Introduction to Dharma Contemplation
Video
Brief introduction to the practice of Dharma Contemplation.
Role of Spiritual Friendship in Meeting the Difficult
Audio
This talk considers the benefits of spiritual friendship in meeting the difficult.
Five Questions of Sati
Audio
Five Questions of Mindfulness (Sati).
Guided Anapanasati with Another
Audio
Guided Anapanasati meditation and contemplation.
Giving Attention - Sources Happiness & Freedom
Audio
Exploration of causes and conditions that both hamper and support deep seeing.
Kindness in Action
Audio
About kindness being expressed through generosity, appreciation, and friendship.
An Overview of the Four Brahma Viharas
Audio
Exploring the skillful qualities of kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity.
Turning the Mind Towards the Dharma
Audio
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.
Working with Afflictive Thought Patterns 1: Wisdom as Antidote
Audio
Some suggestions for bringing wisdom to deeply conditioned mental patterns such as "lack" mind and comparing mind.
Working with Afflictive Thought Patterns 2: Compassion
Audio
An exploration of compassion and self-compassion as Brahmavihara practices, and some suggestions for applying compassion as an antidote to painful mental states.
Aggregates Series
Video
A series of talks on the five aggregates also known as the "clinging-khandas": form, feeling, perception, constructions, consciousness.
Dependent Origination Series
Video
A series of talks on dependent origination (paticca samuppāda) understood in a relational context offered to members of the Insight Dialogue Community.
Dharma Contemplation: Meditating Together with Wisdom Texts
Teaching
This book describes the nature and purpose of Dharma Contemplation, with chapters detailing each of the five phases of the practice.
Gratification, Danger and Escape
Teaching
A series of teachings on gratification, danger and escape offered on retreat collected and annotated to facilitate their use for study by individuals or groups.
Sutta Reflections
Video
As series of four talks each focusing on one or more discourses of the Buddha (suttas) offered to members of the Insight Dialogue Community.
The Aggregates and Interpersonnel Meditation
Audio
Reflections on the aggregates and interpersonal meditation.
Awareness and Release
Audio
A talk about awareness and release.
Awareness Releases the Knot
Audio
This talk explores how the particulars of this human experience known through awareness and the map of the Dhamma can support release.
Balance, Remembering and Effort
Audio
This talk considers how right effort and the calling forth of joy and curiosity cultivates a path of remembering and mindfulness for daily life.
Clinging and the Vicissitudes
Audio
This talk describes how we can have stability of mind even when changes happen and we resist or take in personally, thinking things shouldn’t be as they are.
Constructed and Unconstructed Intimacy and Love
Audio
This talk considers constructed and unconstructed intimacy.
Cracking Hunger and Ignorance
Audio
Talk about the role of hunger for pleasure, existence and non-existence and ignorance of these hungers in suffering.
Cultivating Mindfulness in Relationship
Teaching
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.
Deep Listening: An Interview with Gregory Kramer
Teaching
An interview with Gregory Kramer taken from Insight Journal, Spring 2006.
Four Doorways to Speaking and Listening
Audio
This talk describes how to bring listening and speaking into meditation while maintaining the integrity of practice.
The Four Noble Truths
Audio
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.
The Holy Life
Audio
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.
Impermanence of Breath - A Guided Meditation
Audio
Guided meditation on impermanence of the breath.
Insight Dialogue Disrupts the Structures
Audio
Reflections on how Insight Dialogue reveals how the Buddha’s teachings on tanha manifest in our interpersonal lives and how the hungers for pleasure, existence and non-existence can be disrupted by the practice.
Liberated through Sense Contact - Part 1
Audio
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?”
Liberated through Sense Contact - Part 2
Audio
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.
Living Spark of Wisdom
Audio
This short, guided practice begins with an inquiry into what provides the motivation that moves the heart, mind and body toward wisdom.
Living the Teachings
Teaching
An essay on living the teachings of the Buddha.
Guided Metta Meditation
Audio
This 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.
Metta Meditation
Audio
Guided metta (loving kindness) meditation.
Metta Meditation & Our Willingness to Turn Towards What is Here Now
Audio
This short metta meditation points to how our willingness to turn towards what is here now is the essence of loving kindness.
Mindfulness in Relationship: The Power of the Shared Human Experience
Video
Gregory Kramer 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.
Pain and Pleasure Guided Practice
Audio
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.
Pause - A Guided Preparation
Audio
A guided preparation for the Insight Dialogue guideline Pause.
Relating to Experience
Audio
This talk considers how we relate to experience as part of a liberative path.
Relax – Layers of the Guidelines Relax
Audio
Brief talk about the many layers of of the Insight Dialogue guideline Relax.
Release Just Here
Audio
Reflections on how the Insight Dialogue guidelines can help orient us toward mindfulness when we forget. We pause, relax and open to investigation.
Seeding the Heart: Loving-kindness Practice with Children
Teaching
Gregory Kramer describes the practice of loving-kindness he shared with his children each night at bedtime, while they were growing up.
Sembrando el Corazón: La Práctica del Amor-Universal con Niños
Teaching
Spanish translation of Seeding the Heart: Loving-kindness Practice with Children.
The Sensitive Human
Audio
This talk speaks to the exquisitely sensitive nature of the human being and our specific and acute sensitivity to other humans in particular. Our sensitivity to others can be a source of great suffering and it can also open doors to insight.
Sensitive Humans
Audio
Talk about the sensitivity of the human organism and the implications of this sensitivity.
Speech Is Action
Audio
This talk looks at speech as a world-forming action. In the Hindu and Abrahamic traditions, all things take birth in the Word. In the Buddhist tradition we have consciousness taking rise based upon volitional formations.
