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

The Individual-Relational Dharma Paradox and Why it Matters to Your Life

With Gregory Kramer recorded on February 16, 2025.

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

Biologically, psychologically, and in common sense there is no doubt that the human experience is both intrinsically individual and intrinsically relational. Our bodies are separate. You will never directly know my inner universe. Also, our bodies evolved to relate. The brain is a relational organ. Our sense of safety and joy, suffering and inquiry, has relational roots.

And since the Dharma is about the nature of the human experience, the Path must be both intrinsically individual and intrinsically relational. Morality, wisdom practices, and even meditation will be most fitting when they reflect this conjoined individual and relational nature.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Yahel Avigur

    The Necessity of Trust

    The qualities of trust, faith, and confidence are essential for mental health, profound spiritual explorations and the depth of relationships. To serve well, trust needs cultivating in conjunction with qualities of discerning wisdom and conscious intention. This session explores how this can be encouraged in both meditation and in our heart’s countless daily actions. 

    Read More

  • Martine Batchelor

    What is this?

    In this session Martine leads a guided meditation on the question “What is this?”, and then explores this questioning practice as a means to encounter each moment with awareness and as a means of developing a stable and open heart.

    Read More

  • Ralph Steele

    Introduction To Buddhist Psychology

    The Four Noble Truths are a foundational practice that supports our ability to navigate the inevitable changes life presents. They offer insight and guidance. Mindfulness fosters compassion and paves the way for a deep dive into Buddhist Psychology. You will gain a better understanding, a reason for, and an application in everyday life of the…

    Read More

  • Norman Blair

    Settling Into Your Body In Meditation – December 2023

    Finding a comfortable body posture when meditating is a crucial element in our practice. We can use our bodies as a way of experiencing change and impermanence. Each time is different. In this session we will be looking at ways to make our bodies comfortable for meditation – both standing (if appropriate for your body)…

    Read More

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    Let’s Talk about Meditation

    This class is an opportunity to explore our meditation practice, on and off the cushions. Meditation can be everything we do. It’s up to us whether we have a life of meditation or a life of daydreaming. Meditation will lead to freedom of your mind and daydreaming will lead to the enslavement of the mind….

    Read More

  • Christine Kupfer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christine Kupfer – Week of 30 June, 2025

    We’re grateful to have Christine Kupfer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Meditating on the Five Elements : A Journey into Interconnectedness

    This week, we explore how the classical elements – earth, water, fire, air and space – invite a meeting between our inner landscape and the living world. Each session offers a meditative gesture of presence, revealing that we are never separate: we are the breath, the body, and earth becoming aware of itself.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Dave Smith

    Genuine Happiness: An Alternative Perspective

    So much of what we hear and learn about within Dharma practice places an arguably unnecessary emphasis on suffering (dukkha). While the acceptance of suffering (dukkha) is an important and essential aspect of the path, it is by no means the end of the story. In one of the Buddha’s oldest descriptions of what it…

    Read More

  • Nourishing Compassion

    His Holiness the Dalai Lama has shared that compassion is not a luxury but a necessity for human beings to survive. There is no more important time to understand and strengthen compassion than right now.

    Read More