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

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of May 30, 2022

    This week’s theme is: Bringing the Practice to Life. The Buddha’s teachings emphasise the whole of our lives as a rich ground for exploration and growth.  Through meditation, we cultivate skills and ways of relating that can be applied beyond formal meditation. This week we will explore bringing the practice to different areas and aspects of our lives. We will open to taste how this enlivens and rejuvenates our practice, and how it can nurture wellbeing for others and ourselves.

    Read More

  • From One, To Two, To Many: The Dharma-Power of Specific Relationships

    Specific relationships are each a nexus of power in the larger human system. The naturally intense energies and tendencies of the mind are not only amplified and their potency for action accelerated, but specific relationships also function as a vector for proliferation from the individual mind out to other nodes of the system. Relationships are…

    Read More

  • Stephen Fulder

    Welcoming the Beyond

    What is beyond the ordinary mind? Can thought be background music, not a distraction? How can we access a consciousness that is open, free and limitless? How can we dive into the ocean instead of being tossed by the waves? The Buddha was an unparalleled non-dual teacher who taught the formless as well as form….

    Read More

  • Return to Oneness – Resting in Luminous Being

    Who is it that suffers? And why is asking that question valuable in our spiritual practice? In this Sunday session, we’ll explore these questions, and more. Following a guided meditation and teaching from Caverly’s book, The Heart of Who We Are, there will be plenty of time for discussion. All welcome.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The nature of experience. Part 3: Non Self Existence.

    Today’s session is the third in a special run of three consecutive sessions with Martin, where he looks deeply at the nature of experience through Buddha’s profound descriptions of reality – Impermanence, Emptiness, Non self-existence. The classes point directly to how these themes can come alive in our practice and understanding, looking at the personal,…

    Read More

  • Kaira Jewel Lingo

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Kaira Jewel Lingo – Week of April 27

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, April 27 Resting in your own being Wednesday, April 29 Freeing the habit of separation Friday, May 1 Settling into…

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Apr 29 – 3 May, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.

    Read More