Insight Dialogue (eBook)

From Chapter 1: On the Path Together

The whole of our path of awakening, including the profound contributions of meditation, can be fully integrated with our lives with others. A great deal of our suffering in life is in relationship to other people. We cannot reasonably expect individualistic philosophies and solitary practices to directly address the pain and confusion that arise between two people or in society at large. Nor can we expect solo endeavors to yield a direct path to the rewards of relational ease and insight. What is required is a fundamentally interpersonal understanding of the path and a meditation practice explicitly evolved to take place in relationship with others. This book is about such an understanding and such a path.

We meditate alone but live our lives with other people, a gap is inevitable. If our path is to lead to less suffering, and much of our suffering is with other people, then perhaps we need to reexamine our sole commitment to these individual practices. Meditating alone reinforces an unreflected assumption: that the deep work of awakening is a private affair. From this assumption we build a sense of the path—,its overall direction and its particulars—,that favors solitary and internal endeavor. Meditating individually, we lack any practice that explicitly addresses the interpersonal realm. We may sense vaguely that something is awry but cannot see what is missing. We are not clear that the personal and interpersonal paths are profoundly connected, nor do we know how easily and even elegantly they can be interwoven. A wider vision is available to us. It is so simple.

All meditation helps us calm down, become more aware of what is going on within us, and meet difficulties with honesty and acceptance. Meditation involves both an explicit practice of tranquillity and reflection and a lifestyle of mindfulness and care.

When we meditate alone, we might be quiet for a few minutes or a few days, possibly attending to the breath or to some quality of the heart. We calm down, the mind clears and becomes still. In the stillness of individual meditation we perceive the suffering associated with our relationship to ourselves. We notice how easily we become lost in automatic thoughts and emotions. We notice bodily suffering, personal grasping and fear, and confusion. Against the backdrop of simple awareness, our longings and fears—,our struggles to attain pleasure and to avoid pain—,become starkly visible. Seeing the stress involved in satisfying our desires, we glimpse how we habitually fabricate many of our problems, and begin to release these habits. As individual practice deepens, it may yield true ease. We get a taste of freedom. But whether we practice meditation in seclusion or independently alongside other meditators at a meditation group or retreat, individual meditation approaches the confusion and pain of our relational lives only indirectly.

When we meditate together, as in Insight Dialogue, the same process unfolds—,with two significant differences. Interpersonal meditation reveals the suffering associated with our relational lives, and in society as a whole, much more directly. It is exceptionally effective at revealing desires and fears about being seen, the dynamics of loneliness, and the powerful but hidden processes by which we construct a self-image. Interpersonal meditation also provides us with a more direct way to unbind the knots behind this relational suffering and confusion. Its dynamics are similar to those of traditional, personal meditation: we gradually cultivate mindfulness and tranquillity, these qualities allow us to apprehend the...