 | Relational Dharma |
~ An Invitation to Engage in a Relationship in Dharma ~
It was the 13th century Zen poet Eihei Dogen who expressed, “Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.” Unbound by forms, not held in time, or dependent on concepts. Closer than our own breath, this intimacy simply is. It draws us toward itself, seeking illumination and union through our recognition. As Dogen further unveiled, the way into this intimacy was to be found through the deep entering of relationship. “To be enlightened by all things,” he said, “is to remove the barriers between oneself and others.”
As consciousness, or awareness, touches deeply into and across all things, it finds its own resonance, and mind naturally and effortlessly releases, unfolding into its own enlightenment.
That this undivided holiness resists conceptual certainty is its very nature. Not bound, perpetual, inexhaustible, mystery. Our nature forms this sensitive hypercomplexity and is, in turn, informed by it. This speaks to a power that is beyond intellectual comprehension. And yet, it is what we are.
The Invitation
To accord; to be at one; together, in one; to bring heart to one's own being and to extend that heart to others; to reconcile oneself - this experience and its embodied expression may arguably be the most relevant and important action we can take - personally and globally. As J. Krishnamurti expressed, "What you are, the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world."
Opening to the dharma offers a way to enter very directly the nature of this experience, or physics, of accordance. Dharma is a word that speaks to energy - the energies of being that, through accordance with awareness, function to liberate experience from self-generated suffering. Relational Dharma invites this accordance process through shared awareness in human relationship.
Awakening to an Experiential Physics of Accordance
The essence of Relational Dharma: Awakening to an Experiential Physics of Accordance is to invite an uncommon visibility to the nature of the intersubjective - the space of awareness that exists in-between the appearance of self and other. As awareness itself, co-joins, through a direct intent within human relationship, a new perceptual lens forms. This sensitive lens magnifies a kind of media that illuminates the orchestration of relations that form and inform the nature that, in turn, gives rise to the appearance and experience of self and other.
"Don't be confused by surfaces; in the depths everything becomes law."
Rilke
Beautifully, we see this nature together, in one, as its motion threads through the entwining reciprocity of our volitional interrelations. As the constituents that coordinate the visibility of our own nature are aligned with and seen, we are less tethered to the tide of our unconscious conditions. New forms of intimacy and knowing emerge, and relationship itself becomes the vehicle and direct path through which we de-condition suffering and self- imposed limitation.
As awareness is heightened and sensitized through shared energy in relationship, the nature of who and what we are goes through a deep and liberating transformation. This attunement within dharma gives rise to the visibility of our own most true and unique nature. As direct resonance occurs with who is, beneath the opacity of appearances, a liberating illumination occurs and new forms of freedom become possible.
We enter this experiential physics of accordance through the recognition of the dharma of human relationship.