| Ananda: "This is half of the holy life, lord: noble friends, noble conversations."
The Buddha: Don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Noble friends and noble conversations are actually the whole of the holy life.
|
Do you feel like you've gotten all the low hanging fruit from your current insight practice(s)? Do you wanna step it up? Insight Dialog is an amazingly effective way to move to a deeper level.
This method is an insight technique that involves sitting facing another meditator and shifts (with a teacher's guidance) between being internal and silent (for short periods) and "speaking the truth, listening deeply" on topics the teacher guides you into contemplating. It just blew me away how readily the insights came and how deep they were. And most amazingly, all that talking - deep, structured talking (not the usual chatter) - left me in a deeper state of concentration than on a traditional silent retreat.
We are social animals and this method takes advantage of that fact and also leads to deep dharma insights of a relational nature as well as a personal nature. This is a method for not only filling in the missing relational piece from traditional insight practice, but also for gaining a much deeper understanding of what the Buddha meant when he said "Noble friends and noble conversations are actually the whole of the holy life." Highly Recommended!
For more information, visit The Metta Foundation.
This is a 15 minute excerpt from a talk Greg Kramer gave in Holland on the movement from an individual heroic view of the path to one that explicitly encompasses our lives as relational beings. http://bit.ly/2nZVC95
This next piece is 30 minutes long and in it Greg Kramer speaks about the interpersonal facets of tanha, craving. So this is one example of how the Dhamma is applied in immediate and helpful ways to our relational lives. It’s an older talk; note that the audio quality on this one is not so great. http://bit.ly/2oS4g8U
This video is a 60 minute piece on the three bases of Insight Dialogue. That is, how do meditative qualities, the Dhamma, and relationship come together to make this practice effective, and how might knowing this effect our teaching. While it’s a longer talk, it provides a good theoretical foundation for those so inclined. https://youtu.be/v3RfSAWkdok
| Back to Leigh's Home Page | Site Map | Site Search |
Leigh Brasington
/ 
/ Revised 26 Apr 17