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

  • Eugene Cash

    Waking up to Love!

    What do you love? What’s your relationship to love? Do you love yourself? Do you love someone else? Do you love your job or your hobbies or your house or your friends or your community? Do you love the dharma or the truth or reality? What is Love? Beyond learning about what we love, what…

    Read More

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of Nov 13, 2023

    This week’s topic is “Entering Fall”. The autumn season can be a challenging (transitional) time of the year with darkness, rain, wind, mist, and a sense that the cycle of life is coming slowly to an end. Paradoxically, nature also offers intense scents and colors before heading into the coldness and barrenness of winter. This week is an invitation to experience autumn within us. A time to bring the mind momentarily to a stop and explore what can nurture and provide a refuge for the heart. Let’s explore the sparkling colors of autumn’s heart and mind 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

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of 07 April, 2025

    We are delighted to have Jaya Rudgard leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring nourishment to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Dharma Here and Now: The Art of Being Present

    As meditators we aspire to being awake to life. We know that this life with its gifts, challenges and opportunities, only ever happens NOW, yet this NOW often eludes us. This week we’ll investigate what helps and hinders our fully inhabiting the moments of our day, and what possibilities might emerge when we do so.

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

    Read More

  • Jill Satterfield

    The Skilful Process of Transformation

    In this session, we’ll use the skilful means of mindfulness, mindful breathing and leading the nervous system into a parasympathetic state, to guide our mind towards organic spacious awareness. Within this relaxed spaciousness we’ll imagine the ways in which we wish to incline, head towards and become one with.

    Read More

  • Forgiveness: The Practice of Returning to Love

    A heart rooted in compassion longs to uplift and free all beings. Yet holding such a heart is not always easy. We stumble, we protect, we carry wounds. In our time together, we’ll explore forgiveness as an act of self-compassion-a way to meet our own suffering with kindness, and to restore the dignity that pain…

    Read More