The following article was adapted from an interview with Larry Rosenberg by Inquiring Mind Editors Barbara Gates and Wes Nisker. Colette Bourassa, Eric Brus and the rest of the staff at CIMC contributed significantly to the final form of the article.

When we opened the city-based Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) in 1986, we intended for it to operate in conjunction with the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), a rural retreat center in the town of Barre, in western Massachusetts. Over the years of teaching, I noticed that students and teachers both tended to emphasize retreats as the wellspring of practice; daily practice was always mentioned but not backed up by example or encouragement. It seemed that people were sitting wonderful retreats at IMS, but when they came home they were unable to sustain their practices. As a result, long-term intensive retreats had come to be thought of as “the practice.” I hoped that an urban center would help strengthen daily sitting and living practice but not at the expense of longer retreats.

At CIMC, our work is an attempt to put real vitality into daily life as practice. If we work with the events of our daily lives, they can be every bit as fulfilling as retreats. We can wholeheartedly bring the dharma into our lives by entering fully into life just as it is—as the perfect place to practice. Many of us who are attracted to intensive practice have been wounded on the battlefields of school, work, family or relationships. During a retreat, we may feel nurtured by calming silence, kind people and tasty vegetarian meals. It’s only natural that we are reluctant to go back into the combat of daily life. But we must!

Typically, people who think of retreats as “the practice” are either looking back with fondness to a past retreat or fantasizing about when the next retreat will be, but in the meantime, life is passing them by. The work is to help people maintain a healthy balance between formal practice and practice in action. Our center strives to support both of these essential aspects. Sitting and walking practice is strengthened through daily sittings, weekend retreats and classes. Also we have designed many of our retreats, practice groups and interviews to focus on daily life. We encourage people to do retreats at IMS or elsewhere when they are ready and to keep the practice a vital part of their lives when they return home.

In helping people work with daily life, we have found it useful to establish some form of accountability. This is an integral part of the “sandwich retreat,” in which participants combine a period of intensive practice with their daily lives. In a sense, the “filling” of daily-life experience is sandwiched between the “bread” of a standard retreat. This retreat includes two weekends that are similar to other retreats—sitting and walking from early in the morning to late in the evening—with weekday evenings in between. We end the first weekend with a dharma theme, such as right speech, and have people pay special attention to that theme during the rest of the week as “homework.” When retreatants return on Monday evening, we don’t immediately resume sitting and walking, but instead begin with accounts of the day’s experiences that related to right speech. This is what I mean by “accountability.” We ask questions like, “Were there any ways in which you misrepresented the truth or spoke harshly or divisively?” Typically, by Tuesday, people report little gems about how they suddenly heard themselves saying things to dear friends that weren’t entirely true, gossiping and so forth. For the eleven years we’ve been teaching at CIMC, the sandwich retreat has been effective in bringing contemplation and action together. Similarly, most of our practice groups throughout the year include dharma theme homework.

We can also help people examine and change their attitudes about practice in daily life through interviews. The teachers at CIMC conduct two kinds of interviews. One is the familiar kind that takes place on retreats and focuses primarily on sitting and walking. We also make interview slots of twenty to thirty minutes available during the week so that people can discuss concerns such as aging, illness, work or relationships—major life issues—in addition to issues concerning sitting meditation. We’re not therapists or marriage counselors. We listen with a dharma ear and try to offer appropriate feedback which can arouse just the motivation and effort someone might need to view life experience as practice. So much unnecessary misery in life grows out of “selfing”—attaching to virtually everything as “me” or “mine.” Can we see this and let go into the clarity that makes wise and kind action possible? Life constantly presents us with challenges. Can we hear and respond from a dharma perspective?

Frequently during interviews, we discuss two areas of life where people either forget to practice or are unwilling to practice. One area consists of the routine and repetitive activities that make up so much of daily life; the other is the times of crisis. People need tremendous encouragement to work creatively with these two areas of their lives.

Routine is a big part of the our lives, and people often forget to be mindful in the small activities that compose a day. In the routine and repetitive aspects of life, we must either directly meet what is happening with attention or we miss it! The quality of our lives is enhanced if we bring attention to these small details. We feel more alive.

In times of crisis, the practice is usually to see the suffering and the source of suffering in the situation. One yogi recently told me of losing his job and how he felt very depressed and desperate. He said, in a way as to reassure me, that he was sitting for up to two hours every day. I asked him how he was practicing during the other twenty-two hours in the day, because it seemed that he was using the formal sitting practice to avoid examining painful feelings. Did his practice include looking at the suffering of this situation? The formal breath and metta practice can be used to calm and strengthen the mind so that we are more able to look at our painful situations. But in his situation, he was using them to avoid painful emotional facts and postpone necessary action. Was it possible for him to be with his suffering and begin to understand the source of this suffering? Could the energy that is held captive in attachment to and identification with self images concerning work be liberated through awareness and insight?

Another yogi, who works as a labor organizer, learned how to transform a difficult work situation into a vehicle for practice. A major part of his job was fomenting aggression. By finding fault with the bosses, he encouraged workers to think that they were being mistreated. Conflict gave the union energy to negotiate. At a certain point, he became very discouraged about this kind of work and was ready to quit. I asked him if there was a way to salvage things by shifting perspectives: Could he continue to examine working conditions, procedures and salaries while staying objective and communicating honestly with management? Could he treat management with respect and encourage the workers to negotiate without insulting or blaming management?

Of course, to do this he had to work on his own anger, which until then had been a major source of energy for him. After some months of vipassana practice, he reported that a good contract had been signed. By communicating clearly and directly and without being derogatory—by being respectful—the workers and management had come to a satisfactory resolution. The workers celebrated, and, to their surprise, some top managers asked if they could attend the celebration! A kind of Gandhian labor-management relationship had evolved, to everyone’s satisfaction.

As lay people, we simply must learn to bring meditation into our normal lives, because we spend so much time there. If we don’t, lay practice will be feeble; we’ll be like second-class monks or nuns. We need to learn to bring dharma practice to issues of money, sexual energy, food and so forth, because they are the elements of our lives. Can we use intensive practice in a way that helps us plunge into daily life instead of feeling handicapped by fear of living? Yogis often compare “intensive practice” with “daily life.” What I am saying is that daily life is intensive practice!

All of us who teach at CIMC—Narayan and Michael Liebenson Grady, Sarah Doering and myself—agree about the importance of daily life as practice, and we also passionately value retreat time and do personal retreats often. We have different styles and interests, but the cornerstone of the teaching here is to encourage people to directly experience the Four Noble Truths by working with their daily lives as the perfect materials for practice.

Typically, at the end of a retreat yogis are encouraged to “bring the practice home.” Then teachers and students go their separate ways. Because CIMC is an urban center, we are able to see yogis regularly over a period months and years. We encourage them to bring dharma principles into their lives again and again. This adds another dimension to the process, one that is challenging and enriching.

My main method in teaching is mindfulness with breathing—anapanasati. I encourage people to stay in touch with their breathing as much as they can throughout the day. The breath is simple, natural and portable—wherever we are, there it is. By relating artfully to the breath, we’ll know when to let it be in the background, subordinate but helping us do what we’re doing, and when to drop into it fully, even if just for a couple of minutes, to develop calm when nothing much is asked of us.

Another tool I use is a phrase taught by Ajahn Buddhadasa: “That’s the way it is.” It’s more of a reflection than a mantra. If you feel caught somehow, it’s helpful to realize, “Well, I hate being here, but that’s the way it is.” “It’s pouring rain, and I don’t have a raincoat, but that’s the way it is.” “I’m in a crowded elevator, and I’m hot and sweating, and my stomach’s turning, and I’m feeling a little claustrophobic, but that’s the way it is.” The words help you acknowledge your situation so that you can be direct and intimate with your experience instead of getting lost in comparisons and imaginings.

Most dharma practitioners in the West are city dwellers. We are lay people, and our lives are far different from the monastic structures that support dharma practice in Asia. We have to look closely at the methods we adopt as well as how we adapt them to our own situation and to the tradition. Ajahn Buddhadasa gave me some excellent advice about approaching dharma practice under these conditions. He said we have to be both very conservative and very radical. The core of Buddhist teaching is universally applicable and is not dependent on a particular time or place. We need to conserve this precious resource. If we don’t, we’ll lose it. On the other hand, we’re bringing a teaching from one culture to another and need to realize that it won’t survive the journey if we aren’t clear about what we’re bringing from the old culture that may not be relevant. CIMC is a Western, urban, lay organization, and we are continually working to adapt the teachings to our culture without damaging or tainting the dharma. I have erred in both directions, sometimes holding on too tightly to Asian forms that were not appropriate and at other times diluting the message of the Buddha so that the teaching would be “popular.” I now feel more balanced about this than I have ever been, but this healthy tension between conserving and adapting the form of the teaching is an ongoing challenge that requires constant attention and refinement.

In the beginning of CIMC, we poured most of our energy into helping people establish a strong formal practice so that they would naturally develop a love of dharma. We didn’t emphasize sociability until a core group of yogis with a solid sitting practice developed. After four to five years, and with the stability of such practitioners, we actively encouraged the growth of the sangha. Out of such practice and dharma have come a sangha that is very sociable and conscientious. Many friendships, some long-term relationships between members, and even a few marriages have developed here. The social arena is beginning to flower at CIMC. More people are attending the community dinners, and volunteering at the center, and there’s generally greater participation in all activities. Many in the sangha are very devoted to a contemplative life and practice and are also actively engaged in living in the world with awareness and compassion. There have been many wonderful acts of gratitude and generosity in support of the homeless, neighborhood and prison communities… and we all “sit and walk,” as well.

Our teaching is very simple. When sitting in the meditation hall, give yourself 100% to sitting. Then “exhale” the sitting so that you can fully “inhale” what is next. Washing the dishes? Going to work? Being with friends? Then pour your whole being into it. All day long we exhale the past to make room for the present.

∞

From the Spring 1997 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 13, No. 2)

Text © 1997–2020 Larry Rosenberg & Inquiring Mind