Please join us!
Please join us!
This online Insight Dialogue meditation workshop invites us to explore the sources of our energy and commitment to the Buddhist path. Insight Dialogue is an interpersonal meditation practice that brings together meditation, the Buddha’s teachings, and human relatedness to support insight.
We often think of relationships contributing to our spiritual path through love, compassion, and the soothing of friendship. All of this is true. But relationships can also be a necessary source of zeal, especially for those who have rejected religion as too emotional, too non-rational, or politically and socially unworkable.
The Buddha was intense in his commitment to awakening. He urged his followers to intensity. He knew the purpose of the path and what it takes to break through the sludge of conditioning. An arms-length approach won’t suffice. Many have turned away from religion and its profound dangers of magical thinking, blind faith, and bigotry. But we still need the commitment and energy usually provided by religious belief.
This all-in attitude has an emotional basis, what some might call heart, that brings commitment and energy. In our time together we’ll explore how relational practice can reconnect us with the wholesome elements of religious emotion yet still allow uncompromising existential inquiry, rational inquiry, and a profound and ripened common sense.
Through Dhamma reflection and guidance, relational and silent meditation, and an opportunity for discussion, we’ll explore:
- What gives you energy for this path?
- Can we be emotionally committed without being dogmatic?
- How does practicing with others ignite what practicing alone cannot?
In our time together we will explore the experience of relational contact as a source of zeal and coolness – samvega and pasada – on our Buddhist path, even for those who feel secular in orientation. In a world torn apart by root relational fracture, we need this power at our back.
The workshop is suitable for all levels of experience.