IMS Book Club: Gregory Kramer

A Whole-Life Path
A Lay Buddhist’s Guide to Crafting a Dhamma-Infused Life
By Gregory Kramer

Book Club Dates:
November 10, 17, and 24
7:00-8:30 PM ET

Q&A Information for the Meetings

Meetings #2 & #3: will be conducted on Zoom using the chat function.

For descriptions of each meeting, click here.

About the Book

Many lay Buddhists struggle to carry the benefits of their studies and meditation practice into their twenty-first-century lives. How might our daily experience of both life and the Buddha’s teachings shift if there were no separation between them?

In A Whole-Life Path, Gregory Kramer invites us to see the complexity and challenges of today’s world as doorways to fully embodied Dhamma wisdom. He explores each factor of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path then looks at modern life, calling out opportunities to put all the Buddha’s teachings into practice—individually, relationally, and socially.

“This remarkable book offers a perspective on the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path that is at once solidly rooted in the canonical texts of early Buddhism, yet astutely attuned to the needs of contemporary readers seeking to navigate our frantic, directionless culture.”— Bhikkhu Bodhi, Buddhist scholar and translator

About the Author

Gregory Kramer teaches, writes, and is the founding teacher of the Insight Dialogue Community. His primary focuses are sharing a relational understanding of the Dhamma and teaching Insight Dialogue, an interpersonal form of Buddhist insight meditation. He is the author of Insight Dialogue: The Interpersonal Path to Freedom; Dharma Contemplation: Meditating Together with Wisdom Texts; Seeding the Heart: Practicing Lovingkindness with Children; and other books and articles. Since he began teaching meditation worldwide in 1980, he has pioneered online meditation and contemplation practices. His primary focus since 1995 has been developing and sharing a relational study of the Dhamma and Insight Dialogue, an interpersonal form of Buddhist insight meditation, and groups are now active worldwide. He also developed Dharma Contemplation, a text-based contemplation practice.

About the IMS Book Club 

Each month, the IMS Book Club brings together authors and readers for a facilitated discussion on the featured dharma-book-of-the-month. Our book club offers participants a deeper experience and engagement with early Buddhist teachings and practice through the lens of the selected book.

• The IMS Book Club is entirely free of charge.
• All Book Club meetings will be held online  via Union and Zoom.
• Each monthly Book Club event will feature a new book and three group discussions, including at least one session with the author.
• Featured authors will lead at least one of the three group discussions. If the author/teacher does not participate in all three sessions, a trainee in IMS’s Teacher Training Program will moderate those discussions in place of the author.
• Discussion questions will be offered to participants in advance of each meeting session so that everyone has a chance to consider if and how they want to contribute to the discussion.
• Beyond these basic guidelines, authors will be able to tailor their book club meetings as they see fit, so the structure of book club gatherings may vary from month to month.

Want to Join? 

Step one: register for Gregory Kramer’s three book club meetings here. 

Step two: join the IMS Book Club here,if you haven’t already. This registers you for our monthly newsletter which announces new programs and allows you to sign up for the book-of-the-month discussions that interest you.

Step three: order your copy of A Whole-Life Pathhere. Although there is no charge to join the book club, participants will need to secure their own copies of the books prior to the start of the monthly discussion group.