Awakening together - Insight Dialogue workshop
Description
Most people who sit in silent meditation know the experience of losing mindfulness the moment another person enters the room. The stillness cultivated on the cushion can feel like it evaporates in conversation — attention gets pulled into reactivity, self-presentation, or the pull to fill silence. Insight Dialogue is a meditation practice that takes place in relationship rather than in solitude, it allows for the practice of cultivating mindfulness in the presence of another and along with the voice of another cultivates mindfulness and gain insights internally, externally and both.
Insight Dialogue is grounded in satipatthana, the foundations of mindfulness, and works through six guidelines, that structure contact with another person as a field of meditative attention. Rather than treating dialogue as something separate from practice, or as a skill to be optimized, the guidelines slow interaction down enough that the same awareness available in stillness becomes available in speech and listening. Insight arises here not through thinking about the dharma, but through direct, embodied contact with what is actually happening between two people.
This introductory course is designed for those with some meditation experience but no prior exposure to Insight Dialogue required. No conversational fluency or particular relational skill is assumed — what matters is a willingness to bring the same beginner's attention you'd bring to the breath into contact with another person.
We will go through some of the guidelines as well as bringing in teachings of practice that allows for awakening in the here and now with the community, family and the world.
We will start at 9am and finishes at 4.30pm. You are welcome to bring your own lunch, the location is only 5 mins walk from Chatswood station with many choice of eateries available. The exact location of the venue will be sent closer to date.
If you have any questions, please email us.
FAQs
- What is Insight Dialogue? What can I expect?
In a typical Insight Dialogue practice session, people begin with a period of silent sitting meditation and are then invited into pairs or larger groups to practice together.
Six meditation instructions, or guidelines, form the core of Insight Dialogue practice—Pause, Relax, Open, Attune to Emergence, Listen Deeply and Speak the Truth. The guidelines serve as the foundation for bringing meditative qualities of mind to the practice.
As practitioners meditate together, supported by the guidelines, they reflect on topics that encourage a direct and intimate inquiry into the nature, causes, and release of human suffering.
Contemplation topics in Insight Dialogue range from direct noting of sensory experience (e.g., pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the body) to more content-rich teachings such as the three characteristics (suffering, impermanence, and not-self) or the “divine abodes” of lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. These teachings are not discussed in the abstract, but rather explored in present moment experience. In this way, relational contact and meditative qualities of the mind help bring root wisdom teachings into lived experience, here and now.
Here is a short video of Insight dialogue
- Can I still come if I need to come late or leave early?
We highly recommend all participants to be here for the whole duration of the day of practice. Please email us, and have a chat before you register for the event if you have any questions in regards to coming in late or leaving early.
- Are there free or paid parking close by?
There are paid underground carpark such as Zenith chatswood centre or Help Street parking or Wilson parking closeby. please check their website for weekend parking prices.. There are also free street parking on the streets closer to Beauchamp park on the other side of the railway tracks.
- How do I get there?
You can travel via train or metro to Chatswood station, and then it is a 5-8 mins walk to the venue. Location will be announced closer to event date.
- What do I need to bring? What should I wear?
Some light refreshments will be served.
There will be chairs provided. If you would like to sit on the floor, perhaps bring some cushions but it is optional.
If you like you can bring your own lunch, we will have an hour lunch. If not there are places you can buy lunch closeby as well.
Wear something comfortable as you will sit and might do some light movement throughout the day. You will be asked to take off your shoes inside the venue.
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