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

  • Nobantu Mpotulo

    Courage to Love

    I cannot be fully me if you are not fully who you are destined to be. I AM Because We Are.

    Read More

  • Jill Satterfield

    Apply as Needed; the Benefits of Skillful Means

    Becoming quiet allows for deeper listening – to the whispers of the body, heart and mind as parts of a whole and as harmonic convergence. How we tune our instruments depends on what we hear. Skillful means provide a variety of tools to self prescribe and address what is needed in the moment. We’ll practice…

    Read More

  • Clear Presence, Sweet Absence

    Dharma practice encourages us to see the present moment clearly – to meet and respond to it well. What is here in this moment? Another dimension of practice is to learn to appreciate absence: What is this moment free from? Having skill in both these dimensions brings us closer to the joy and peace that…

    Read More

  • Yahel Avigur

    Samadhi: The Reliable Path to Wisdom, Joy and Happiness

    Samadhi is the art of nourishing, gathering, and collecting the heart. Highly regarded by the Buddha, this practice relies on honesty and wisdom, reliably leading to joy and happiness, and inclines the heart towards the depth of the path. In this session, we will open a door to cultivating this skill.

    Read More

  • The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love

    When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. When we know ourselves as a whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human….

    Read More

  • Practice as a Way of Remembrance

    Many are referring to this time as apocalyptic. Fair enough. It can seem as though everywhere we turn a dismantling of some sort is in the works. While we might intellectually feel able to embrace the change upon us, for many it can be easy to fall into overwhelm, hopelessness, even despair. What do the…

    Read More