Introducing Insight Dialogue
A relational Dhamma calls for a relational meditation practice—and such a practice, in turn, reveals a relational Dhamma.
Insight Dialogue (ID) is the relational meditation practice I’ve been developing and teaching since 1994. It has been the motivating force and method of my inquiry into Relational Dhamma. To better understand my perspective on human relatedness and the Buddha’s teachings, it is useful to know about ID. I’ll introduce it here and if you wish, you can learn more from my book Insight Dialogue—The Interpersonal Path to Freedom and at Insight Dialogue Community.
Relational is a loaded word, and relational contact is a complex and tender thing. We are attracted and repelled by other people. We are sensitive to attention, afraid of intimacy, and yet crave genuineness and safety. With mindfulness, these sensitivities can increase, especially when the mind becomes stable enough to observe its reactions. ID is a meditation practice of relationship, one that unfolds in a shared field of awareness, and so it is offered with care. Still, ID is not a replacement for silent individual practice. Relational and individual silent practices complement and support each other.
Like traditional vipassana meditation, Insight Dialogue cultivates not only mindfulness, but all the meditative qualities, or factors of awakening.
Meditating together, we are cultivating mindfulness and tranquility, which help calm our inner and relational excitements. By fostering investigation and energy, our meditation helps us recognize and work skillfully with habitual ways of relating. Joy, concentration, and equanimity all contribute to balance and eventually insight.
In addition to cultivating these seven meditative qualities, ID explicitly enfolds root wisdom teachings which guide our inquiry and form the substance of our dialogues. Dharma wisdom (such as studying the suttas) grants us a perspective on experience drawn from outside our conditioned frameworks and helps keep the practice aimed in a wholesome direction. When formal practices like ID cause us to observe our lives through the lens of wisdom teachings, we naturally ask if these teachings fit our experience, if they are, in that sense, true. Because actual experience, not intellectual abstractions, are the basis for investigation in ID, and those experiences are unfolding in relationship, the relational facets of the wisdom teachings make sense and gain immediate relevance.
Because actual experience, not intellectual abstractions, are the basis for investigation in Insight Dialogue … the relational facets of the wisdom teachings make sense and gain immediate relevance.
Relational practices like ID share much with traditional silent and solo practices. At times, we are likely to experience agitation, fogginess, and doubt. Both relationally and individually, the conceptual mind may take charge and draw us far from the here and now. There may be episodes of bliss and moments of insight, but as practice deepens and the foundations of ‘self’ shift, we are also likely to feel unsettled, even scared. Thus, all meditation should be approached with care.
Interpersonal practice presents particular challenges. More than silent meditation, it provides worldly stimulation to which we might react or cling. Talking with others can draw us into emotional reactivity and relational habits. We can get stuck in conceptual investigation and fail to remain grounded in present moment experience. Meditating together, our urges for pleasure, acknowledgment and safety can become triggered and clearly known. Sitting with other people in silence is revealing; relational sensitivities bloom. We may feel safe and well-met, allowing rare experiences of safety and ease. But we may feel unsafe and unmet, and in interaction these sensitivities can be amplified. Whether fulfilling or scary, agitating or profoundly calming, we’d best proceed with care. We are bringing together the powers of meditation and relationship.
We are bringing together the powers of meditation and relationship.
For interpersonal meditation to work safely, and for insight and unbinding to occur, the method of practice must be strong and clear enough to meet the challenges that arise in bare relational contact. To begin with, ID is guided by clarity of intention. It is not offered as a way to figure out and fix the struggling personality. There are psychotherapeutic benefits that naturally emerge from ID practice, but these are not the primary aim. The core intentions of Insight Dialogue are identical to traditional Buddhist insight meditation. In ID we may directly experience the self as constructed and without enduring substance. We observe the impermanence of inner and outer things. We notice the stress of trying to get things the way we want in a world that is not under our control. We taste the ease that comes with releasing our wanting and control. Insight into the roots of our dissatisfaction, unskillfulness, and ignorance inclines the mind toward release; insight into our capacity for joy, peace, and compassion inclines it toward freedom.
Because ID balances energy and calm, and it helps to cultivate other meditative qualities, the power of relationship is encountered in ID by a mind that is wakeful, gathered, and flexible. Common features of relationships, such as the stimulations of pleasure and pain, the entanglements born of longing, and the amplification of hungry personal and cultural norms, can be seen and potentially released. It is a practice that benefits from the warmth and compassion of relational contact, while also revealing the impermanence of all things, including relationships. From this, and experiences of non-separation, our perspective on life inclines towards freedom.
Contemplation
We invite you to notice if relatedness is somehow present in your awareness during a silent meditation. If there are other people in the same space, is there knowing of their presence, even with your eyes closed? Any thoughts arising about some interactions with others - past or future? Or there could be an internal dialogue, relating to yourself, like criticizing or soothing oneself about something? There might also be a sense of loneliness - missing relationships? Feelings of unsafety or safety connected with others? Or something else - just gently investigating possible relational aspects arising in your awareness during silent sitting.
Originally written in 2019 and revised in 2025, this unpublished overview of Insight Dialogue by Gregory Kramer is offered now as part of an ongoing inquiry into relational Dhamma.