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

Belonging: The Dharma as a Journey to Connectedness

With Willa Blythe Baker recorded on July 10, 2022.

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

Behavioral scientists have long known that human beings are wired for connection. But recent studies show that in the wake of the social isolation imposed by the Covid crisis, the world is experiencing a spike in loneliness.

In such times of isolation — physical or felt — how can meditation help? What do the Buddha’s teachings have to offer with respect to developing and strengthening a sense of belonging?

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Being Real Together

    Let’s pause. How are you doing in this time as all is showing up for reckoning at the same moment? Take some kind breaths, and have a moment of compassion for your self, others, and for it all. In today’s session let’s pause quietly, recalibrate, and check in. 

    Read More

  • Jill Satterfield

    Awareness Shift: Knowing the Nature of the Body, Heart/Mind through the 5 Elements

    Sometimes a simple shift of our perception can change our sense of everything and allow for a fresh experience of the personal and transpersonal simultaneously. There is so much more ease in a relaxed, open view. By widening our awareness aperture and somatically exploring our composition, we revisit connection. Sensing the organic arising and passing of…

    Read More

  • The Path of the Bodhisattva: Choosing a Life of Kindness

    The path of the Bodhisattva asks us to dedicate ourselves to the well-being of all sentient beings – to show up as best as we can for ourselves, each other, and the natural world with a quality of no-matter-whatness. It’s an impossible though necessary task. Yet the teachings and practices of everyday dharma offer accessible,…

    Read More

  • Brian Dean Williams

    Post-election trauma: embracing fear, extending love.

    It has been a distressing and disorienting time for many of us, and to different degrees. Following recent political events in the US and Western Europe our practice is being challenged in new ways. Spurred by a Trump victory, violent attacks on individuals in marginalized groups are on the rise. The three poisons of Greed,…

    Read More

  • Shaila Catherine

    How Does Meditation Support the Path of Awakening?

    Scientists have documented some significant and measurable changes that occur as a result of meditation. But Buddhist practice is not limited to calm, pleasant, relaxing states of meditation. The liberating path includes a broad range of practices that produce a wide variety of benefits. We learn how we encounter the world of the senses; we…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Getting Free: The Infinite Middle of the MiddleWay

    Dharma teachings are sublime, subtle, and onward leading: they are always going deeper and wider than we may first presume. Yet, they also meet us where we are, in the midst of our life. In this session we’ll explore two expressions of the middle-way we can cultivate and develop in our practice and in our…

    Read More

  • Leigh Brasington

    Impermanence

    Anicca, usually translated as “Impermanence” or “Inconstancy,” is one of the three characteristics of all worldly experience. It’s the one of those characteristics we can usually get some understanding of right away. But the deeper implications of anicca are quite profound and that’s what we will explore together.

    Read More

  • chris crotty

    Confidence in the Dhamma, Confidence in Yourself

    As we attune to the truth of impermanence (anicca) the very preciousness of life itself begins to penetrate our awareness: the flowers will not last forever, our dear friends will come and go, those we love will grow old. Even how we chop our vegetables matters if we wan’t to be touched by the the…

    Read More