Read an Excerpt

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 moment-tomoment nature of experience; what we then realize, frees us. But because interpersonal meditation works with the moment-to-moment experience of interacting with another, it brings the liberating dynamic of meditation into our interpersonal lives. From there it migrates to society as a whole.

In Insight Dialogue—whether on retreat or in a weekly group—a simple practice unfolds: after a period of silent sitting meditation, people are invited into pairs or larger groups to reflect together on a topic such as change, death, or doubt. Some basic instructions are offered about pausing to be mindful and relaxing in the face of reactivity. In Insight Dialogue, meditators encounter more stimulation to react or cling to than they would in silent practice. Along with this challenge, they discover the unique gift of mutual support for seeing things as they actually are. Because the guidelines, the practice, and the insights all address the dynamics of relating with other human beings, they follow us into our everyday lives easily and naturally. We spontaneously remember to relax in interaction with a coworker or notice how we are positioning ourselves in a conversation or see our own clinging with clarity and compassion. We also learn to recognize the spark of clear awareness present behind the clamor of human encounter. Each moment of human interaction becomes part of the path to awakening.

The group practice of Insight Dialogue is portable and accessible: a practice group may be formed anywhere. Insight Dialogue groups might meet once a week; typically, they begin with a review of the goals and methods of the practice. We meditate silently and individually for a time, releasing the whirling of our everyday lives. Then we are invited to find a partner and are given new instructions. We are offered a topic to reflect upon, usually a real-life issue considered in the light of wisdom drawn from an established spiritual tradition. We are invited to pause periodically during that reflection and release habitual stories and routine reactions, meeting the present moment of interpersonal contact with mindfulness. A bell is rung, and we step into interpersonal practice as mindfully as we are able.

Immediately, stories well up. We find our own stories, and those of our co-meditators, to be absorbing, sometimes touching. We form judgments about the stories, about the actors in them, about the way they are told. We are carried away by habits of speech; we find ourselves grasping at the emotions aroused by this encounter. A bell is rung, and everyone drops into silence. Stopped in our habitual spinning, we come home to mindfulness. We notice how our thoughts and emotions have proliferated. Mindfulness stabilizes a bit and we calm down, letting the mind settle on simple bodily awareness or the breath. When the bell is rung again, we reengage with our partner. Excitement and identification still arise easily, but soon we begin to pause on our own, without the bell’s reminder. We also have the support of each other’s practice: our partners also begin to pause on their own, bringing us back to the moment when our own mind wanders.

By the end of a single evening of practice we have paused many dozens of times. We carry back to our everyday lives an awareness of the possibility of pausing, of not identifying with the proliferations of our hearts. As we enter our everyday relationships, we sometimes find ourselves pausing spontaneously, meeting experience with acceptance and including others in our field of mindfulness. At work and at home, as well as in our weekly practice group, we find opportunities to cultivate flexibility of mind; we begin to move easily from internal mindfulness to mindfulness of others.