 | Personal Statement |
The previous decade for me has involved studies into the nature, or dharma, of mind and consciousness.
Dharma points to the truth of the way things are, to the specific elements of experience and the natural laws that govern experience.
The central question motivating this exploration has been - what activates higher human intelligence and awareness, and what in turn reduces human harm and suffering. This examination of what facilitates and quickens patterns of higher awareness, as well as greater degrees of freedom, wisdom and compassion, has moved me to conduct research in a number of different disciplines and traditions. From within academia, I studied psychology, modern physics, philosophy, eastern religions, system's theories, evolution, and the sciences of complexity. Synthesized with theoretical work, I explored a range of modern and ancient experiential approaches that relate to mind and liberation. Most significant were the meditation practices that I encountered through Buddhist perspectives, specifically those rooted in the Theravada, Dzogchen, Mahamudra, and Vajrayana traditions. Each of these paths have been gifts - deeply informative and richly transformative - leading to the realization that the practice of consciousness toward liberation is itself, a technology.
The paths to liberation are arguably as mysterious and changing in their forms, as individual subjective experience is immeasurable. My own glimpses into these richly patterned, experiential architectures, emerged concurrent to insight into the meaning and dharma of relationship - with one another and all scales of life expression.
In Buddhist thought, this architecture of relations that in turn gives rise to the formation of self, other, and world, occurs through a “dependent co-arising” (the Buddhist Pali term for this doctrine is called “paticca samuppada”). This sublime perspective underscores all sects of Buddhism and was realized by the Buddha on the eve of his own enlightenment. Far more than an abstract statement of a universal law, this holistic view of reality can be entered directly within human relationship as a means to gain insight into freedom and resolve suffering.
As the Buddha said, “He who sees dependent co-arising sees the dharma, he who see the dharma sees dependent co-arising”. The dharma itself, is composed in and through us, and can become visible through shared awareness. It was through relationship that I touched dharma directly and discovered that the freedom associated with liberation comes into its most clear and meaningful, experiential dimension, when entered with and alongside the mind of another. This is the ground and inspiration of Relational Dharma - the path of liberation through engagement in the dharma of human relationship.