Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

A Relational Dhamma

With Gregory Kramer recorded on October 17, 2021.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

If humans are intrinsically relational creatures, how do we integrate this understanding with the Buddha’s teachings on suffering and its cessation? Relational suffering and craving? Dependent origination?

In this session, we explore the power and necessity of a relational understanding of the Buddha’s teachings. We discuss and practice relational aspects of the path, including the relational Vipassana practice of Insight Dialogue, and living a Dhamma-infused life of relatedness, through friendship and community.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of May 23, 2022

    This week’s topic is An Enigma Inside A Mystery. We typically freeze in amazement or feverishly search for causes when we suffer dukkha (life’s tension). We’ve probably all experienced how these reactions exacerbate the problem. The Buddha taught that dukkha is a puzzle that can be solved: it doesn’t have to be a mystery. We can learn the resolution that brings us from bewilderment to marvellous release by paying quiet attention to the pattern of the difficulty.

    Read More

  • Deborah Eden Tull - Senior Dharma Teacher

    Compassion, Emergence and Climate Change

    This year, humanity has witnessed the alarming acceleration of climate change… the loss of forests and rivers, animal and plant species… and the potential annihilation of our species. Alongside our profound grief for what is changing globally, however, we are also experiencing Emergence.  Emergence, the organizing principle of Gaia, can help us to stay present as…

    Read More

  • How Family and Work Shape Our Character and so Influence Our Path

    Gregory writes: “Obviously our Dhamma practices infuse our lives (if not, something is amiss). We don’t usually talk about how this flows the other direction: the qualities we develop in our personal and professional lives strongly impact our Buddhist path. That’s what I’ll be speaking about, drawing examples from my own life in music, inventing,…

    Read More

  • Body and Heart: Qigong and Meditation for Harmony and Ease

    Our heart’s experiences do not only affect our mental and emotional states. They also impact bodily experience, creating tension, tightness, spaciousness or ease. Likewise, our bodily experiences do not only generate physical sensations, but also inform and determine the energies of our heart. In this Sunday Sangha session, we will use qigong and meditation to…

    Read More

  • Bart van Melik

    Wise Mindfulness will Protect You

    Awareness isn’t something you make. It’s already here when you pause and notice. Mindfulness knows the good and helps it grow happily. It also knows the difficult and helps us hold it with care. Join us to explore how wise mindfulness protects us, bringing kindness and wisdom to each moment.

    Read More

  • Akincano M. Weber

    Touching the Earth: Turning the Mind to the Roots

    During this session we discuss the teaching on ‘wisely directing one’s attention to the roots’ (yoniso manasikāra). It is a remarkably pragmatic approach to contemplative practice and one of Early Buddhism’s unique contributions to the human emancipatory effort from suffering.

    Read More

  • Sitting with Pointlessness – Living with Potentiality

    During a recent retreat, the teachers’ instruction was to hold the question ‘What is this?’ in mind. While sitting on the cushion, the thought struck me that my life is futile! I am genetically programmed for survival and sex; everything else is just distracting window-dressing. This talk will explore the journey from the apparent ‘futility’…

    Read More