The Yoga of Discernment: Dharma, Intuition and Right Action
We all have an inherent capacity for intuition, but as life becomes noisier, our intuition can become harder to hear.
Yoga has a lot to say about this.
We tend to think of decision-making as a mental process. You know, we gather the information, weigh our options, and try to choose wisely. But there’s often a major snag that most of us aren’t even aware of.
Our mind is rarely neutral. Much of what influences our choices happens below conscious awareness, through fear, desire, habit, past experience, expectation, attachment, and all the conditioning we’ve accumulated over a lifetime. How we perceive the world informs how we move through it.
This is why Yoga places so much importance on awareness and discernment. The more clearly we can see what’s moving through the mind beneath the surface, the better chance we have of recognizing what’s actually guiding us.
Is It Intuition or Conditioning?
We hear a lot about trusting our intuition, but sometimes it can be tough to know if what we’re feeling is intuition in the first place.
Fear can feel like a warning, desire can create a powerful sense of certainty, and familiar patterns can feel safe just because we know them well.
Yoga gives us words that describe this: saṃskāra, the impressions left by our past experiences, and vāsanā, the tendencies that grow from those impressions. Over time, these patterns shape the way we interpret what’s happening around us, influence the choices we make, and the next actions we take.
This is where consciously cultivating our awareness helps to change how we move through the world. Instead of automatically reacting to what’s happening, we learn to pause before acting, and to observe and question what might be influencing us and the situation.
We may not always know the answer right away, but over time, with more practice, clarity comes with more ease, because by expanding our awareness we grow our capacity for viveka.
Yoga and the Practice of Viveka
In Yoga philosophy, viveka refers to discernment, our ability to see clearly through the conditioning and limited perspective that can cloud our understanding. We rarely have the full picture of any situation, and so often we aren’t even aware of what we’re missing. Cultivating awareness helps us see more of what’s actually there.
As our awareness grows, so does our capacity for viveka. We become better able to distinguish between the movements of the mind and the deeper awareness that can observe those movements.
This has a spiritual dimension, but it also has a practical one. We start to notice the difference between fear and caution, desire and alignment, habit and conscious choice. We can recognize when we’re trying to control an outcome, avoid discomfort, or make a decision because we want approval or recognition.
The more clearly we understand what’s actually happening, the more clearly we can choose our next right action. One of my teachers uses the analogy that we’re all driving down the highway with a dirty windshield. As we cultivate our discernment, the windshield becomes cleaner. We see more of what was always there, and the road ahead becomes clearer.
The Role of the Buddhi
In order to understand how discernment develops, it helps to know that Yoga doesn’t treat the mind as just one single thing.
Sāṃkhya, a foundational philosophy of Yoga, describes three distinct functions within the inner mind: manas, the processing and sensory mind; ahaṃkāra, the sense of “I” and individual identity; and buddhi, the faculty of intelligence, discernment, and clear understanding.
Buddhi is the aspect most relevant here because it supports our capacity for viveka, for seeing clearly. While the mind can produce endless arguments, imagine future scenarios, replay old conversations, and search for certainty, buddhi allows us to step back from immediate reaction and evaluate what’s happening with greater clarity.
It can take in the information moving through the mind without automatically following every thought, feeling, or impulse that arises. As our awareness grows, buddhi can function more clearly, strengthening our capacity for viveka.
Awareness, buddhi, and viveka are closely related in practice: the more clearly we observe, the more effectively we can discern.
Dharma and Right Action
This brings us to dharma.
The Bhagavad Gītā begins with a crisis of decision. Arjuna is standing on a battlefield, overwhelmed by grief, moral conflict, fear, and uncertainty, and his conversation with Krishna unfolds from that moment.
One of the ideas Krishna returns to is dharma, a word connected with duty, responsibility, right action, and that which supports or sustains. Although dharma is often described today as “our purpose,” its meaning is much broader. Our dharma can change with our circumstances, responsibilities, relationships, and stage of life.
Dharma asks us to consider what action best supports life and stability, both individually and collectively. The question becomes: what’s the right action here, within the responsibilities and circumstances of my life? How does that action affect the lives of others, directly or indirectly?
The answer isn’t always comfortable. Living our dharma can involve a lot of friction. The right action may be difficult to carry out even when, underneath the difficulty, we can feel its alignment with truth. Sometimes it’s easier to recognize what’s right than it is to live it.
Dharma asks us to act as rightly as we can, even when doing so is uncomfortable and the outcome remains beyond our control.
Why Meditation Helps
Taken all together, this is one big reason why we meditate. Meditation is one of the most direct ways we can cultivate the awareness that allows buddhi and viveka to function more clearly. Like all things Yoga, this develops over time through consistent practice and direct experience.
Meditation gives us the repeated experience of watching thoughts arise without immediately following them. We observe sensations, memories, emotions, and mental stories moving through awareness and let them pass. Practicing this kind of noticing, or witnessing, consistently in meditation makes the same capacity more available in daily life. This is where meditation starts to have noticeable effects on the way we live.
Over time, meditation creates more space between what arises in the mind and how we respond. Fear, desire, or conflict may still be present, but we become better able to recognize those forces without automatically allowing them to determine our next action. In that quieter space, inspiration and intuition can come forward more clearly, helping us make wiser choices and take more appropriate action.
A Simple Practice for Listening Inward
Here’s a helpful practice to help us step out of mental analysis for a moment and create some room for listening inward, toward the wisest part of ourselves.
Sit somewhere quiet, in a comfortable position with a tall spine if possible. Let the muscles in your face relax and allow the breath to become slower and steadier, paying attention to the inhale and exhale. If it’s comfortable, close your eyes and gently extend the exhale a little longer than the inhale.
When you’re ready, bring your awareness to the navel, near the body’s centre of gravity and the place where you were connected to nourishment and life in the womb. This can also be a powerful place to become more aware of prāṇa moving within us.
Let the body become part of the inquiry. Notice what arises without analysis or judgment. What are you feeling? And maybe ask yourself what might that feeling be rooted in? Fear, desire, habit, obligation, or a clear sense of what is right?
Stay with it for as long as feels right. Listen for the subtler information beneath the mental noise. Return to this practice regularly and, over time, you may begin to recognize things you couldn’t access through thinking alone.
It’s amazing what we can learn when we become quiet enough to really listen. Through that listening, we start to recognize what’s actually guiding us, what’s motivating us, then the next step becomes clearer.
More right information leads to more right action.
Throughout the Bhagavad Gītā, Krishna repeatedly brings Arjuna back to the question of right action, helping him see his circumstances more clearly so he can act in accordance with dharma even when certainty is impossible.
Discernment doesn’t always give us absolute certainty, but it can help us act with greater clarity and awareness.
Imagine how different the world might be if more of us learned to pause, look beneath our conditioned reactions, and see more clearly before we acted. Yoga gives us practices for cultivating that clarity throughout our lives, so our choices can arise from greater awareness of ourselves, our circumstances, and the effects our actions may have on others.
The clearer we learn to see, the more wisely we can choose how to act. That’s how we live our dharma.
