What should I practice?
Pragmatic Dharma isn't about fantasy wish fulfillment, it's about where the rubber of practice meets the road of our lived reality.
No card. No countdown. The free account stays free.
- Practice
- Bringing attention to a single point.
- Result
- Unification.
- Practice
- Noticing sensations in real-time.
- Result
- Clarity.
- Practice
- Inclining the mind toward opening the heart.
- Result
- Love.
- Practice
- Using an open-ended question as a prompt.
- Result
- Discovery.
- Practice
- Inhabiting the body.
- Result
- Presence.
- Practice
- Incorporating subtle imagery & energy.
- Result
- Wholeness.
- Practice
- Doing nothing.
- Result
- Ineffable.
The problem was never a shortage of techniques.
You can find ten thousand guided meditations before breakfast. What you can't find is the one sentence that matters: given where your practice actually is, what should you be doing today?
Practice doesn't stall because you're lazy. It stalls because you haven't found the right practice for this moment.
Ten questions, then a map.
It isn't a personality test you take once and frame. Your assessments are kept in your library, so you can watch the shape change.
Answer ten questions.
Five minutes, no account needed. The questions are about how practice actually feels to you, not what you know about Buddhism.
Read your map.
All seven ways, measured. Your strongest way — the one your practice already leans on — and your growth edge.
Practise from it.
Your home feed follows the map: talks, practices and courses chosen for that shape.
Seven ways in. Yours is a mix of all of them.
These aren't schools you pick between or levels you climb. They're seven directions a practice can move in, and everyone leans on some and quietly avoids others. The map shows you which is which.
The interesting one is the way you've been avoiding.
Most of us practise our strength and call it discipline. The concentration person gets very good at concentrating. The heart person gets warmer. Both stay exactly the same shape for a decade.
Your growth edge is the way with the most room in it right now — the direction that will cost you something and give you something back. The map names it, and the feed starts quietly bringing you the teachings that live there.
Free isn't a trailer.
Make a free account and the map opens. That's the whole transaction.
Not a preview of the map — the map.
And it keeps moving as your practice does.
In full, however many you get through. No thirty-second sample, no daily cap.
What you have sat with is yours to look back on.
You can see exactly what is inside before you decide whether any of it is worth paying for. Browsing a paid course does not open its lessons.
Live sits with other people, on a free account. How that works is below.
Awakening is a team sport.
A live multiplayer session is a real room with real people in it at a real time — facilitated sits you join and leave together. It's the part of practice an app usually can't give you, and it's the part that keeps people practising.
Free members get sixty minutes of it a month. Unused minutes don't roll over, which is deliberate: the allowance is there to be used, not saved up.
Afterwards you get the full session data, free account or not. We don't ration that.
And then, for some people, an hour stops being enough.
If you sit most days, you'll feel the ceiling before long. Not because the free material is thin — it isn't — but because the instruction that would actually move you next is the kind a teacher gives a student they see every week. It comes with caveats. It assumes you've done the earlier thing. Handed to a stranger on day one it does more harm than good, so it doesn't sit in the public library.
That's what Hardcore is.
Hardcore is what happens when practice gets deliberate.
Two things get rationed on a free account: depth and company. Hardcore removes both limits at once.
In full, sitting alongside the free material rather than replacing it.
The detailed, specific instruction that assumes you are actually doing this.
The meter comes off entirely — sit as often as you like.
Twelve-week cohorts that meet live on a schedule. Enroll while a cohort is open; every session is recorded and kept.
Added to your account when it lands, at no extra cost.
And for the ongoing work of recording, editing and holding the rooms open.
Seven days free, then $19.99.
$19.99 a month. Seven days free first.
Free account · $0
| Where they differ | Free | Hardcore |
|---|---|---|
| Hardcore teachings inside Programs & Courses | — | Yes |
| In-depth practice instructions from the Sangha | — | Yes |
| New Hardcore material as released | — | Yes |
| Live multiplayer sessions | 60 minutes a month | Unlimited |
| Live training cohorts | Schedule only | Enroll, attend, watch back |
And the apps you're weighing this against.
The other question in the room. Four apps, the rows where the difference is real, and the two numbers that don't flatter us left where you can read them.
| Where they differ | Pragmatic Dharma | Waking Up | Headspace | Insight Timer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $19.99 — seven days free first | $19.99, or $129.99 a year ($10.83 a month) | $12.99, or $69.99 a year ($5.83 a month) | No monthly plan. Member Plus is $60 a year |
| What you get without paying anything | The whole map, every public talk and practice, and 60 minutes of live practice a month. No card. | A short free trial. A free membership if you ask for one and can't afford it. | A small set of free sessions, then a trial. | An enormous free library — tens of thousands of meditations, free for good. |
| Practising in a room with other people, rather than watching a broadcast | Small facilitated rooms where the others are present with you. Unlimited, included in the $19.99. | Live events and Q&As with teachers — an audience, not a room. | A monthly 30-minute live meditation and quarterly workshops, broadcast to every member. | A large live-events programme, running most of the day — one teacher, thousands watching. |
| A training that meets as the same group, week after week | Twelve-week cohorts with a teacher who learns the room. Included, not an add-on or a per-session fee. | Courses are recorded and self-paced. | Courses are recorded and self-paced. | Courses and one-off live workshops; nothing that holds a group together. |
| Who is teaching | Buddhist lineage holders, for every recording in the app. | Sam Harris, with invited teachers across the Theory and Practice sections. | An in-house team, led by a former monk. | Thousands of independent teachers publishing to the platform. |
| Where to start, and what comes next | A ten-question map of the seven ways, and a feed that keeps following it. | An introductory course, then a daily sit. | Goal-based packs and a daily sit. | Search, playlists and what's popular — you choose. |
Headspace is $7 a month cheaper than we are, and Insight Timer's core library is free and always has been. Both are true, so both are on the table.
Prices read on each company's own site on 26 August 2026, and re-checked by hand rather than fetched. If that date looks old, treat the numbers as old.
Some of this isn't for sale.
Alongside Hardcore there are Teacher and Lineage teachings. Those are arranged with the community — you don't buy them, and buying Hardcore doesn't unlock them. They come with a relationship, which is the only way that material makes sense.
If you practise with the Pragmatic Dharma community, ask your teacher or the community team. Once it's on your account it opens automatically, and you won't be charged more for it.
Teacher
Arranged between a student and the teacher they see.
Lineage
Given inside the lineage, on the lineage's terms.
We'd rather tell you that here than at a paywall.
The AI recommends. It doesn't teach.
Every recording in the app, and the models behind the recommendations, come from a team of real Buddhist lineage holders. The software's job is narrow: keep track of where your practice is and put the right human teaching in front of you at the right time.
We don't think AI enhances human wisdom when it's built to replace humans. Only when it directly supports human collaboration — including in religion and spiritual practice.
Asked and answered.
No. Answer all ten questions first — the account only opens the results. We email you a sign-in link and your answers travel with it, so you can open your map on any device.
You go back to the free account with everything you have done still there — your map, your feed, your journal and your monthly hour.
No. It is a way to practise well between the times you see one, and a way to sit with other people while you do.
Start with the ten questions.
Answer ten questions and see the shape of your own practice. Everything after that is your decision.
Five minutes · ten questions · the map draws itself as you go