Humans are relational beings -- pack animals, born and raised in families, working and living together. Much of our suffering is people-suffering. We meditate to be free from suffering, yet sometimes a gap arises when interpersonal suffering is being addressed in intrapersonal meditation. We perpetuate the "island universe" of the individual self even as we seek freedom. Insight Dialogue is a fully relational meditation practice based on Buddhist Vipassana Insight meditation and a relational understanding of the Dhamma. The mind is invited to stillness and keen mindfulness even as we remain in dialogue with others. Here we meet the shared human experience that transcends our very real differences in genetics, background, and worldly circumstances.

Guest Dharma Talk

Relational Dhamma

What activates the desires and fears we have when we come into contact with another? Meditation is about seeing things as they actually are, the operation of the heartmind intra and interpersonally. The mind will then incline towards what is wise. The heart is moved by contact with another. However there is pressure/tendencies of the mind to move into agitation and confusion on contact with others. What activates the fears and desires of interpersonal interaction? Hunger (tanha) pressurises thoughts and feelings so that the mind doesn't settle. It is like fuel or an electric current for the system (personality) that is in place. All thoughts/actions/speech are conditioned by past habits and occurrences (sankhara conditions namarupa). Hunger/craving fuels/energises the system to generate more constructs along the same lines as previous ones. (These can be wise or unwise habits) There are three hungers: 1) Hunger for sense desires which includes social desires as well e.g. avoidance of loneliness which is like a death of the self. it might be seeking pleasure from others, seeking approval from parents, or in a Buddhist rebirth sense of driving from life to life. 2) Hunger to be seen, to become. 3) Hunger not to be seen e.g. interacting whilst performing a role, wearing a mask so the 'real you' is hidden, limiting contact with people, or having contact defined procedurally so it is blinkered - again a form of 'hiding'.