Listening to the True Dhamma

An important part of the practice is listening to the true Dhamma. That means two things: You have to know how to listen and you have to know how to recognize what’s true Dhamma and what’s not.

For “listening,” the ajaans say that you listen not just with your ears, but with your whole heart. In other words, you think of the problems you have in suffering and you ask yourself, “How does this talk apply to my suffering? How can it help me understand why I’m suffering and how I can put an end to it?”

As the Buddha says, you want to listen with respect. There’s one passage where he talks about five factors that go into proper listening—and the first three have to do with respect.

The first is that you don’t look down on the person who’s giving the talk. Think of the forest ajaans going into Bangkok. There were some people in Bangkok who looked down on them because they were from a poor part of the country. But the people who listened to them with the thought, “Well, even though they’re poor, there’s always the possibility that they may know something I don’t know”: Those were the ones who benefitted from listening.

Second, you don’t look down on the content of the talk. You want to think about how it fits in with what you already know of the Dhamma and you have to be open to hearing some unexpected things. So you listen to the content with respect.

And finally, you have respect for yourself. Sometimes, people listen to the Dhamma and say, “That’s way too high for me. It’s way too advanced.” But maybe it’s not. If it’s a good Dhamma talk, it’s talking about what’s going on in your mind right now and pointing out where you’re focusing on the wrong things.

Like right now: Focus on your breath, where you feel the breath in the body. As for the affairs of the world outside, don’t focus on them at all. There’s work that has to be done, and it has to be done right here, inside. So focus your attention here.

As you get focused here, you begin to see that the talk does refer to what you’re doing right now. When it talks about perceptions, okay, you’re engaging in perceptions right now—whatever images you have of how the breath flows in your body, where you are in the body, what pictures you have in the mind. Are they the best pictures for getting the mind to settle down?

The Dhamma points you to things you’re doing all the time but haven’t been paying attention to. So now you pay attention and you see, Yes, the Dhamma is pointing to something in your mind, something you can comprehend. And it’s giving you advice on what to do. You’re putting yourself in a position where you can get benefits from the Dhamma, right here, right now.

In addition, the Buddha said that there are two other qualities you have to bring to proper listening. One is that you’re single-minded in staying with the topic. In other words, you listen to this topic and you don’t pay any attention to anything else outside. This is a quality of right concentration. When you’re concentrated on the talk, you can hear it clearly, you can understand it clearly. That makes it even easier for it to have a good impact on your mind.

That good impact also depends on the second added quality, which is appropriate attention—yoniso manasikāra. This basically means asking the right questions. Here, the right questions are: “Where am I causing myself unnecessary suffering right now? What can I do to stop?” When you think about these questions, then you’re taking the essence of the talk and applying it inside.

This is how Ajaan Mun listened to the Dhamma. There was a monk from Bangkok who didn’t have much use for the forest tradition. His teacher had been an old friend of Ajaan Mun’s and he would bring this more junior monk with him to visit Ajaan Mun. But the way Ajaan Mun taught was not like the Dhamma taught in the books in Bangkok at that time. He didn’t understand it and he was not impressed.

Then, one time, after his teacher had died, he came to see Ajaan Mun. He said, “I’m in Bangkok where there are lots of wise people all around, yet even then there are times when I come across a problem that no one I know can solve. And here you are, out alone in the forest: Where do you get to hear the Dhamma?”

Ajaan Mun responded, “I hear the Dhamma twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, except for when I’m asleep. A leaf falls and it teaches the principle of anicca. Animals call out and it teaches the principle of dukkha. There’s Dhamma for you to hear everywhere.”

What he didn’t say at that time was also an important part of his listening to the Dhamma. He would have visions—visions of the Buddha coming to teach him, visions of the devas coming to teach him, nagas. He realized that if he believed everything he heard and saw in his visions, he’d go crazy. Just because you have a vision of the Buddha doesn’t mean it really is the Buddha. Beings in these visions don’t carry identity cards. So he realized that the only way he could keep himself from going crazy was to ask the right questions of the vision.

One is: “Does this message fit in with what you already know of the Dhamma?” If it doesn’t fit in, just put it aside. The second question is, “If I were to put it into practice, what would the results be?” If it looked like the results would be good, he could put into practice, to test it. This is how you get to know the true Dhamma—by asking the right questions. If he found that putting the teaching into practice gave bad results, he’d say, “Okay, I can’t trust that vision—put it aside.” If it gave good results, then it was Dhamma.

So, asking the right questions as you listen to the Dhamma also helps you understand what is true Dhamma, what’s not—because the Dhamma is meant to be put into practice.

When the Buddha describes the three qualities that go into mindfulness practice—mindfulness, alertness, ardency—mindfulness is the ability to keep things in mind. Alertness is knowing what you’re doing while you’re doing it. And ardency is trying to do it well.

When Ajaan Lee explains those three qualities, he says that the wisdom faculty in those three is the ardency. You realize that these teachings are not just there to look at or think about, but to put into practice. So if you’re really wise, you’ll put them into practice.

This is how you test the true Dhamma. You look for what happens when you put these things into practice.

There was a time when MahaPajapati, the Buddha’s aunt, came to see the Buddha after she gained ordination, and she asked for a brief teaching. He gave her some principles for figuring out how to recognize what is Dhamma and Vinaya and what’s not. There are eight principles altogether, and they fall into three categories.

The first category has to do with the goal of the practice: “Does this teaching, when I put into practice, lead to dispassion, does it lead to unfettering the mind?” If it does, then it’s true Dhamma, true Vinaya. If it doesn’t, then put it aside.

The second set has to do with qualities you develop inside, like contentment persistence, and modesty.

In other words, you’re content with material things so that you can focus on the main area where you can’t rest content—which is the mind. As long as it isn’t fully skillful, you want to continue developing it.

Persistence—whatever Dhamma urges you on, gives you energy to practice—is true Dhamma. But if it encourages you to be lazy, just to sit back and say, “I have to accept everything. I’ll let everything to take care of itself”—that’s not true Dhamma, it’s something else.

As for modesty, you’re not here to show off to other people. If you’re practicing the Dhamma to impress other people, then it’s not Dhamma.

This ties in with the third category, which is how your practice has an impact on others. You want to make sure that you’re not entangled and that you’re unburdensome.

In being unentangled, the Buddha gives an example for a monk: People come to see him with questions about the Dhamma, and he answers them just enough so they’re satisfied with his answer and they go away. In other words, you don’t try to create a network of connections by finding other things to talk about. You deal with the issues they have and then they go away.

As for being unburdensome, you don’t make a lot of requests. You want to make sure you style of life isn’t going to place a lot of burdens on other people. Any Dhamma that requires that you be burdensome is not really Dhamma.

So, these are the areas that you want to have a look: “When I put this into practice, does it have a liberating effect on the mind? Does it develop more persistence, energy in my practice? Does it make me more content with material things? Does it have a good impact on other people, in the sense that I’m not entangled with them and I don’t place burdens on them?” If the answer is Yes, then you know it’s true Dhamma. You can take it as a guide.

Listening to the Dhamma in the right way requires a lot out of you. Some people say, “I’m not going to believe the Dhamma until it’s proven to me to be right,” but the Buddha didn’t encourage that attitude. Although he did say you don’t accept things simply because he said them, he’s not putting himself in a position where he has to prove things to you.

As he said, the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection. In other words, you commit yourself to listening properly, you commit yourself by putting it into practice, then you reflect on the results. You have to make an investment and look at how well you’re doing. This requires a lot out of you, but then it gives you a lot as well. Here it is, the path to the end of suffering—total end of suffering.

So you want to encourage yourself that you have the attitude that you respect the Dhamma and you’re willing to commit yourself to it. Learn from it through actions, reflecting on what you’re doing and the results you’re getting. That’s how you grow in the Dhamma and that’s how you find what the true Dhamma is—because it’s not there in the words, it’s in the qualities of the mind that arise as you put these instructions into practice.

That’s where the genuine Dhamma is. It’s a quality of the heart, not just something you memorize. It’s a skill you have to master through commitment and reflection. That, as the Buddha said, is how the Dhamma will grow inside you. That’s how you nourish it.

The Buddha did everything he could to establish the true Dhamma. Now, it’s up to us to recognize it, to show it the proper respect, and to commit ourselves to it, so that as we reflect on what we’re doing, we get closer and closer to the real thing.