intuitively that we want the dharma to pervade more of our life, to fill out our life, and become more of just our way of being. This is actually the direction that the dharma goes. As the path naturally develops and as we keep practicing, the dharma becomes broader and fuller.

The second scenario is that people often want to deepen their practice. In fact, Gil recently said that after having read decades of what people write on their forms before they come to a retreat, the most common intention is to deepen their practice. This is also a natural movement that we have as we're on the path—we want to have more concentration, more ability to be non-reactive, or even to seek the deeper aspects of liberation that are pointed to in the teaching. It is quite natural that the dharma tends to become deeper and stronger as we walk the path.

The dharma has some strength to it, and it also grows in both depth and breadth. The Buddha gave teachings about this. He talked about four strong bases, or sometimes they're called roads, by which the dharma gains fullness in our life, and by which it strengthens our heart, enlivens our mind, and starts to pervade our whole life. These four bases are things that we can turn our whole being toward and use to direct our energy in practice, whether we're aiming for depth or for breadth at a given time. I think we do both over the course of our practice.

These four are meant to be inspirational. They bring up a sense of, "Yes, this is the vitality behind my practice. This is the source of power or potential in my practice." We can gather ourselves around these four so that they infuse our path to liberation. They are named as desire, energy, mind, and investigation. I'm going to describe each one a little bit more, but I encourage you, as you listen to the descriptions, to consider whether one of them stands out as especially alive or juicy for you right now. At a given time, a person's mind might be most attuned to one or two of them, as they're related to our character and the way we approach practice.

In the Pali suttas[^1], these four are called the four _iddhipada_[^2], or four bases of power. I'll talk about them first, and then I'll give some larger context to this teaching.

As I mentioned, the first of these is called desire, which is a funny word to use in the Buddhist tradition, right? We're not supposed to be into desire. But this is a particular kind of desire, and the Pali word for it is _chanda_[^3]. It's meant to be a longing or calling that we feel—this desire for liberation. The mind has to want to walk on this path. It's hard enough that we need to have some desire there to do this, but this is a kind of desire that's not really self-focused. It goes beyond our personal wishes, and some people have even called it a calling. We may be on this path because we have some calling, whether we can even explain it logically or not. It's this kind of desire that comes through the heart: dharma desire.

The second of these bases is energy. The Pali word for it is _viriya_[^4]. It appears in many lists, but when it's used here as a basis of power, this is an upwelling of energy in the body and also in the mind, where we just have a sense of applying ourselves toward the path. There's effort, but not in an effortful way. It's just: how else would we be using our energy? It flows the way a river flows down a channel quickly if it's well channeled. It's possible that the Buddha used this particular basis of power in his own practice. Of course he had all of these in some ways, but when he sits down under the Bodhi tree and makes his vow that he will sit there until he's awakened—we may not be at that point in our practice, but that's a sense of really bringing full energy.

The third of these bases of power is mind, and the word is _citta_[^5], which is understood to be the heart and the mind together. There isn't a distinction made in the ancient Indian tradition between the rational and the emotional side, and so _citta_ is meant to capture both of those. In the case of using it as the basis for walking the path, this becomes something like wholeheartedness. A real sense of, "Every part of my life is part of my practice, and everything that happens I'm going to turn into the path somehow." It is a sense from within of meeting our life completely with the dharma. This is the _citta_ orientation of wholeheartedness: it's all practice, it's all path.

And then there's investigation, which in Pali is _vīmaṃsā_[^6]. This is a sense of really wanting to understand the mind, wanting to know the truth of how these things work. How does the mind work? How does life work? How does suffering work? This will get us to the end. It is a deep curiosity and a wholesome, energetic investigation of experience all the time—curious about this life, how to live it well, and how to awaken through it. We would pursue that all the way to the end.

These bases of power are meant to be avenues of practice that could go all the way to full awakening. In the texts, these four are said to emerge through _samadhi_[^7], through gathering or concentrating the mind, but in my own experience, they can be sensed anytime that the mind is relatively calm and balanced. We just have to know to listen for them.

When the mind is caught up in its hindrances—in wanting and not wanting, torpor, restlessness, doubt, and fear—all those things essentially amount to a binding up of our energy. They dissipate energy. They confine energy in ways that limit us. As those start to calm down, even in a simple way like through half an hour of meditation, there's some freeing up of energy that comes from that. That energy can be freed up and directed toward the path if we have that intention. In that way, these four bases of power give us an indication of how to do that, and it also shows that they're very connected to the path.

In fact, the Buddha says in one of the suttas: "And what is the way leading to the development of these four bases of spiritual power? It is this Noble Eightfold Path, namely right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration." These avenues or ways that we direct our mind are inherently connected to—I would almost say infused into—the path. They're informed by wisdom and all the factors that we're practicing with.

That's important to understand because some of these movements of the mind can really feel quite strong. Even just hearing about them today, you might have felt a pull in your heart, especially toward whichever one is resonating for you at this time. There's no need to fear this feeling of strength if it's informed by these other factors of the path.

Two path factors in particular are especially important. One of them is wise view and wise understanding. This brings the sense that we're on the path for the purpose of not doing harm in the world, and no longer bringing harm to ourselves or to others. We cultivate a sense of harmlessness, compassion, and the understanding that our actions in body and mind have consequences. We always want to direct our energies well, in service of wholesome qualities, and in the service of letting go of our unwholesome qualities or our challenges. We also maintain the understanding that we're moving away from suffering, so we can always check if our actions are leading toward or away from suffering.

The second path factor that's especially important is wise mindfulness: having the capacity to check our practice and be aware of how we're walking the path. I have a lot of faith that mindfulness has a balancing effect. As we walk the path, inevitably we go a little bit too far this way or a little too far that way. We get caught up in something, realize what's happening, and come back. As long as we have wise mindfulness, there will be that correction and reorientation as we go along letting go of what we need to in order to be free.

The dharma is powerful; it brings all the factors of our mind and heart together. As we bring our understanding of this path to the way that we walk it, we begin to see that these components of the bases of power are not very personal. In the case of desire, it's not really about our personal wishes; it's about the dharma wanting to move forward and express itself. That's the case for all four of them. We start to have the sense that the dharma is doing this, not me, not my own gain or personal wishes. It is the natural way that the dharma moves through us.

As we do this, we allow the dharma to unfold. I like that word, unfolding. It has a sense of starting somewhere internal, like a flower bud, and then it opens. As it opens, it gains more connection to the world, but also more strength. From that little step that's been taken, there can be another unfolding, and we can keep unfolding for quite a long time. I heard one teacher sum up these four bases of power in this way: "Fullness, strength, humanity." When those three are the way that our practice is infused, it has powerful effects.

Because these bases of power are connected to wise intention—the intention of compassion, loving-kindness, and non-harm—there is no conflict between kindness and making strong effort on the path. There's a sense of wholeness and softness. As we walk on the path, we become stronger and more capable, but there's also a softening. We balance this softness and strength, continuing to unfold into a flower. Flowers are both soft and give an image of strength.

There's a book by an Ajahn[^8] called _Don't Hold Back_. It's interesting that a monk who lives by the rules of renunciation, by a very simple lifestyle, would write a book with the message of not holding back. But this is the essence of fully engaged practice: that it infuses our whole life. Even as we are completely committed to restraining our harmful habits, there's a fullness and strength that comes from that. This is the depth and the breadth that we naturally want through practice. Please consider whether one or another of these bases—desire, energy, mind, and investigation—feels inspiring to your heart and could be infusing your life at this time.

## The Context of Spiritual Power

I said that I would talk first about these four bases of power, and then give a little bit more of the dharma context for them. Let's go into that now.

These bases of power, the _iddhipada_, tie into the ancient Indian understanding that there is the attainment of various supernormal powers through meditation. Remember that in that culture, there was a group of people who lived outside of society and had devoted their life to practicing a lot of different methods or techniques of meditation. The Buddha was in that group, and he acknowledged that these psychic powers were possible through practice, as it was already common knowledge in that society.

It seems more novel to us, but these are things we hear of in other spiritual contexts—things like walking through solid objects, walking on water, flying through the air, and other feats that might appear miraculous to an average, untrained person.

You might be saying, "What does this have to do with the Buddhist teachings? Things like mindfulness, _metta_[^9], and insight?" First of all, it is worth considering that the mind has a lot more capability than we typically allow ourselves to believe. We have very little idea of what our mind is capable of, and I think it's important to consider that the full capacity of the mind is quite vast. Understanding that the mind has these kinds of potentials is part of wise view—understanding the potential for the mind to release its habits and suffering and open into its full potential.

In his characteristic way, the Buddha included understandings from his time, but he skillfully directed them toward what he wanted to teach: what is wholesome and what leads toward liberation. The Buddha didn't deny the psychic powers or the special knowledges that can come through practice, such as being able to see or hear things far away. These are called the _abhiññā_[^10]—deep understandings of how mind and matter work that allow one to do things that look like miracles.

He included those, but he had his own take. He would say that these psychic powers are essentially mundane; you can do those without any real understanding of awakening. He forbade his monks and nuns from displaying these powers for the purpose of gaining followers or requisites, although the texts do show him using them at times when they would be effective. The message he repeated again and again was that the real power of the mind is to come to the end of suffering. To have a mind that is free of greed, hatred, and delusion—that is real power.

In our society, we also exercise power in various arenas. It's interesting to note that some of what we can do through modern science and modern psychology mimics the so-called supernormal powers named in the texts. Things like radio, television, and satellite technology allow us to see and hear things far away that we could never access otherwise. How are you listening to this talk? This would appear magical to somebody in ancient India. We can manipulate materials in ways they could not fathom, and through our modern understanding of psychology, we can touch people's minds in ways that might have appeared to come from meditative strength.

With our mundane techniques, we haven't tapped into the full power of the mind, but we have a lot of mundane power in this world compared to then. Sometimes it's directed well, and sometimes it is directed quite harmfully.

The Buddha didn't shy away from the idea of power. He didn't say, "Because this is dangerous, you should just sit peacefully and never do anything." He was clear about what he meant by spiritual power, and gave clear indications of how we can use our energy and vitality for the path.

When our practice is informed by wise view, mindfulness, and intention, we can use the inspirational energies of our heart and mind to lead us into the full potential of our practice. That means we can live from a place of non-suffering, non-struggle, and non-stress. We may be very engaged with the activities of life while we have our vital power, but the mind will do these things with an internal strength that cannot be shaken.

When we direct our practice toward having these internal bases of power, things don't exert power over us so much. We're not pushed around by our greed, our hatred, or our delusion. That is real strength: to be in the world with the power of a mind that is not under those influences. Nothing exerts power over a free mind.

Whether your interest is in broadening your practice to encompass more of your life, or in deepening your practice to discover some of the more profound sides of the teachings, these four bases of spiritual power can enhance that. They can bring the dharma more and more into your life.

Wholesome desire, full energy, wholeheartedness, and keen investigation. I hope all of these will enliven you and be of benefit to others around you and to the whole world. The world needs the strength and power of the dharma right now. It has a lot of other dissipations of its energy, so these kinds of power that we can bring through practice are very much needed.

I wish you all very well in that. May there be peace.

---

[^1]: **Pali suttas:** The discourses of the Buddha, originally preserved in the Pali language.

[^2]: **Iddhipada:** The Four Bases of Spiritual Power. (Original transcript read "before pada").

[^3]: **Chanda:** Wholesome desire, intention, or interest to act in ways that lead to awakening.

[^4]: **Viriya:** Energy, effort, or diligence.

[^5]: **Citta:** Mind or heart-mind; consciousness.

[^6]: **Vīmaṃsā:** Investigation, inquiry, or exploration of reality.

[^7]: **Samadhi:** Concentration or unification of mind.

[^8]: **Ajahn:** A title for a senior Thai Buddhist monk. (Original transcript phonetically recorded this as "ajon").

[^9]: **Metta:** Loving-kindness or goodwill.

[^10]: **Abhiññā:** Supernormal knowledge or higher knowledges attained through deep meditative absorption. (Original transcript erroneously recorded this as "the opinion").