How a Group of Broke 20-Somethings Accidentally Launched the Mindfulness Movement | Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg

The time the Dalai Lama went bowling in their basement, the time a stranger showed up with exactly the $15,000 they were missing — and more behind-the-scenes stories from 50 years of IMS. In 1975, a handful of young Americans fresh back from years of intensive practice in India and Burma pooled together $150,000 they didn't have and bought a former Catholic novitiate in rural Massachusetts. Fifty years later, the Insight Meditation Society has become one of the most consequential institutions in the history of Buddhism in the West — the place where Jon Kabat-Zinn had the idea that became Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and where, as one longtime yogi put it, the whole thing has run for half a century "without any adult supervision whatsoever." For IMS's 50th anniversary, Dan sits down with four of its founding teachers — Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jacqueline Mandell — along with Steven Schwartz, who helped get the organization built in the first place. Together they trace the founding story, the early years of $25-a-month stipends and "window wars," the accidental birth of the mindfulness movement, and what they hope IMS looks like 1,000 years from now. For more on the Insight Meditation Society, including how to support their new retreat center, you can visit dharma.org http://dharma.org/. Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Join Dan, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18, 2026. Register here. https://www.eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party#9851 To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dan Harris?

  Hey, hey, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. This is an episode about the fact that even Buddhists fight. Even Buddhists struggle. Just because you start practicing meditation or practicing the precepts of Buddhism does not mean, as I often joke, that your life is going to be magically transformed into a nonstop parade of rainbow barfing unicorns. Perfection is not on offer, but the practice of meditation can help you manage the ups and downs of life more seamlessly, especially when it comes to one of the difficult, one of the most difficult aspects of life, and that is interpersonal relationships. What you're about to hear is a conversation with the five co-founders of the Insight Meditation

• 0:48Dan Harris?

  Society, or IMS. It's a legendary retreat center in Berry, Massachusetts, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. But just because the co-founders, who were very young at the time of the founding, had a lofty mission, just because they were doing something Buddhist in nature, did not mean that it was all a smooth sailing, as you're about to hear. My guests today are Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein, three teachers who have appeared on this show many times, along with two people I had never spoken to before this conversation, Jacqueline Mandell and Stephen Schwartz, who were right there at the beginning. I really appreciated this conversation because all five of these people have dedicated their

• 1:29Dan Harris?

  lives to a mission that has changed so many other lives, including my own. If you are meditating today, it is highly likely that the karmic cause is the work of these five people. I should say, before we dive in here, if you're interested in learning more about the Insight Meditation Society, they have a website, dharma.org, and there you can donate to their latest project. They're building a new center on the grounds of IMS, because right now it is very hard to get into a retreat right there. So they're trying to build some more capacity so that more of us can practice on retreat. All right, we'll get started with a roundtable of the IMS founders right after this.

• 2:11Dan Harris?

  A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I get two questions all the time. One question is, how do I maintain an abiding meditation habit? I keep falling off the wagon. That's what I hear from people all the time. The second question I get all the time is, I'm interested in Buddhism, but I don't know where to start. I have answers to both of those questions. The answers are slightly self-serving, because I'm going to send you to my app, 10% with Dan Harris. But check this out. Starting this Sunday, July 12th, at 4:00 PM Eastern, we're running a Summer Sunday Live series with the great meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg, who's going to do an eight-part series every Sunday for eight weeks, where she takes one piece of the Buddha's Eightfold Path. If you're looking to get

• 2:54Dan Harris?

  into Buddhism, a great place to start is one of the foundational Buddhist lists, and that is the Eightfold Path. You can think of it as the Buddha's cookbook for a happy life. And Sharon is going to walk us through each part of the Eightfold Path, and she's going to do so live and in community. So every Sunday at 4:00 PM Eastern, you can meditate with a bunch of other people. And the science shows that habit formation is often much more successful in the carpool lane. So you'll meditate as a group with the rest of us, myself included, and we will then listen to Sharon teach us a little bit, and then we'll all get the opportunity to ask Sharon questions. So it really is

• 3:37Dan Harris?

  an enormous opportunity to deepen your practice and to learn more about the Dharma. Again, it starts this Sunday, July 12th, at 4:00 PM Eastern. Go to danharris.com and sign up for the 10% with Dan Harris app right now to start your free trial, and we will be right back after this. Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible, or worse, extremely visible, but for the wrong reasons. I remember one year when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it in memory, and

• 4:21Dan Harris?

  it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie, now streaming on Prime Video, the first ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Eight episodes from Mike Flanagan, with Stephen King as an executive producer. Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy. It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone, and about how small, everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously as a person, rather than as some sort of symbol. And the season keeps circling around one

• 5:02Dan Harris?

  major question. Are you watching the making of a hero, a villain, or something more complicated than either of those options? Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video. Jack, Joseph, Sharon, Jacqueline, and Stephen, great to be with all of you in one virtual space. Sharon, let me start with you. What do you remember about getting IMS started lo these many years?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Lo these many years. I remember, I guess I was 23 years old, and maybe the youngest of the four. And there was also Stephen, who's also on this call, who was very instrumental. Like, speaking for myself, I knew nothing about an organization or about the process. And we really relied on people like Stephen, who was in the first board of directors, and actually did the founding. I do remember very much the day in December when we went to look at the property for the first time. And we had looked at a variety of places up and down the East Coast. The original idea to start a retreat center was not our

• 6:16Speaker 01

  own. We were living in California and various places. And somebody came through this house that Jacqueline and I, and at times Jack, were at, kind of running it like a little retreat place, where a few people could just come and do self-retreats, and we would provide food and things like that. And somebody came through who said to us, why don't you start a real retreat center somewhere? And it could be like a sacred site in the US. It could be a place where the kind of energy that gets created when people come together in this way doesn't have to dissipate. And he said, I know all the people who can help you. They're all in Massachusetts.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  So we went back to the East Coast. I'd never even been in Massachusetts. And there was people like Stephen and some others that really formed the first board of directors and looked for property and did the negotiation. And we did look up and down the East Coast. I remember somebody suggested we contact Catholic archdiocese, because the country was in the midst of what we were quaintly calling the gas crisis. And these very large properties were very hard and expensive to heat. And so a lot of places like novitiate and so on were for sale. And sure enough, we went to this town called Berry, Massachusetts, and there was a novitiate for sale. And that was like the first glimpse of the place.

• 7:41Dan Harris?

  Stephen, since Sharon referenced you there, anything to add to her first foray into this reminiscence?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  When Joseph and Sharon called from Boulder and said, could you help us make this happen? My first inclination was to do what my Jewish grandfather did in New Jersey, which is put an ad in the New York Times. And we put an ad in the real estate section of the New York Times. And of course, what we got were million-dollar mansions in East Hampton, completely inappropriate. So then we went back to New England, looked at other places, like Sharon said. And then when Sharon called and came up with this idea of contacting the Catholic Church, I'd never thought of the Catholic Church as a great potential real estate operation, but they were. So I wrote letters to every archdiocese in New

• 8:29Speaker 02

  England, and the archdiocese in Worcester had a lot of extra property. So that's how we got focused there. The real estate agent for the one in Berry was most engaging, and he said, you really want to buy this place. So I said, let's try it. What's the price? He said, $850,000, which to us was about $50 million at that time. And again, learning from my grandfather, I figured if he said $850,000, I should go 1/8 of that. So I offered 1 1/4, and we settled on $150,000.

• 9:07Dan Harris?

  Wow, you got it down from 850 to 150?

• 9:11Speaker 03

  I did. He was being very proud.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Well, we also separated some land that we bought much later. So Stephen negotiated a somewhat different package, you know, of property. And can you believe we got that place for $150,000? Which I should also add, we did not have.

• 9:32Dan Harris?

  Jack, do you remember the first time you walked through the property?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  I do remember walking in. I remember the piano in the dining room. I remember going into the upper walking room, which was probably a ballroom before it became the novitiate. And I thought, this is kind of cool. And then I thought,

• 9:51Speaker 03

  80 rooms, you know, a swimming pool, a tennis court, 80 acres of land for 150,000 bucks. I mean, it seemed like an unimaginable amount of money, but that just seemed like ridiculous. And I loved walking around because they knew we were going to use it for spiritual purposes, so to speak. And so they left the kitchen, big pots and all the accoutrements to run the center. And there was something really kind of magical about it. Now, I also have a different memory about the beginning in that I believe our first three month course in Bucksport, Maine,

• 10:31Speaker 03

  there was a Catholic nun who sat there and she also made the suggestion at that time that the Daisies had a lot of property and not very many avid, you know, participants in it. So I think it also came out of that first three month course.

• 10:49Dan Harris?

  Joseph, what are your earliest memories?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Well, when we all came to look at it, we had, I think we had different takes on it. I remember Stephen talking about seeing the ancient boilers. I think wondering how we were going to ever replace them, which would have been an added expense. And as Jack mentioned, the place was so big, you know, we wondered whether we would ever fill it.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  And then as we were considering all this, and this is kind of a famous story in IMS's lore. We went to downtown Barry and thinking it's a huge step. We were, most of us were just back from India with very few resources and a huge gamble. But then when we were in downtown Barry, we saw on the town green, a monument with the Barry town motto. And the motto of the town of Barry is tranquil and alert. And we just took that as a clear omen that this was the place for us.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Because those are precisely the qualities that we cultivate in the practice. So that felt like a good sign and we decided to go for it.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  It is worth pointing out that except for Stephen and a couple of others,

• 12:17Speaker 04

  none of us knew how to either establish or run an organization. We were all very immersed in Dharma practice and energized and enthusiastic about coming back from India and sharing what we learned. But there was another whole learning curve that took about the next 20 years to figure out, okay, what's the best way to run an organization? So there are parallel developments in all of this. There was the physical facility and then the inhabiting of it in a really skillful and harmonious way. That took time.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  That was basically about us growing up.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  So sort of an interesting movement from Asia to America, you know, from east to west. And trying to figure out like, what should it look like here? You know, we were very immersed in a world where you didn't pay for retreats, even housing often like in Burma. Cause you didn't pay for a room and board because everything was offered by the people of the village, you know, or the community. And so, you know, I remember sitting in those early board meetings and Stephen or somebody would say, well, we have to give the staff health insurance.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  And I think, huh, I wonder why? Like, you know, and or, you know, the common question was like, what if the roof collapses or something? You know, what if there's a physical calamity and you just go to the, go to the sangha, you go to the community. But we just went to them yesterday for health insurance. It was such a cultural awakening, like, oh, this is what it's like in America. This is what it needs to look like. And I've heard Joseph tell this story that the financing of it from the beginning was really interesting because it was $150,000, which we did not have. And I'll let Joseph tell the story of raising the first 50,000.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  And then the fathers of the Blessed Sacrament, who's a novitiate it was, gave us a mortgage for 50,000. And we could not get a bank to give us a mortgage because we were like brand new and, you know, nobody. And, and so that's yet another part of that story, how it all came together.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  As Sharon just mentioned, we needed to come up with $50,000, you know, on the down payment, so to speak, on the property. And a few of the friends here in Massachusetts, among them raised about $35,000. And again, we were basically kids coming back. You know, most of us had no money at all. So $50,000 seemed enormous, even the last 15, we had no idea where that was going to come from. At that time I was teaching, Jack and I were both teaching at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  It was one of the first year or two that it had opened and I was teaching a large class there. And one day a student in the class came to my apartment. She was from Canada and she said, you know, I just inherited some money and I have $15,000. I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Do you have any ideas? Yes, I do have an idea. And she very generously offered that 15,000. It was like dropping down from heaven. And that completed the money we needed to raise to actually purchase it. So from the beginning, it felt like this, as you know, there's been some

• 16:10Speaker 04

  protection, guidance, energy behind the whole endeavor. Because whenever we were faced, you know, at a certain point with a difficulty, whether it's financial or otherwise, somehow things came together to resolve it and we could move on. And I think for all of us, it's quite amazing that here we are 50 years later.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  Of course, the implication of IMS being 50 years old is that we're 50 years older. And sometimes that's harder to take in, but there it is. And it's been an amazing evolution.

• 16:52Dan Harris?

  Your story about the $15,000 mana from heaven reminds me of something I've heard you say before, Joseph. And I don't know if this is a phrase of your coinage or you, you heard it from somebody else. But if you take care of the Dharma, the Dharma will take care of you.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's something, the very first time I was leaving India, I had been there the first time for just six weeks or two months, and then I had to come home for something. And as I was leaving Bodhgaya, India, having first begun my practice with Munindraji, my first teacher, I was in the rickshaw going back to the train station. And as I was leaving, that's what he said. He said, the Dharma protects those who protect the Dharma. And of course, at that time I was very young. I was in my early twenties and it sounded a little hokey to me. You know, yes, the Dharma protects those that protect the Dharma.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  But over all these years, I've really come to deeply appreciate the truth of that. It's, it's a real inspiration and

• 18:03Speaker 03

  It was this community of people mostly who've been together in India practicing and coming back and

• 18:11Speaker 03

  There was a feeling of excitement, which I love, of family. Oh, we're in this together. We've done this before in, you know, different ways in India. We practice, we know how to move. Let's just do this. And there was this kind of youthful exuberance and positivity and a lot of love, a few little love experiments between staff members, all of that. But there was a kind of communal field that felt actually very positive and healthy. And I loved that. Jacqueline, how was that for you?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  It was my life. Because I had, as you know, I had traveled to India alone. And I didn't know anyone. And I walked into the Burmese fahara. And I still didn't know anyone, but I felt like I knew everyone. And it just stayed that way. And it's so interesting about the beginning of IMS, because I was remembering what Sharon was. We were gifted, actually, a house in Felton, California, from the first year Joseph's apartment, which was 1974. And the next year was 1975, a little different.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  And a gentleman named Dr. Robert Hall said, oh, I have this house. I want to give it to you until I sell it. And then he wanted myself and some others to run it. So I all of a sudden became a Dharma house manager. And then Jack taught his first retreat there. Sharon and I were there together. Joseph was there. We organized Joseph's first retreat. And I can remember standing outside, and I actually think I was talking to Jack and a few people. And then somebody, we turned to look at the house. It was a long ranch house and rooms that we all meditated in, in a central room that we called the group meditation hall. And then we had a kitchen.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  And somebody said, let's make it bigger.

• 20:18Dan Harris?

  Jacqueline, let me ask you about something that I have, at many times in the past, asked Jack, Joseph and Sharon about, but having just met you, I've not had a chance to ask you about it. So the founding team includes two Schwartzes, although you subsequently changed your last name to Mendel, a Goldstein, a Salzberg and a Kornfield. So.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  And we're all in a book called The Jew and the Lotus.

• 20:43Dan Harris?

  So I have not read that book. Thank you for the heads up.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Page eight.

• 20:46Dan Harris?

  Do you think, is this a coincidence? Or is there something about the story of the Jews in America that makes this make sense to you?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  And I can remember being there. And it was really the Tibetans who noticed that everyone that they were talking to, and I don't even know how, you know, people's religion came up in conversation. But the Tibetans had a whole theory, you know, that we were basically past Holocaust survivors and that we understood suffering. And that that brought us to practice. But it was being talked about even when we were in India. It was like, what were all these Jewish people doing here? So I think later, I mean, I do think there is a sensitivity to suffering.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  I mean, certainly my own upbringing, and I'm sure, you know, everyone else's. There was just an attunement to, I mean, I was born, you know, two years after the end of World War II. So everything in my family, you know, people whispering, speaking Yiddish and so forth. You know, there was kind of a haze that there is suffering. So that was not hard.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think it's important to point out that even though there are probably some commonalities among us all, people come to the Dharma and Dharma practice from many different motivations. You know, and for some people, it is that awareness or connection with suffering. And it kind of inspires one to look more deeply. But I can't say that that was my motivation or a big part of what drew me to India. For me, it was much more, I would say, a philosophic interest,

• 22:48Speaker 04

  a pragmatic philosophic interest in just understanding my mind. You know, and that just was so, such a compelling force in me. And especially at that young age and early twenties, when, you know, many people at that age are still trying to figure out their lives and the world and their place in the world. And just looking at kind of the inner angst and confusion that is often there, you know, in one's early twenties. And I remember at one point, this was still when I was in the Peace Corps in Thailand, before coming back to the States and before my practice in India,

• 23:33Speaker 04

  just looking in the mirror in the midst of kind of this inner confusion, really. And one, who is it that's behind the reflection? Who's in there inside? And then when I first went to India, Metman Intergy, you know, he said something so simple and so straightforward. When he said, if you want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it. So years later, a center emerged where people can sit down and observe their minds and really discover themselves. So it's just interesting to me, and especially among us, and also working with so many people over the years,

• 24:18Speaker 04

  that people really do come to Dharma practice from many different sides. You know, and different motivations. And in fact, the motivation can change, you know, in the course of practice. So it's a really tremendously rich unfolding, I think, for all of us personally. And for all the people, you know, that we've worked with.

• 24:41Speaker 05

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• 25:41Dan Harris?

  Sharon, looking back to the, to the beginning 50 years ago, talked about the 20 years of growing up and learning how to become a functioning center. Was that the hardest part of the endeavor or was it something else?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  That was difficult and challenging for sure. You know, looking back, the way we got the last bit of financing, by the way, was that some friends went to the, since we couldn't get a mortgage from the bank, some friends went and personally co-signed loans so that we could get that last 50,000 and open up. So our mantra, like in the teaching team, was we can always close in a year. If it doesn't work, we'll just close in a year. It was completely unknown. You know, what would happen? And it seemed so large physically, you know, it was like, it could sleep so many people and who in the world was going to come.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  But we took care not to repeat that mantra in front of the people who personally co-signed the loans.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Like we had a rather a different spirit than, than they had. It was all challenging and interesting, you know, because I think of a couple of things. One is, I mean, Joseph talked about people coming to practice from different motivations. But in those days, whatever your motivation was, it was strong. You know, because you had, you had to be willing to schlep to Asia, you know, and adopt a completely different lifestyle and, and, you know, give up, let go, sacrifice so much to be there. And, you know, it was not clear, like, how many people and, you know, sort of bringing it here or establishing it here relieved some of that.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  But still, you know, as you know, it can seem so woo-woo and odd and, and not very palatable or understandable. So there was that hurdle. And then, you know, really, what should it look like here? And what are the different expressions and even the architecture? And as, you know, we've talked about before, we had these big debates in the beginning. The way it was phrased was very funny. It was, should we have Buddhas in public places?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Because we'd all, you know, Jacqueline, Joseph and I in India, Jack in Thailand, had teachers who were not kind of holding the Dharma as a possession. You know, my first retreat was with S. N. Goenka, the first night of that retreat. He said, the Buddha did not teach Buddhism. The Buddha taught a way of life. And this is open to anybody who wants to practice. And Jack famously tells the story of leaving Thailand and expressing to his teacher, Ajahn Chah, some concern about people in America maybe not finding a lot of harmony with the teachings. Because by and large, there weren't that many people who were raised Buddhist. And Ajahn Chah said to him, just call it Christianity.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  You know, so that was one whole orientation that would argue like, maybe don't have Buddhas, you know? And then, of course, the other side was as a historical figure, as a symbol of human aspiration being fulfilled for wisdom and compassion. Yeah, you know, there's a body of knowledge that is derived from, from his expression. There is a lineage and that, that's honor that and have Buddhas. And I just found it so amusing that it was phrased like, should we have Buddhas in public places? You know, because the staff people could do whatever they want in terms of their statuary, you know? But this U-Haul arrived from Maryland where Jack had a number of Buddhas that had been

• 29:26Speaker 03

  in storage in his mother's attic that he'd gotten when he was in Thailand. And suddenly we had Buddhas to put in public places. So we did. But that sort of dilemma or challenge remained, you know? And it was also very interesting and important that we consider those aspects of things.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  It's hard to communicate how young Sharon and Jacqueline was, a little older than Sharon, but not much. Were, I mean, you were 21 or 22, looking around. And I remember the kind of country, I was a mature 28 or 29 or something like that. But kind of trying to sort out our relationships to our teachers who we loved. And yet we knew they weren't going to be here. That was sort of the weird thing. We were like looking at each other, I guess we're it. No, like tag, okay, Jacqueline, now you're it. But it was also immensely exciting in some way, exciting, maybe a little too strong

• 30:31Speaker 02

  or Buddhists don't get that excited, right? But there is something about like being together in an amazing challenge. And not because we wanted to spread the Dharma or be famous or anything, but it had changed us so much. We needed that and people were really interested in how do we do this? So, and the use of it also, I think, built off the sixties, honestly. I was a hippie. Most of us had done psychedelics along with meditation and that actually changed our consciousness in some way. But we needed to find a way to actually embody it and live it.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  So we were also living in a cultural stream or counter-cultural stream that brought other young people in especially. And it was, again, both in tune with the times and how do we change ourselves and maybe how do we change the world around us?

• 31:28Dan Harris?

  Jack, just picking up on your comment about the, you know, being part of the cultural stream or counter-cultural stream of the sixties, leading up into the, the founding of IMS in the mid seventies. I sometimes think about, and I don't have any math on this, but I, I think the vast majority of the people who were part of the counterculture then got absorbed into the, the mainstream culture and became normies or straights or whatever you called them back then, you know, got regular jobs, shaved their beards. But you guys didn't. And in some ways you're still living the norms and ethos, whatever the plural of that is, of the sixties.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  We're not normies and never will.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  You know, I just also want to highlight one aspect of IMS's founding, which I think is somewhat unique, not completely, but somewhat different than the establishment of other centers in this country, starting back then and since. Many other centers start and are founded by an Asian teacher who has come to live in the States and they become the main teacher of that center. And really imbue it a lot with kind of the cultural norms to some extent of their Asian

• 32:55Speaker 04

  background. At IMS, it was not an Asian teacher who founded it, right? Once we established it, then we would invite our teachers. And so we have this very strong connection to the lineages, but they weren't involved in the establishment of the center, which in a way gave us a lot of freedom to just experiment and explore and see what would be appropriate in this culture, what's not appropriate, what's helpful or not. So that I think was just kind of a unique situation, you know, and all of us coming

• 33:34Speaker 04

  back from Asia and setting it up first and then inviting our teachers to come and visit rather than to run the place. And so it's given IMS, I think, a unique flavor in that way.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  One of the things we had to decide in line with that was I was put in charge of incorporating the organization. And under the Internal Revenue Cup, there's a section for charitable organizations that many other nonprofits have. But within that, there's a special preference for a religious organization. And within that, there's a special preference for something called a church. But to be a church, to be organized and incorporated as a church, you get a number of privileges and immunities from subtle government oversight. So that was ideal.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  But the problem was that the rules of the IRS was in order to be a church, you had to demonstrate a tight connection to a lineage and the actual practice of what was called sacrodotal functions. I had no idea what sacrodotal functions are, but they basically mean practices. And so I thought this was a great idea, but I had no idea how to implement it. So I spoke with Jack, Joseph, Sharon and Jacqueline, and we came up with this idea that we didn't want to be tied to a particular lineage, as Joseph said, because he didn't

• 35:15Speaker 02

  want to be associated with one teacher. But many of us, but especially Jack, Joseph, Sharon and Jacqueline were connected to, to three teachers. Manindraji's teacher in Burma, Mahasi Sayadong, Gwankas teacher Ubakin from Burma, and Jack's teacher from Thailand. So we decided to have three lineages and three sacrodotal functions tied to three different people and their teachers, which would simultaneously achieve my little tiny legal goal of getting us organized as a church, but Joseph, Sharon, Jack's, Jacqueline's

• 35:59Speaker 02

  larger practice goal of being what we called at that point, a teacherless center, not having a specific Asian personality or practice or even lineage that dominated and controls how everything would be.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  I remember there were moments when we had a conversation, should there be robes for our teachers, right? What should they wear? It was really, you know, an unknown palette, but a few of the things that were really important are to IMS and Spurrock as it's grown. The first is that we did team teaching, which was pretty much unknown in Asia. And both, it had a beautiful Dharma effect because people could hear the Dharma from different voices and languages, and it would strike people in different ways. So it was very healthy for the students to hear that. And it was also great for us because we didn't know what we were doing.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  And so we could turn to one another and support each other in some way. That was fabulous. Also, what happened, remember from the first three month retreat and Joseph was, you know, maybe reading some passage from our...

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Patriarchal Buddhist texts and some feminists at that time, there was a, you know, a lot of them, beginning of widespread feminists were saying, what's with all these men? And we started to realize we're not in Kansas or Asia or wherever anymore. We really have to change the culture, the language that we use to not only include women as teachers or and laypeople, which was unknown in Asia, to have very rare, Goenka was an exception, to have a major center that wasn't founded by a monastic also. So all these kind of big cultural changes as lay teachers trying to integrate it into a different culture

• 38:04Speaker 03

  and have multi-traditions, which was really healthy for people because there were some people where, you know, body scanning and sweeping was the perfect practice and for others noting and for some meta. And there are ways that we carry that multiple tradition we do still at IMS that make us both unique and really quite healthy and in some way inspiring for each of the different people that come.

• 38:32Dan Harris?

  Multi-tradition, multi-lineage, but really focused, I think, in one of the many schools of Buddhism, the old school, Theravada, was that, was that a deliberate, I'll throw this to you, Sharon, was that a deliberate decision? And did it create any controversy or turmoil over the years?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Everything creates controversy and turmoil. It's like, you're talking about 50 years, like, not knowing what we're doing and trying the best we can. It was a conscious decision, even though in our personal lives, many of us, maybe in all of us, have studied and benefited from, you know, teachers in other Buddhist traditions or other traditions altogether. We did make a decision that there was a kind of power for the programs offered through the center that it would be, there would be some boundaries and that it would be from the Theravada tradition. And there was enough variety and richness within the

• 39:38Speaker 01

  tradition to have many, many aspects. But yeah, even though, you know, I might study with a Tibetan teacher or any of us, you know, I remember the wave of people doing sashins, you know, with Zen teachers and things like that. We did make a decision that for the center, you know, it was one thing in our personal lives and our personal transformation, which is the way it would be brought back would be through our own understanding, you know, if that was changed or tempered in some way. But we were going to just keep things simpler and just have people within that tradition.

• 40:17Dan Harris?

  I asked Sharon a little while ago, what were the biggest challenges over the years? Jacqueline, let me bring you back in. From your POV, what in those early days or beyond, what were some of the biggest hurdles?

• 40:32Speaker 07

  Well, for me, and I think for some of us, you know, my first teacher was Essa N. Goenka. As Sharon mentioned, that was her first retreat. It's also where I met Sharon. It's also where I met Joseph. And, you know, coming to Buddhism was, it was like stepping into another world that was so extraordinary. And there was so much love and so much reverence. And then coming to IMS and realizing that, you know, I would not always be following

• 41:14Speaker 07

  the exact way that Goenka wanted us to follow as a student. It took me a while to really, actually, Jack actually had to do a guided imagery with me. And I was sitting on the floor and he was pretending he's Goenka. And I'm telling Goenka that I'm going to study with other Theravada teachers. And I was absolutely, it's a guided imagery and I'm like nervous. And because I just respected Goenka so much and he gave me everything.

• 41:55Speaker 07

  You know, I mean, Sharon and I sat with him all night under the Bodhi tree, you know, after we got invited to his only self-retreat of the year and only old, very mature students, you know, were 20 years old could do that. And then we walked up in silence to the Bodhi tree and sat there in the different parts you could go in. And we sat on the upper level and we meditated with him until early morning when he started chanting. And to think that I was going to be leaving this person who gave me everything, it was really hard. And when he came to visit in Massachusetts after I'd already been a nun with Mahasi

• 42:40Speaker 07

  Sayadah and Tengpulu Sayadah, and Tengpulu Sayadah was visiting, and I went to say to him, you know, my first teacher is up the road, what should I do? And he said, go see him. And that was a big deal for me. And I went and they put me in the front row, which is, you know, where the old students sit. And, you know, I went up to him and I said, you know, I ordained with Mahasi Sayadah and Tengpulu Sayadah. And he was so kind. I was so grateful because I had been, I don't know, he expected so much. So

• 43:22Speaker 07

  it was a huge hurdle. And I think as all of us went through that with Goenka, but especially for myself, it was my first teacher, it was my heart.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Let me just give you an example, because it's something Jacqueline said, not really on the topic she was talking about, which is very true, not just for her, but when she mentioned Tengpulu Sayadah, I remember the time when we, Tengpulu Sayadah was a very great Vermees meditation master. And we invited him to come to IMS, he was in the States, you know, and he said, yes. So we put out all these announcements, like special appearance and, you know, great master, rarely seen. And, you know, so all these people came to hear him give a talk. And in the tradition, really old style tradition, when a monk is speaking, you know, they have these big sort of round fans that they carry

• 44:18Speaker 01

  around with them. They put the fan in front of their face because it's not a person speaking, it's the Dharma. And so you have like zero glimpse of their face, their eyes, their smile, if they're smiling. And so he sat there in front of all these people who came for our, you know, very puffed up announcement, great master coming, holding that fan in front of his face. And, and there was a lot of distress in the room, like, because there was no sense of the human being who is making this offering to you. And it's meant to not be a sense of the human being making the offering, but just this sort of all pervasive

• 44:58Speaker 01

  truth. And, and that would just be an example of, you know, east and west. And, you know, what do you do here? And this is the tradition, you have to respect it. And at the same time, it's not really working necessarily in the way that it was meant to be working. So hearing Jacqueline talk about Tengpulu Sayadah brought that back.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  There's another Tengpulu story from the other side. This involves Jack. We were both visiting Tengpulu Sayadah in California at the monastery that was set up for him there. And we had been teaching, I don't know, a couple of years by then, and it was very busy, full schedules. We were really working quite hard and maybe experiencing a little burnout, energetic burnout. And I remember Jack and I went to see him and Jack was describing, you know, is there some way to, to kind of protect ourselves energetically in meeting, you know, all of these people and absorbing all of their energy day after day. And, you

• 46:09Speaker 04

  know, it took a certain toll, especially in those early years as we were just learning about teaching. And I think Jack had in mind something like, you know, this great master will, you know, give us some meditative technique of setting up a energetic shield of light or something, you know, to protect us. And Tengpulu listened to the lament of being really tired and burned out a little bit. And he thought for a moment and he said, just take more vacations. That was the great wisdom from-

• 46:46Speaker 03

  Shorter retreats and more vacation.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  We should have followed that.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  And one of the beautiful things at IMS, even though we were quite deeply committed are to the Theravada tradition, we have been able to host this wide range of teachers, both within the Theravada tradition, like Tengpulu and Vashisayado, Ajunsha, and Upandita Sayado, and many others. But we also have been able to host, at least as visitors, the 16th Karmapa, you know, and Samsara Sansanaim, the Korean Zen Master, and others. And somehow our openness and the fact that we needed that in some way to learn in these different

• 47:34Speaker 03

  ways, also, I think, fostered an open-mindedness in our community, where people really learn, they learn from other traditions or psychological ways and so forth, not in conflict, but in a way that we now know can deepen their presence and mindfulness and understanding. And I'm really pleased about this for our community, because some communities still are very bounded in a way, and you can't deviate from that. And we're deviators, so we just owned it.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  And also on that list is the Dalai Lama, of course, when he came to visit in 1979. And I recall him, this could be my hallucination, I recall him going bowling in the one-lane bowling alley.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  He did. He threw the ball. I don't think he got a strike, but he threw a ball down there.

• 48:27Dan Harris?

  There was a reference a while ago to showing one of the great teachers to his room, and he laughed at the bed because he was undergoing the aesthetic practice of not lying down. But it brought to mind the conditions for yogis. Right now, it's pretty nice. What was it like back then?

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, the foamies on the floor, basically. A little foam mat, and that's it. Some places in Asia that we slept.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  Also, even though we're dedicated to peace, in the early years, there were the window wars. Because the way we were trying to create different single rooms, we just made partitions in the rooms. And sometimes the partitions landed in the middle of the one window. And people on either side, one would want the window open, one would want the window closed. And so the window wars emerged in those early years. Happily, everybody has their own room, their own windows. So peace reigns once again.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Well, and there was also, among the staff, in the early years, I can't say it was exactly a hookup culture, but we were young and single, and there were people who were getting engaged. But we had properly decided that IMS was celibate ground. So that would be, so you wouldn't be in your room, and there'd be somebody making love in the room next door that you'd hear through the sand walls or whatever. So then, some staff member discovered the mosque garden, that if you walk back from IMS, and follow the wall on the, on the southern side, on the other side of the property, there's this beautiful garden of thick moss. And that became the trysting place. And there was even a thing

• 50:17Speaker 03

  in the kitchen where you could sign up for who got the mosque garden's face, which couple could go enjoy a tryst in the mosque garden.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  When we started, Dan, we had a business plan, that two or three of the people who were managing, and myself and others, developed a business plan, because we decided that, well, we needed a plan. And we had to figure out how to charge. And we had come, as Sharon said, Jacqueline said, we'd come from a practice where no one ever paid. You didn't pay to do a retreat with Goinkan or Mahasayadab. So our first inclination was to see if we could actually offer this free. But the mortgage and the food and the heating costs and everything else like that made that really not sustainable. So we came up with a budget. The budget was,

• 51:14Speaker 02

  as we said at the outset, $6.50 a day. We got that number by adding up all the costs

• 51:22Speaker 02

  that were mandatory, like heat and food, divided by the number of projected yogi days, and hope for the best. We hoped that there'd be that many yogis who would come to that many retreats, so the budget would not be a major shortfall. As Menjia had taught us, we trusted the Dharma. The numbers turned out to be in the ballpark, until the costs went up. And so one of the most ongoing challenges of IMS has been, what should the daily rate be? Taking into consideration our commitment, everyone's commitment to offering

• 52:02Speaker 02

  the Dharma for free, dealing with realities like, maybe we should buy beds instead of having everyone sleep on full mattresses, and wanting to make the Dharma available to people who were less privileged, and of different cultures and, and communities, so that we could have scholarships and so on. So that's been an evolution that actually has been quite exquisite. Because it started with an intention to never take money, except as a pass-through to someone else, and to enlarge the community who could participate without a barrier of cost.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Just to highlight the commitment to that from early on, the first staff, our first staff, I think there were 10, eight or 10 people on the first staff. And, and their monthly stipend was $25, $25 a month. So a lot of people contributed to the founding and the development of IMS because of their passion for the Dharma, you know, and at that time, people were willing to do that. Of course, things have changed since then, but

• 53:27Speaker 04

  it was inspiring in those beginning years. Yeah, we were all young, and we were able to do that. But it was really inspiring, with people joined together to create this place.

• 53:39Dan Harris?

  Which leads me to the state of IMS today. And it's really changed. And it's not just IMS. In, in Bury, there is what I sometimes refer to in ways that I'm sure you guys will dislike, a kind of Dharma Disneyland, where you've got IMS, you've got the Bury Center for Buddhist Studies, you've got the Forest Refuge, soon, a new retreat center, as yet unnamed, across the street from the former Novitiate. And so Sharon, I just, let me go back to you, just your thoughts on what has grown out of that initial seed planted 50 years ago, right there in Bury?

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Well, a huge amount has grown out of it. And, you know, I can't speak for all of us at the very beginning, but for me, I had no clue that what was, what happened was about to happen, you know, like, we really went through, you know, this place sleeps 100 people, you know, there'll never be 100 people who want to come meditate. It was before the research, before the science, before John Kabat-Zinn had his big thought sitting at IMS, where he had the thought, you know, you could take all this, re-language it in terms of science, instead of Buddhism, and bring it to health, and then bring it to education, and call it mindfulness-based stress reduction. And he said he got up, it's

• 55:07Speaker 01

  just like this 20-year plan came up in his head in his meditation. He got up, he wrote it down, and then he did it. You know, which obviously had huge influence. So I never could have imagined what has happened. I go to places sometimes, you know, university or a business, and I think, wow, I never would have guessed, these people would be interested in bringing a meditation teacher in. Or, I mean, you, Dan, have said to me, you people think you're so mainstream, you're not so mainstream, which I think there's also truth to that. But given where we started, which was, you're a meditation teacher, that's kind of weird, you know? It's come a long, long way. And a lot I could never name, because

• 55:52Speaker 01

  I'm not on the receiving end of all this communication, but every once in a while, somebody who's very accomplished in their own field will say to me, oh, I sat 10 years ago at IMS, and it really changed my life. And I had no idea, you know, that that was the case. And it's beautiful, both the unknowing of it, and just the immensity of it. I mean, look what has happened to mindfulness practice, for one thing, and, and now loving kindness practice, you know, coming up behind it in terms of research and interest and applications. And it's remarkable.

• 56:32Dan Harris?

  Jacqueline, is it head spinning for you to consider the, my word, I don't know if you'll co-sign on it, but the really momentous implications of what you all launched 50 years ago?

• 56:47Speaker 07

  I think it's actually like Sharon pointed out, it's the word. I mean, mindfulness now, I mean, there was some kind of food that said it was mindful. And, you know, I was like, really?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Mindful mayo.

• 57:04Speaker 07

  Mindful mayo. And then somebody sent me an article and you can have micro mindfulness if you don't have time. So my, so the way that it has, I think, is it's practical. You know, just the way that it has made sense to people really in the, it's exactly the way it was for us. It made sense. That's really the basis. Mindfulness makes sense. Being in the present makes sense. And somewhere we all know that. So it's really quite beautiful to see that this has been a connector.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  Well, it's very much as Sharon and Jacqueline said, I mean, I share those same kind of amazement of the unfolding. And my mind also looks ahead, not only back over the past 50 years. And I've told this story, actually, in the Sangha News announcement about, about the new center. Some years ago, I was teaching in Italy at a Catholic monastery in the mountains of Tuscany. Catholic monastery was a thousand years old.

• 58:22Speaker 04

  And that was unbelievable to me, you know, and we think 50 years is a long time, or even the the duration of our country of 250 years is a long time. A thousand years. And so I get inspired from seeing, looking back to where we started from, to where we are now. And then I just love to imagine the possibility of IMS still existing in a thousand years. And people having come to practice over all that time.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  So it's kind of a fantastic revision. And who knows how things will unfold, but the fact that it has already happened in history. Why not? You know, and so if we can be the stewards of this time, leading to that kind of unfolding, it's tremendously inspiring.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  As we've explained, because we had no idea what we were doing and we undertook a mammoth project, at least as measured by square feet and concrete and acres and, and so on, and, and merging traditions and practices and so on.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  There were so many times where there were challenges or doubts about what to do. And every single time it's worked out.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Not always the way we expected, but it's worked out. And so I think what, for me, who had a lot of doubt, starting with the boiler,

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  has really happened is Meninji's little phrase is no longer a phrase. It's the way we live. It's the way that we

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  think about the next center, think about the next generation, the next group of teachers, our next incarnation, or everything else like that, is that as long as we are trusting, it will take care of itself. So for me, going forward is actually a lot easier than it was before because my faith in the practice

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  is unshakable.

• 1:00:59Dan Harris?

  Jack, let me bring this, bring you in on this. You, you have gone on to start a center on, on, on the, the left coast, the magnificent Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where I did my first retreat many years ago. But when you think about the future of IMS, what comes to mind for you in terms of your hopes and dreams?

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  Well,

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  what I see is that mindfulness has also shifted from being an individual focus, which is very much when we started. It was your old personal retreat and personal transformation. And we spoke about Bodhisattva and, and so forth. But then, as it grew, as we know through John Kavitsian and lots of people's work, it became really important in education, in child rearing, in healthcare, in, in a lot of other ways. And now it feels like we're in a global cultural moment

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  where it's very obvious that no amount of new technology, not AI and computers and space technology and nanotechnology is going to stop continuing warfare and racism and climate change, because all those are resulted from the human heart. That's really where it all starts. And so I see IMS as not only being a luminous place where people learn ways to live from their hearts, from their deepest values, but also that it's sending transcendent rays, which

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  we can't quite measure yet, out across the society. Because those people now realize and understand that this is the medicine that's needed more collectively, especially in this time of such a great transformation. So if anything, I think IMS not only will continue to be kind of a strong place for people to come and transform themselves, but it also will be sending out the medicine, if you will, that the culture and society needs. And that, who would have thought? It's a fabulous thing. And, and it happened. We didn't do it. It did it itself. We just practiced.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  And then we talked to people and said, yeah, okay, I know you're restless when you're sitting. It's okay. You could be mindful of it. And they go, oh, thank you. Right?

• 1:03:38Dan Harris?

  Well said. Jacqueline, your hopes and dreams as it pertains to the future of IMS?

• 1:03:45Speaker 07

  Everything began, you know, in the meditation halls in Asia and in our own individual huts. And in our shared rooms and in the balcony on, at the Burmese Vahara. And, you know, my sleeping pad with my mosquito net next to Sharon's sleeping pad and her mosquito net. And my being inspired by Sharon sitting up all night, and then I sat up all night.

• 1:04:15Speaker 07

  That is my hope and dream for everyone, to know that level of commitment, of practice, and where it leads. And even now, you know, I wake up at, this morning I woke up at three. And I'm inspired by that level of practice because I know the result, I totally know all the results. And that's my hope and dream for IMS and for as many people who are interested.

• 1:04:53Dan Harris?

  Sharon?

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  That was very beautiful, Jacqueline. Well, I remember in 2020, when IMS had to shut down because of the pandemic. And my fervent wish, spoken and unspoken at that time, was I just want to make it to 50 years. I just want to make it to 50. We're so close, you know? So it's a little bit like now we're about to hit 50 years, just in a few weeks, actually. And it's like when you've fulfilled something on your bucket list and you think, well, now what? But part of what happened for me when the retreat center had to shut down was that IMS went online, which that was also something we didn't have to do, but we did it. You know, how do you do that?

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  And even though online Dharma is available in so many places now, I still think it has a vital role in IMS because it, it represents accessibility and real openness. I had an unforgettable moment when I was teaching online in, in that era, when everything was shut down, when somebody put in the chat, I'm a resident of a nursing home and I haven't had a visitor in a year.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  And I thought, oh, this is how she's finding community. You know, this is how people can find one another when they can't afford to come, or they are taking care of someone else at home, or they're in some restricted circumstance. And so both online and in person, I think that is one of my strongest values is accessibility and, and availability and openness. And so I really hope that just continues and grows and, and develops through time, you know, and that it's really like a cardinal value that, that we bring forth into, into all of these decisions.

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  And Sharon, from the beginning, when we walked in to those columns and above them was Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament in this beautiful black script. She said, oh, we can rearrange those letters and have it say Metta. And now that becomes, as much as mindfulness has grown, and you hinted at it, Sharon, when we were talking earlier, that that actually also becomes a really important wave of understanding across the culture and the possibility of living a life that's grounded in Metta and compassion. So that's also apparently part of what we get to do.

• 1:07:31Dan Harris?

  Just in, in closing here, let, let, can we just do one last loop? I would like to hear your funniest memory or memories from 50 years at IMS. I have one that I heard secondhand that I can throw out there, but only if nobody says it organically. Joseph, I'll start with you.

• 1:07:54Dan Harris?

  Yeah, the man with the worst memory.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  I'll start before Jack tells my story because I've often heard him tell my story, which was, we were doing a, like a go around at the end of a three month retreat. And one of the participants said, the thing that astonishes, astonishes me about IMS is that it was founded, has grown, and is flourishing without any adult supervision whatsoever.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  So that was both accurate and pretty funny.

• 1:08:29Dan Harris?

  Well, but wait, Sharon, your other memory, I know because you sent me a coffee mug that has the words on it.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  The Hindsight Meditation Society? Oh, yes. Since we were called the Insight Meditation Society, within a month, we received two letters that were, back in the day, that were remarkable for how they were addressed. The first, instead of being addressed to the Insight Meditation Society, was addressed to the Instant Meditation Society. So that was pretty funny. And the second was addressed to the Hindsight Meditation Society, which I really loved. So all these years when IMS has had a significant anniversary, and we've had a party, and they make mugs and T-shirts, I've always said, how about one that says Hindsight Meditation Society? And they always say, no. And then, I think

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  for our 40th anniversary, separately, some friends made me like 10 or 20 mugs that say, Hindsight Meditation Society. But now I'm moving on to I'm Not Normal, you know, so.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  So just to build, a memory came back, just to build on what Sharon said about us starting without any adult supervision. In the early years of the three month course, so people would be calm and practicing in silence and very intensively. And then for some crazy reason, we had the idea that the best way to end the three month course of silence and intensive meditation would be to have a dance party in the lower walking

• 1:10:05Speaker 04

  room with music and strobe lights. And people are coming just out of silence into this

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  crazy energy. And looking back now, one can only laugh.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Hindsight's that much fun at IMS.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  But lots of things I did find, but it wasn't a place where I did a lot of giggling. But the one time that I do remember giggling is back to the story that Jacqueline was telling about Tengpulu Sayadaw. I was staying in one of the large rooms in the older building, and that's the room that he was going to have. And I, the room had a beautiful walk-in closet, which I used to make, I had a little heating coil, so I could make chai and not have to leave the room. Anyway, Tengpulu came in and he knocked on the door. They brought him in, and I was moving my stuff out. And he looked at the bed where I had been staying, and that's where he said, like, I don't need that. And then he went over to the closet,

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  and he walked into the closet, and he just said, I'm here. And that's where he stayed. That's where he stayed for the entire retreat that he taught, except when he was down in the hall. He just moved into the closet.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  That was his cave.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that was also an inspiration. I thought someday I'll move into a cave. It's not a closet. Would be enough for me.

• 1:11:40Speaker 03

  We had a number of esteemed elders come to IMS, and one of them was the 16th Karmapa, who was revered during the Black Hat Ceremony and being a transmitter of Dharma in remarkable ways. And we set up a throne for him in the meditation hall. And he was sitting there. We were all receiving teachings. And in the front row was also Menindra, who'd been there at that time, and Deepama. And so some of our teachers from India and so forth. And the Karmapa gave a talk on the Four Noble Truths. I think knowing it was

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  a Theravada center, but also knowing that that's kind of the essence of Buddhist teaching. And then it was getting translated from his Tibetan into English. And then sitting next to Deepama was her daughter, I think, who was translating the English into Bengali.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  And at some point, partway into his teaching, Deepama, who'd been in Bodhgaya with the Tibetan temples and all the Tibetan lamas under the Bodhi tree chanting and so forth, she turned and she said, he's a Buddhist. Because she'd actually never heard the teachings translated. She didn't know what they were doing. It was, there was something beautiful about that, that we actually became a place that connected these thousand-year-old tradition together in Barry, Massachusetts.

• 1:13:18Speaker 07

  I am going to go to an extension of Yucca Valley, because we taught, actually, many years in Yucca Valley. And so one year, we all had invited Mahasi Sayadaw to IMS, and he was going to be coming first to Yucca Valley. And I don't even know if Joseph knows this story, but Joseph and I were teaching in Hawaii, and all of the planes went on strike. And Joseph and I had to talk about how we were going to get out because we needed to meet Mahasi Sayadaw. And we decided, well, Joseph should leave first. So somehow, a

• 1:13:57Speaker 07

  travel agent got Joseph a flight, and he got out. And I was left in Honolulu. And then the travel agent called me and said, oh, we have a flight for you. It's an international flight, and they've decided they can stop here and pick up one person. So they stop, and I get on the plane, and there's one seat, and it's next to Mahasi Sayadaw.

• 1:14:25Speaker 07

  And so then we fly together to Los Angeles, and Mahasi Sayadaw is getting off, I'm getting off the plane. And I had gotten to know his translator. So we all kind of got to know each other on this flight. And when we arrived in Yucca Valley, somehow, within our conversation, we decided, myself and a few other people, would be a cultural attendant of Mahasi Sayadaw, which meant I sat in on everything. So we asked Mahasi Sayadaw, how long would you like for your interviews? And he said, three minutes. And there were lines of people outside of

• 1:15:05Speaker 07

  the door, because no one could keep their interview for three minutes. And then we decided, okay, we'll have a group interview for him. So then I'm sitting there with the translator in a group interview, and somebody starts telling, which happened all the time, their life story and some drama that plays in family. And I'm cringing, this would never happen in Burma. So I turned to the translator, and I said, does Mahasi Sayadaw understand? And so he translated that. And then what came back was, yes, Mahasi Sayadaw understands suffering.

• 1:15:45Speaker 04

  That's a beautiful story, Jacqueline.

• 1:15:49Dan Harris?

  Well, before I let you all go, anybody have anything else they want to get off their chest?

• 1:15:56Speaker 03

  Those of you who are listening to this, to feel the level of devotion and love that's behind everything that happened for 50 years, that people, you who are listening, among them, have brought such good hearts and such deep interest in the possibility of learning and awakening. And that beautiful energy of devotion and love is really what made it happen and what makes going to IMS for everybody a field of profound transformation.

• 1:16:33Dan Harris?

  Well said. Jack, Stephen, Joseph, Sharon, Jacqueline. Pleasure to be with all of you. And genuinely, as a yogi, thank you. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. One last thing I want to say before you go. If you enjoy this show, please do

• 1:17:12Dan Harris?

  me slash us a solid. Follow the show and leave a rating and a review on whatever platform you watch or listen to us on. It only takes a minute. It's free, and it really helps new people find us and spread the good news that the mind is trainable. Thank you. Sincerely, I mean it. Thank you.