Wisdom Cultivated through Dialogue

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. 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.