It’s perfectly possible to meditate completely alone and do well, but an essential nutrient can get missed if that is all we have - relationships with others. The Buddha’s attendant Ananda once remarked to him ”I’ve been thinking that community, Sangha, is half the spiritual life”; the Buddha replied "don’t say that Ananda, the *whole* of the spiritual life is within community, within Sangha”. In this talk Daizan Roshi explains about how we can use our relationships with others, particularly the more challenging ones (what he refers to as our troublesome Buddhas), to enrich and deepen our practice.