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

  • Roxanne Dault

    Trust and Surrender: Meeting Life Fully

    As we move through life, we meet change, obstacles and beauty, hardships and love, praise and blame, and all the rest of the winds of life. Our question is then how to meet life with a sense of trust in the unknown and find a place where we can meet it all with more ease and…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Potentizing Practice

    At various times, it can feel like meditation practice has become routine. That nothing is really moving or deepening. However, there are many ways to consciously potentize your practice. In this class at the wonderful new Sangha Live website, Martin explores various different ways of doing this. We also look beyond meditation, to three ways…

    Read More

  • Resting in Love, as Love

    Consciousness itself is not disturbed by a busy mind. In practice, the ego takes this truth and says, “I will transcend mind.” But the “I” that experiences itself as separate from life cannot and will not ever know liberation. There is no such thing as an enlightened ego. What else is possible? Resting in Love,…

    Read More

  • Shaila Catherine

    Lovingkindness in the Little Things

    In this session Shaila Catherine explored the practice and purpose of lovingkindness (mettā) meditation. She clarified what mettā is, and what mettā is not. Mettā is more than merely an antidote to apply on occasions when fear and ill will arise. Mettā can become a skillful and liberating way to experience all moments of life.

    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

  • Shaila Catherine

    Appreciation and joy

    We can cultivate the attitude of appreciation and allow it to enhance and strengthen our mindfulness practice. Shaila Catherine speaks about the powerful impact that joy and appreciation can have on the quality of our minds, and the development of our spiritual path.

    Read More