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

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

With Caverly Morgan recorded on October 7, 2018.

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

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. We experience viscerally that “the world is my family.” From this understanding, we recognize that liberation is not a singular experience and ease our suffering in this remembering.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 22 September, 2025

    We’re grateful to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Still Heart: Cultivating Equanimity in an Unsteady World

    In a world marked by constant change, uncertainty, and emotional intensity, equanimity can seem like a distant ideal-or even a form of indifference. But in the Buddhist tradition, equanimity (upekkhā) is not cold or passive. It is the spacious, steady heart that knows how to stay open, grounded, and present with whatever life brings.

    In this week we will explore equanimity as a deep source of inner freedom-neither detached nor reactive, but wise, loving, and awake.

    Through daily reflection and embodied practice, we will ask:

    What is true equanimity, and what is it not?

    How can we meet change without losing our ground?

    How do we love and let go-at the same time?

    And how can we live with a still heart in a restless world?

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

    Read More

  • Kate Johnson

    Radical Friendship – Practicing Freedom in Unfree Places

    In these times of isolation and uprising, how can wise relationships be a refuge? Join us for an exploration of the Buddha’s teachings on spiritual friendship, and how they can help us embody freedom in all our relationships as we navigate the path to collective liberation.

    Read More

  • Ronya Banks

    Depth of Spiritual Practice – Even in a Chaotic World

    “Practicing systematically, taking the time to go into deep practice and making it the number one priority, leads to a state where the mind is very still and malleable and can investigate.” – Nikki Mirghafori As the human race’s daily living pace continues to speed up and an increasing sense of insecurity and doubt arise…

    Read More

  • Nina la Rosa

    A Pathway to Freedom Through Connecting with the Body

    Where’s your body? Can you feel it? Is it still there?! Life is full. There’s so much to plan and think about. We can go hours without feeling a single breath or footstep. Can you relate? By getting lost in our thoughts we over-identify with a limited sense of “self” and therefore suffer. We will…

    Read More

  • Yahel Avigur

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Yahel Avigur – Week of 14 July, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Yahel Avigur guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions enrich and support your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Metta — Healing All Aspects

    This week, we’ll open to the healing power of metta – loving-kindness, or goodwill – as a transformative force in our lives. We’ll practice offering this gentle warmth first to those we naturally care about, and to ourselves. Gradually, we’ll widen the circle, allowing metta to infuse our relationships with neutral people, those we find difficult, and ultimately all beings. As kindness suffuses more corners of our hearts and lives, we may begin to discover a growing sense of spaciousness and connection – and with it, insight, balance, and inner freedom.

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

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Groundlessness: Letting Go Into the Unknown

    Pema Chödrön writes, “It’s not impermanence per se, or knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation.” The truth of impermanence means that ultimately there is nothing we can rely on for lasting happiness. We will investigate the underlying feeling…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The full range of the heart.

    We call this ‘the season of goodwill’. A reminder to care for one another, and to wish each other well. This year, we find ourselves in more need of understanding and expressing our common humanness than ever. We use this week’s session to honour the human heart; to reflect together on both how we respond…

    Read More