Introduction
Many negotiation and mediation scholars have grown interested in recent years in the ways in which mindfulness practice, as found in various Buddhist schools, may be integrated with conflict resolution research and practice (e.g., Bowling 2003; Freshman 2006; Peppet 2002 and 2004; Riskin 2002, 2004, and 2006; Rock 2005), as well as Darshan Brach's contribution in this very issue). In a special edition of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review titled “Mindfulness in the Law and ADR,” dispute resolution scholar Leonard Riskin wrote that mindfulness practice can diminish the traditional adversarial mindset, which “provides a constricted vision of . . . human relations that rests on separation and autonomy, on rights and rules” (2002: 16) and can nurture a broader and deeper perspective from which to act. Mindfulness meditation, Riskin explained, is a systematic process of investigation that can affect negotiators' perceptions and behavior by helping them enhance awareness of, and distance from, not only the behaviors associated with an adversarial mindset in negotiation (impulses, assumptions, automatic habitual reactions, etc.) but also of the limits of the adversarial mindset. It can improve negotiators' and mediators' abilities to listen deeply to both themselves and to others, to look beneath the surface positions to uncover deeper needs and interests, and to empathize and respond appropriately, acting from a mindset found on an alternative philosophical map.
Gregory Kramer, the author of Insight Dialogue, is a long‐time teacher of Buddhism who, for more than twenty years, has trained practitioners of mindfulness meditation to practice and cultivate the qualities of mind offered within the Buddhist tradition in interpersonal settings. His perspectives on mindfulness practice are examined here in light of their potential relevance to those theorists and practitioners of negotiation and ADR who seek to transform adversarial mindsets.
In this review I suggest parallels between the Buddhist framework and some key ideas in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scholarship and theory. Within that alternative framework are important insights about conflict escalation and transformation, and practices that I believe can help “change the game” of distributive bargaining.
Insight Dialogue: Foundational Premises
Kramer's somewhat radical premise is that meditating alone, but living our lives with others, creates an inevitable gap between the insights and mindfulness that those who meditate experience when in solitude and the lack of equanimity they experience when they engage with others throughout the day. This gap increases one's feelings of what the Buddha called suffering (Dukkha), a state of discomfort and dissatisfaction, of lack of mindfulness, tranquility, and clear awareness, which is the opposite of the state of comfort and ease known as Sukha. Kramer translates Dukkha to “stress.”
The author opens his book with the assertion that “the whole of our path of awakening, including the profound contributions of meditation, can be fully integrated with our lives with others” (3). This assertion may sound familiar, reminiscent of Thich Nhat Hanh's claim that one can also practice mindfulness when engaged in daily activities (e.g., washing the dishes or watering the garden). Following that rationale, practicing mindfulness principles when one is with others sounds natural.
Insight Dialogue, however, not only suggests that we bring awareness to the interpersonal realm but offers an entire methodology that seeks to help us turn interpersonal interaction into a journey on the path to cultivating equanimity, mindfulness, and calm awareness. The interpersonal conversation then becomes a sort of martial art — like a student of jujitsu or archery, one is guided to master the art of dialogue. Much like the physicist and philosopher David Bohm (1996) and possibly inspired by his view, Kramer sees dialogue as an interpersonal practice for cultivating deep wisdom, thus questioning what he sees as an “unreflected assumption . . . that the deep work of awakening is a private affair” (3).
But unlike Bohm, Kramer's understanding of deep wisdom is grounded in Buddhist thought and practice, specifically, Theravada Buddhism and Vipassana practice. (Toward the end of the book, in chapter 21, Kramer describes how insight dialogue is situated in traditional Buddhist teachings.) He provides a Buddhist‐oriented analysis of the causes of interpersonal suffering, stress (which I choose to characterize as “dis‐ease,” as it captures both the distress that the Buddha described and links it also to illness, both mental and physical) and provides guidelines, reflective exercises, and guided meditations for practice to help transform that dis‐ease into dialogue, through dialogue. He begins by reading the Buddha's most basic text, The Four Noble Truths (the truth of suffering, the causes of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering) as interpersonal truths, elaborating on the truth of interpersonal suffering, the causes of interpersonal suffering, the cessation of interpersonal suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of interpersonal suffering.
Seen in this light, Kramer's theoretical analysis and his suggested practice, I believe, have potential relevance to ADR practitioners and scholars: Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and practice — taken into the interpersonal realm — suggest new avenues for both theoretical analysis and further development of practices to help parties transform their interpersonal “dis‐ease” into dialogue. In Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton (1991) used martial arts (jujitsu) as a metaphor to describe the skilled negotiator; it is worth examining which lessons can be drawn from Kramer's Insight Dialogue to help negotiators and mediators better develop their skills.
The Four Noble Interpersonal Truths
The first “noble truth” is the truth of the existence of suffering.1 The human condition is full of dis‐ease and stress; in many occasions we prefer to shy away and not be bothered, to look away and to avoid it. The first noble truth calls us — as a first step — to honestly observe these occasions. The second noble truth focuses on the causes of suffering, described by Kramer as follows: “We cling to our efforts to get what we want, and we also cling to the fear of losing what we have. The tension inherent in such grasping is the root of suffering” (31). We cling to our ideas about what we desire, which only reinforces those desires and our assumptions about them and also shapes our personal sense of who we are, what we want, and what will help us get there.
The second noble truth focuses on our attachment to egocentric perceptions and the firm and unchanging roles we often construct for ourselves. “To understand suffering,” writes Kramer, “we must take a close look at clinging,” and this careful awareness of the manner in which that clinging occurs, is what the Second Noble Truth invites us to develop.
Egocentrism can be a barrier to effective negotiation, writes negotiation scholar Max Bazerman.“[A] barrier to optimal resolution is ‘egocentrism,’ the widely documented tendency for our perceptions and expectations to be biased in a self‐serving manner. When people are confronted with identical information, their role in a given situation tends to color the way they interpret that information” (Bazerman 2006: 55).
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen (1999), in their book Difficult Conversations, address these fixed perceptions. “The process by which we construct our stories about the world often happens so fast, and so automatically, that we are not even aware of all that influences our views” (1999: 38). The Buddhist practice seeks to cultivate mindfulness to the fast, almost automatic manner in which we construct our stories about the world and the manner in which we position ourselves accordingly.2
According to Buddhist philosophy, these ideas lead us to develop ignorance (avidya, a central concept in the Buddhist worldview) concerning our relational natures, based on a false sense of self, creating a split between our sense of self and “the other's” sense of self and fostering the adversarialness that negotiation and mediation theorists who advocate for a relational view of the self wish to transform.
Mediation theorist Jonathan Shailor, for example, writes: “[in] the discursive practices of mediation . . . disputants' autobiographies take the form of individuals who are working to maximize self‐interests, while disputant relationships are constructed as contractual arrangements, that is, compromises in service of the goals of individual satisfaction and comfort” (Shailor 1994: 22). Even when negotiation manuals claim to adopt relational emphases, stress Leonard Greenhalgh and Roy Lewicki (2003: 27), the teaching of negotiation “was a convenient simplification, because considering ‘the party’ as a single generic actor allowed scholars to apply all of their individualistically oriented theory to the intra‐group, inter‐group, intra‐organizational, and international levels.”
The Buddhist framework offers a radical critique and alternative to the category of “self” that has potential to transform an adversarial mindset in which each party takes sides, fortifying his or her own separate, independent positions. Some well‐known mediation scholars have described alternative mediation frameworks that critically reexamine the modern Western concept of “self” as a separate and self‐interested entity. These include the transformative approach, with its goal to transform parties from an individualistic to a more relational view of the self, and the narrative approach, which stems from postmodernist philosophy (Bush and Folger 1994/2005; Winslade and Monk 2000). Both frameworks, however, offer different theoretical analysis and different practices than the one suggested by the Buddhist framework. “The self, separate and different,” writes Kramer, “is the one who hungers and hurts” (37), and the cessation of this hunger and craving for, or attachment to, images of self and wants, is the subject of the third noble truth.3
The third noble truth tells us that this illusionary mindset can be transformed. The diminishment of desire (“hunger” and “craving” in the Buddhist vocabulary) is also the diminishment of suffering and “dis‐ease,” a process that can take place in the interpersonal realm. Kramer writes: “The peace born from the subsiding of hungers can be personal and internal; it can also include openness to others and to affiliation with them. As we will see, this affiliation is not tainted by the heat of hunger or the chill of indifference. It is compassion rounded with equanimity . . .” (57).
From a relational standpoint, the interpersonal methodology that Kramer offers may help one develop the necessary awareness of our relational natures, diminishing the hungers and craving earlier described. It can help cultivate compassion (which is somewhat different from the notion of empathy that we aspire for in collaborative negotiation and mediation), as well as equanimity, which is both the ability to refrain from being thrown off and the ability to refrain from withdrawing to the positional, self‐absorbed, and well‐entrenched state of mind. “As the hungers fade and these qualities grow, the notion of me and mine also fades. Boundaries are recognized but not clung to; they are simple perceptions” (73). Awareness is cultivated to the manner the bounded self is mentally formed in dependence with the situation in which one takes part.
That awareness to the interdependency that exists between parties to a dispute may help them in their negotiation. “Mutual dependence,” write negotiation scholars David Lax and James Sebenius, “implies limits to how much one party can do alone, or at what cost, or how desirably joint action may be preferable for everyone. This possibility makes interdependence a key element that defines negotiating situations” (1986: 7).
In the fourth noble truth, the Buddha describes the path one should follow in practice and the qualities of mind one should cultivate to develop that awareness and transform the suffering described. Once again, Kramer describes this shift in relation to the interpersonal realm: “Our lives are not just individual: they are also relational. People live and work together; they suffer together and profoundly affect one another's mind state . . .” (78). He argues that “when we understand the relational path as including the relational and interpersonal aspects of life, many more opportunities and modalities of practice are possible” (78–79). The majority of the book then focuses on translating the fourth noble truth (“The Eightfold Path”) into interpersonal practice.
The Guidelines
Kramer suggests six “guidelines” for those who wish to practice Insight Dialogue and meditate together through dialogue. They are: pause, relax (or accept), open, trust emergence, listen deeply, and speak the truth. They are cumulative — each one is built on the qualities of mind practiced in the previous guideline, and each is practiced on one's own, in sitting meditation, and with others.4 With specific instructions, one meditates to experience and practice each of the guidelines, and then is invited to take these instructions into the interpersonal realm by attempting to bring that quality into a dialogue with another person, on topics that usually do not leave one mindful and tranquil. (Kramer provides some examples of contemplations, taken from the Buddhist teachings, that can be used for practice.)
The first guideline, pause, seeks to help the practitioner develop moment‐to‐moment awareness of the manner in which his or her body and mind constantly fixate upon or clings to whatever constructs it (sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes, and thoughts) and to step out of that habitual, almost automatic, mental habit.
The second guideline, relax, is designed to help the practitioner achieve calmness and bring mindfulness to those parts of his or her body and mind where tension accumulates. It involves letting go and not fixating or clinging, which is a characteristic of a reactive state of mind. It thus enables the practitioner to stay present. The mindful and calmed mind is naturally more concentrated and reactive habits lose their power. Taken to the interpersonal realm, one is challenged not to maintain the utter stillness of meditation, but to integrate it into one's perceptions of and encounters with other people, cultivating patience, clear mindedness and emotional balance, as well as a calm face and relaxed voice.
In the third guideline, open, one seeks to develop the ability to gradually cultivate mindfulness beyond oneself, to encompass the external. This represents a radical transformation from the individualistic worldview, a framework in which one shifts from “awareness of oneself” to “awareness of the other,” to relational spacious awareness, in which we are cognizant simultaneously of both the internal and the external, the private and the mutual, as they are relationally experienced in the moment, prior to its bifurcation to “me” and “other.” This awareness leads to the fourth guideline, the practice of trust emergence, that is, the ability to observe how thoughts arise from a cauldron of sensations, emotions, experiences, and memories, without repressing them or reacting to them in any way. One learns to trust what arises and to acknowledge it as it is, without feeling the need to immediately categorize it and make sense of it through one's own lenses and presuppositions — not by accommodating or compromising — but by not avoiding what is unpleasant while seeking for what is pleasant or self‐reassuring.
Success in this endeavor demands listening deeply, which is Kramer's fifth guideline, and which means surrendering fully to the unfolding words and presence of whoever and whatever we are engaging with, grounded in clear awareness and watching the understanding as it unfolds in the mind. It involves, again, the cultivation and maintenance of relational awareness — this time in the challenging realm of verbal communication. It reveals the mutuality embedded in the experience of the contact between self and other, prior to its bifurcation, which occurs — both internally and externally — in the process of reacting.
The sixth and last guideline, speak the truth, focuses on the outward action. The truth to be spoken, Kramer explains, is the subjective truth of one's internal experience. At a basic level, it invites us to reexamine the process and function of verbal communication, which we can do if we have become mindful and aware through following the other guidelines. The truth is thus not static, but evolving throughout the process, unfolding and emerging through the dialogue. Words spoken from hunger and stress, explains Kramer, have great power to harm. Relinquishing the craving for fixed, firm self‐image by following the suggested guidelines, he argues, can help reduce this craving and, I suggest, can help one to overcome many of the biases and barriers described by negotiation and mediation scholars.
Again, I find many interesting parallels between the steps that Kramer describes and processes described by negotiation scholars. Stone, Patton, and Heen (1999). They, for example, offer advice that has parallels with Kramer's recommendation that one pause to become aware of one's internal striving. They write: “Perhaps surprisingly, our advice is not to turn off your internal voice, or even to turn it down. You can't. Instead, we urge you to do the opposite — turn up your internal voice, at least for the time being, and get to know the kinds of things it says. In other words, listen to it. Only when you're fully aware of your own thoughts can you begin to manage them” (1999: 169). The practitioner of mindful meditation is instructed to do the same: develop awareness to the internal voice. This may lead to the ability to see “the process by which we construct our stories” as suggested by the authors.
The first and second guidelines seek to help one develop “presence of mind,” a state negotiation and mediation scholars have also addressed. “Keen presence of mind,” writes Michael Wheeler (2002), “enables negotiators to work effectively on three levels. Specifically, it enables them to: function in fluid situations, where they must be alert for changes in circumstances and nimble in improvising their strategy; read and influence the behavior of others at the bargaining table; monitor and focus their own thinking and feelings, so that they advance their overall interests free from distractions” (2002: 1).
William Ury (1993) identifies three natural reactions in negotiation: striking back, giving in, and breaking off (1993: 32–35). He writes that “Human beings are reactions machines” (32) and suggests some techniques for refraining from reaction, because “even if reaction doesn't lead to a gross error on your part, it feeds the unproductive cycle of action and reaction” (37).
Kramer's suggested practice, I believe, can help transform the destructive reactivity that Ury describes. Expounding on similar concerns, early twentieth‐century organizational scholar Mary Parker Follet wrote: “I never react to you but to you‐plus‐me; or to be more accurate, it is I‐plus‐you reacting to you‐plus‐me. ‘I’ can never influence ‘you’ because you have already influenced me; that is in the very process of meeting, by the very process of meeting, we both become something different. It begins even before we meet, in the anticipation of meeting” (Follet 1924/2001: 62). Follet elaborates: “while I am behaving, the environment is changing because of my behaving, and my behavior is a response to the new situation which I, in part, have created. Thus we see involved the third point, that the responding is not merely to another activity but to the relating between the self‐activity and the other activity” (1924: 63).
Negotiation theorist Sara Cobb (1993) describes empowerment in mediation in somewhat similar terms. She sees empowerment in mediation as a process that enhances the destabilization of each party's narrative coherence, reducing the rigidity of each party's narrative. She writes: “[i]n mediation, narrative closure or coherence is problematic because it stabilizes the description of the problem in ways that delimit its transformation” (1993: 251).
When addressing the importance of developing flexibility and awareness to flow and to change in negotiation, Roy Lewicki and Daniel Saunders (1999) write: “Interests can change . . . interests can change over time. What was important to the parties last week — or even twenty minutes ago — may not be important now. Interaction between the parties can put some interests to rest, but it may raise others. Thus, the parties must continually be attentive to changes in their own interests and the interests of the other side. As we will point out, when one party begins to talk about things in a different way — when the language or emphasis changes — the other party may look for a change in interests” (1999: 117). When we realize that what we consider to be the truth evolves through the process and unfolds and emerges through dialogue, as Kramer suggests, we can develop the attentiveness that Lewicki and Saunders describe.
Clark Freshman argues that identity, beliefs, or emotions can be dysfunctional and disruptive to the negotiation process when instead of having flexibility with regard to them, negotiators have a fixed perception of them. “Our fixed identity — I must do this because this is who I am — can look a lot like just another example of positional bargaining,” he writes (2006: 99). People may feel, he continues, that they have to be consistent with some identity, and this is one way to understand why individuals may bargain in the ways that they do. This also relates to another of the cognitive biases described by Bazerman — escalation of commitment — according to which “[negotiators] are likely to escalate irrationally their commitment to a previously chosen course of action that may have long since outlived its usefulness” (2006: 57).
Robert Mnookin, Scott Peppet, and Andrew Tulumello (2000) explain that in negotiation, there may be an inherent tension in negotiation between empathy (“demonstrating an understanding of the other side's needs, interests, and perspective, without necessarily agreeing”) and assertiveness (“advocacy of one's own needs, interests, and perspective”) (2000: 47). The goal, they write, is to combine empathy and assertiveness in negotiation. The trust described in Kramer's guidelines can accommodate that tension and can help parties empathize without giving up on their own perspectives.
Similarly, scholars have advised that negotiators and mediators cultivate the quality of listening that I believe is embodied by Kramer's practice of listening deeply. Mark Umbreit (1997) suggests that transformation in mediation “. . . requires moving far beyond the well‐known techniques of active listening or reflective listening with their emphasis on paraphrasing, summarizing and their related skills. Clearly, these techniques when used by disputants or mediators can often be very helpful in the resolution of conflict. The ‘techniques’ of listening skills can also get in the way of genuine dialogue, particularly when their use leads to the inability to honor and feel comfortable with silence, to deeply reflect upon what is being said, and to reflect upon what you (the mediator) are feeling and experiencing in the present moment” (1997: 202). Surrendering fully to the unfolding words and presence of the speaker can, I believe, help us develop our listening and engage in genuine dialogue.
Following Buddhist teachings and tradition, Kramer microfocuses and provides a detailed description of what is occurring in our mind, this time from the perspective of engagement with others. I find it is surprising, however, that Kramer does not provide an etymological analysis of the central term that runs through the entire eightfold path — which is the Buddha's fourth noble truth —samma. The word samma, translated into English as “right,” has the prefix “sam,” which means “with.” In other words, “right action” (samma kammanta), for example, means acting with the acted upon; “right mindfulness” (samma sati) means being tuned, accurately, with what emerges internally and externally, and so on.5 Accordingly, the truth one speaks, I suggest, should not be defined in subjective terms, as the “inner truth of one's internal experience” (165), as such a view of the spoken truth does not reside with the relational understanding suggested earlier. Describing the truth in terms of internal experience suggests a return to the subject–object split and a view of the truth as emerging from within oneself. I suggest rather that the truth be viewed as something that emerges in the common space, a dialogic space from which both the “I” and the “you” emerge relationally. Kramer concludes that “we can never speak the whole truth, in the sense that words are not the whole felt experience” (165), which implies a philosophy of language that stems from philosophical underpinnings to which the Buddhist worldview, I suggest, offers an alternative.
Implications for ADR
Kramer's Insight Dialogue offers us a framework that — although not specifically aimed at mediators and negotiation experts and perhaps because of its lack of familiarity with the ways in which conflict escalation and transformation are commonly analyzed in the ADR literature — nonetheless suggests some intriguing possibilities both on theoretical and practical levels. His framework can be viewed as an outline for a framework of conflict transformation. Leonard Riskin writes: “Mindlessness impairs our work as practitioners of dispute resolution in several ways. For example, it could mean that a mediator or negotiator is not very ‘present’ with the other participants or with himself, that is, not fully aware of what is going on. This diminishes the professional's ability to gather information and to listen to, and understand, others and himself . . .” (Riskin 2004: 80).6 Moreover, Riskin adds, “When mindless — we rely on old habits and assumptions, rather than choosing the most suitable behavior in that particular and unique situation.”
Kramer's interpersonal framework may help us explore new ways to meet these challenges and develop the qualities of mind and skills to do that. Moreover, it can help meet the challenge of finding ways to practice throughout the process, when with others and throughout the process: “Many who do see the virtue in broader perspectives and even decide to employ them have trouble holding on to them, or carrying them out, in the fire of actual practice, and reflexively return to the adversarial approach” (Riskin 2002: 55). It may help meet the challenge of maintaining mindfulness, equanimity, and relational awareness in the heat of the moment, and manage the conflicting situation without withdrawing to adversarial mindsets and approaches.
I suggest that it would also be worthwhile to further examine the relevance of Kramer's framework to ADR and its applicability to conflict settings: for example, what lessons can be applied to settings in which parties do not necessarily arrive with a state of mind of mutual support, as they usually do when following Kramer's guidelines for practicing Insight Dialogue but as adversaries or competitors, as is usually the case in mediation and negotiation settings? And what can mediators do to set the terms that would allow parties to enter the process of insight dialogue?
Insight Dialogue is an intriguing book that combines both an insightful interpersonal theoretical analysis and genuine practical guidelines built on that theoretical analysis. It invites further exploration of the ways in which the emphases he lays out — and others as presented in various schools within the Buddhist tradition — can be integrated with the endeavors of ADR theorists and practitioners.
Theorists and practitioners interested in Kramer's method might also be interested in drawing from other Buddhist schools (e.g., Zen), in order to further integrate Buddhist emphases, skills, and practices into their work — although I would caution against combining the Buddhist frameworks with all kinds of spiritual practices that may seem similar in spirit, but, when their theoretical underpinnings are closely examined may, in fact, have much less in common with the Buddhist path than is apparent at first glance. In individualistically oriented cultures, claims Kramer, the endeavor to implement interpersonal mindfulness is more difficult, as “the higher training in Right Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration have been plucked from their wider context of engaged morality” (78) and “people are left for their own devices” (ibid). The same is true with interpersonal conflicts, where in our individualistically oriented culture, the governing values of individualistic thinking processes and decision making usually leave people to their own devices and their private selves, plunked from the wider context of the interpersonal space. A relationally based conflict transformation framework, I suggest, challenges these very values.
NOTES
Kramer writes: “We can look directly at these tensions; they are always there if we bother to notice. Often we don't want to look straight at suffering. It can feel safer to deny or ignore it. Maybe we fear that looking steadily at our suffering would make it more intense, even overwhelming” (22). I believe I will not cause discomfort to any ADR scholar or practitioner by arguing that this is also “the first noble truth” of our practice and teaching with regard to our view of interpersonal conflicts.
“One way to shift your stance from the easy certainty of feeling that you've thought about this from every possible angle,” suggest Stone, Patton and Heen (1999: 38), “is to get curious about what you don't know about yourself. This may sound like an odd thing to worry about. After all, you're with yourself all the time; wouldn't you be pretty familiar with your own perspective? In a word, no.” The third noble truth, as will be discussed later, will suggest that there is a way to cease that mental process which creates the illusive sense of certainty.
This, however, does not imply that one should give up on oneself, avoid, accommodate, or compromise, as described in Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann's Conflict Mode grid. Neither avoiding, as already described in the First Noble Truth, nor accommodating or compromising is optional. In fact, the Buddha stresses that just as the hunger for being is a cause for suffering, so is the hunger for nonbeing and the fear of being seen, and Kramer notes to that possibility in his book.
Chapter 18 provides a description of four different formats of practice: Insight Dialogue retreat, weekly groups, online Insight Dialogue, and practice in life.
Bernie Glassman (2002) explains: “The word right which precedes all these aspects, is not used in the usual dualistic sense of right as opposed to wrong. In this context right means ‘non‐’, as in nonconcept or nonview. Eliminate all concepts and you have right view. Then go one step further and eliminate nonview as well. What do ‘right words or right speech’ mean? . . . Speaking spontaneously without the filters constructed by the mind, speaking with the whole being, just speaking — that's right speech. Similarly, right effort means noneffort. If I separate myself from what I am doing, or if I see myself as doing anything at all, it's not right effort. Totally doing what has to be done without separation from the deed is noneffort — nothing is being done!” (49–50). The same idea applies, as Glassman explains, to “right view,”“right effort,”“right speech” and so on.
Daniel Bowling claims that by developing presence through mindfulness meditation, one can be present with one's own monkey‐mind patterns and one's feelings, and can be present to another's confusion, uncertainty, and deepest suffering. Experiencing one's own conflicts, one can be present during another's conflict, without resisting whatever is in the mediation room: “Whenever we are mediating and our mind takes us away, wandering off into the imagined past or the future, we are actually resisting the conflict that is in the room. We cannot bring peace into the room, when we are resisting whatever is in the room, even on a subtle level” (Bowling 2003: 270).