Guided introduction to Insight Dialogue Guidelines Listen Deeply and Speak the Truth. Offered online at the Voices of Awakening Retreat, January 2, 2022.
Language: English
Insight Dialogue is an interpersonal meditation practice that brings together meditative awareness (e.g., mindfulness, concentration), the wisdom teachings of the Buddha and the power of relationship to support insight. This talk provides an overview of how these three foundations or bases of Insight Dialogue come together to form the practice. Offered on August 7, 2016.
An introduction to a fully immersive, “always-on” engagement with the Noble Eightfold Path. Excerpted and adapted from Gregory Kramer’s forthcoming book, A Whole-Life Path. Published in Insight Journal, 2019.
A Whole Life Path-Gregory Kramer_Insight Journal 2019An exploration of the importance of friendship on the Buddhist path.
Friendship-Surrey-Hallisey_Insight-Journal-2021Guided introduction to Insight Dialogue Guideline Pause. Offered online at the Voices of Awakening Retreat, December 29, 2021.
Guided introduction to Insight Dialogue Guideline Open. Offered online at the Voices of Awakening Retreat, December 30, 2021.
In this series of four talks Gregory Kramer guides participants in an exploration of a map of the whole of the Buddhadhamma – its core structures, and what they teach us about the interconnectedness of all the Buddha’s teachings. Offered from February to June 2019.
There are four videos in this series.
In this video Gregory Kramer, the developer of Dharma Contemplation, introduces the practice to the Tilorien Dharma Contemplation Group. This teaching was recorded on September 14, 2020.
This Dhamma talk provides a reflection on the Stages of Dharma Contemplation Practice and the three bases of Insight Dialogue. It was offered on June 14, 2021 in honor of the 1 year anniversary of the Tilorien Dhamma Contemplation Group.
This talk considers the benefits of spiritual friendship in meeting the difficult. “In the presence of spiritual friends you can feel the ‘being with’; a compassionate caring based on trust and dharma…..Feeling the compassionate caring of the other allows us to touch what is difficult and painful. Nothing is left out.” Offered in October 2018 in Barre, Massachusetts.
Guided meditation of the five questions of Sati.
- Why am I cultivating awareness?
- What am I aware of?
- How am I cultivating awareness?
- Where am I aware?
- When am I aware?
Offered June 2012 at the Cascadia Insight Dialogue Retreat, Bow, WA.
Guided Anapanasati meditation and contemplation. An interpersonal practice of the mindfulness of breathing sits on a foundation of intrapersonal, knowing breathing internally, breathing externally in the other and both internally and externally. Offered March 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand.
Parts: 1. In silence, guided: Int, Ext, Both; 2. Internal—A (first speaker)-B (second speaker)-AB (dialogue); 3. External—A-B-AB; 4. Int + Ext—B-A-AB; 5. Open awareness; 6. How was practice?
Exploration of causes and conditions that both hamper and support deep seeing. Includes discussion of how our consumer society fosters desire and unskillful behavior. Touches on the value of retreat in supporting ease which nurtures deep seeing while also acknowledging that deepening practice is a whole life practice. Offered July 27, 2019, in North Carolina, United States.
About kindness being expressed through generosity, appreciation, and friendship. Offered February 8, 2019, in Massachusetts, United States.
Exploring the skillful qualities of kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity. Offered September 22, 2019, in Massachusetts, United States.
Supporting our practice with four reflections that highlight the meaning of our life: Precious Human Body, Impermanence and Death, Law of Cause and Effect and the Imperfections of Life. Offered January 2012 in Massachusetts, United States.
Some suggestions for bringing wisdom to deeply conditioned mental patterns such as “lack” mind and comparing mind. Offered September 29, 2019, in Massachusetts, United States.
An exploration of compassion and self-compassion as Brahmavihara practices, and some suggestions for applying compassion as an antidote to painful mental states. Offered October 6, 2019, in Massachusetts, United States.
A series of talks on the five aggregates also known as the “clinging-khandas”: form, feeling, perception, constructions, consciousness. Each talk includes a guided meditation, Insight Dialogue practice and a question and answer period. Offered in April and May 2017.
There are five videos in this series.
A series of talks on dependent origination (paticca samuppāda) understood in a relational context offered to members of the Insight Dialogue Community. Some audiences may find this material to be more engaging if they familiarize themselves with the 12 links of dependent origination and their Pāli terminology beforehand. Offered in July 2016.
- Dependent Origination in a Relational Context: Part I
- Dependent Origination in a Relational Context: Part II
- Dependent Origination in a Relational Context: Part III
- Dependent Origination in a Relational Context: Part IV
- Dependent Origination in a Relational Context: Part V
- Dependent Origination in a Relational Context: Part VI
This book describes the nature and purpose of Dharma Contemplation, with chapters detailing each of the five phases of the practice. It also offers resources for facilitating Dharma Contemplation.
dharma-contemplation-book-2nd-ed-2017This series of teachings were offered by Gregory Kramer at an Insight Dialogue Retreat held in Barre, Massachusetts in October 2015. The theme of this retreat is the Buddhist teachings on Gratification, Danger, and Escape. These teachings were offered in-person to retreatants. They have been collected and annotated to facilitate their use for study by individuals or groups. The transcriptions have been left unedited so the reader can “hear” the language of the teacher. Each talk includes a title, the type of talk or teaching, a list of keywords, the length of the audio file, a brief summary of the content and selected quotations. Contemplations posed during the session are listed. You will also find links to the audio file and to the transcribed text.
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Gratification-Danger-and-Escape-1A series of four talks, each focusing on one or more discourses of the Buddha (suttas) offered to members of the Insight Dialogue Community. The intention in this series to engage the text not as philosophy but as instructions for a whole life practice, including formal meditation and in-life reflection. Offered in December 2016 and January 2017.
There are four videos in this series.
Reflections on the aggregates and interpersonal meditation. Offered June 2010 in Tulloch, Ireland.
Reflections on awareness and release. Offered September 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
This talk explores how the particulars of this human experience known through awareness and the map of the Dhamma can support release. Offered June 2010 in Tulloch, Ireland.
This talk considers how the right effort and the calling forth of joy and curiosity cultivate a path of remembering and mindfulness for daily life. Offered September 2012 in Darp, Netherlands.
This talk describes how we can have stability of mind even when changes happen in life and we take it personally, thinking things shouldn’t be as they are. We can guard the sense doors and know how to meet with awareness the worldly dhammas of gain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute. When we know this, we can meet experience in the way that it is, not in the way we thought it should be. Offered May 2013 in Washington, United States.
Discussion of constructed and unconstructed intimacy. Offered June 2010 in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Consideration of the role of hunger for pleasure, existence and non-existence and ignorance of these hungers in suffering. Offered September 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
This chapter from the book Mindfulness and the Therapeutic Relationship considers how Insight Dialogue practice can be beneficial for psychotherapists in enhancing the quality of the therapeutic relationship.
Cultivating-Mindfulness-in-RelationshipAn interview with Gregory Kramer taken from Insight Journal, Spring 2006.
DeepListening-AnInterviewWithGregoryKramerThis talk describes how to bring listening and speaking into meditation while maintaining the integrity of practice. Speech comes from the development of a capacity for the auditory system to perceive. Through the enlightenment factors and the capacity to reside in the receptivity of loving-kindness, meditators share the intimacy of the moment. Offered May 2011 in Missouri, United States.
This talk offers a description of the Four Noble Truths. The listener is invited to look closely and see the sensitivity of the body-mind, recognize the pain of grasping and from this the possibility of something different. Is it possible for us to watch the process of the mind building our sense of self so that we cease to believe it every time it speaks? Offered September 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Consideration of the penetrating and uncompromising quality of the Buddhas’ teachings and how we bring these forward into this modern life as we live it. Offered September 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
Guided meditation on the impermanence of the breath. Offered May 2012 in Washington, United States.
Reflections on how Insight Dialogue reveals how the Buddha’s teachings on tanha manifest in our interpersonal lives and how these hungers for pleasure, existence, and non-existence can be disrupted by the practice. Offered in 2007.
In this first portion of a two-part talk, Gregory Kramer begins with the question, “What is the spiritual path for, why and how am I doing it?” He continues to explain how the human is hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. Offered September 2012 in Darp, Netherlands.
In this second portion of a two-part talk, Phyllis Hicks describes how we “keep it real” by showing up to whatever is here now. By bringing presence to the difficulty and knowing the reactivity, the mind grows bright and we can know what it is to be caught. We are cultivating a path that leads to the cessation of suffering. Offered September 2012 in Darp, Netherlands.
This short, guided practice begins with an inquiry into what provides the motivation that moves the heart, mind, and body toward wisdom. Practice partners are then invited to use the Insight Dialogue guidelines to voice the wisdom that is already alive in experience. Offered September 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
An essay on living the teachings of the Buddha.
Living-The-Teachings-April-2013This meditation guides us through the expansiveness of metta starting from the self, then moving to all beings, and followed by humbling receiving loving kindness in return. Offered May 2013 in Washington, United States.
Guided metta (lovingkindness) meditation. Offered in 2004 in North Carolina, United States.
This short metta meditation points to how our willingness to turn towards what is here now is the essence of loving-kindness. In this knowing, we respond with wisdom and find happiness in taking care of ourselves and extending love to all others and beings. Offered September 2012 in Darp, Netherlands.
Gregory Kramer, the developer of Insight Dialogue, speaks at The Family Action Network whose mission is to connect parents, educators and professionals through collaborative programming that educates, inspires and positively impacts the broader community. Offered April 23, 2015.
In this Insight Dialogue practice session, the guidelines Pause and Relax are practiced by contemplating bodily pain and pleasure. The question, “what is present now and how are you meeting it?” becomes the refrain throughout the teaching. There is also an opportunity for walking meditation midway through the audio. The second half includes bringing awareness to the impact of having another present while practicing with bodily pain or pleasure. Bells throughout offer the structure for utilizing this audio in practice groups. Offered May 2013 in Washington, United States.
A guided preparation for the Insight Dialogue guideline Pause. Offered in 2011 in London, England.
This talk considers how we relate to experience as part of a liberating path. We can’t control what happens to us – other people and the circumstances of the world. However, with skill, care and patience our internal responses to experience can be brought into a more equanimous way of responding. Also, in the moment of experience, whatever arises can be known without identification, without grasping. Offered June 2010 in Tulloch, Ireland.
A brief talk about the many layers of the Insight Dialogue guideline Relax. Offered April 2010 in Melbourne, Australia.
Reflections on how the Insight Dialogue guidelines can help orient us toward mindfulness when we forget. We pause, relax and open to investigation. Offered September 2012 in Darp, Netherlands.