The Founding Story Behind the Center That Launched Modern Mindfulness | The Founders of IMS

Key Takeaway

Take care of the dharma, and the dharma will take care of you. When Joseph Goldstein was leaving India after his first retreat, his teacher Munindra told him this simple truth. Fifty years later, the Insight Meditation Society stands as proof. The five founders—all in their early twenties, with no money and no organizational experience—trusted in their mission to share meditation practice. That $15,000 down payment that appeared exactly when needed wasn't luck—it was the result of deep commitment to something larger than themselves. Whether you're building a meditation center or pursuing any meaningful goal, the principle holds: commit fully to what matters, and the path forward reveals itself.

Episode Overview

This episode features all five co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS)—Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Jacqueline Mandel, and Steven Schwartz—reflecting on the center's 50th anniversary. They discuss the unlikely founding story, from negotiating a $150,000 property down to $150,000 (which they didn't have), to creating America's first teacherless meditation center that honored multiple lineages while adapting Buddhist practice for Western culture.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Founding Story Behind the Center That Launched Modern Mindfulness | The Founders of IMS from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

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 non-stop 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 Society or IMS. It's a legendary retreat center in Barry, 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 smooth sailing, as you're about to hear. My guests today are Sharon Salsberg, 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 Mandel, and Steven Schwarz, who were right there at the beginning.

I uh really appreciated this conversation because all five of these people have dedicated their 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, dharma.org, 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 round table of the IMS founders right after this. 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 400 PM Eastern, we're running a summer Sunday live series with the great meditation teacher Sharon Salsberg, who's going to do an eight-part series every Sunday for 8 weeks where she takes one piece of the Buddha's eight-fold path. If you're looking to get into Buddhism, a great place to start is one of the foundational Buddhist lists, and that is the eight-fold 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 eight-fold path. And she's going to do so live and in community. So, every Sunday at 400 p.m. 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 an enormous opportunity to deepen your practice and to learn more about the dharma. Again, it starts this Sunday, July 12th, at 400 p.m. Eastern. Go to danh harris.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. Jack, Joseph, Sharon, Jacqueline, and Steven. 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 low these many years?

lo these many years. I remember I guess I was 23 years old and maybe the youngest of the four and there was also Steven 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 on people like Stephen who was in the first board of directors and and actually did the founding. I do remember very much that 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 the east coast.

The original idea to start a retreat center was not our own. We were living in California and various places and somebody came through this house that Jack and I and at times Jack were at kind of running it like a 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?" center somewhere?" center somewhere?" And it could be like a sacred site in 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." So we went back to the East Coast. I'd never even been in Massachusetts. And it was people like Steven 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 arch dascese 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 noviciates and so on were for sale.

And sure enough, we went to this town called Barry, Massachusetts, and there was a noviciate for sale. And that was like the first glimpse of the place. Stephen, since Sharon referenced you there, anything to add to her first foray into this reminiscence? When Joseph and Sharon called from Boulder and said, "Could you help us make this happen?" And my first inclination was to do what my Jewish grandfather did in New Jersey, which was 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-doll 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 had never thought of the Catholic Church as a great potential real estate operation, but they were. So I wrote letters to every arch dasis in New England and the arch dasis 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." said, "$850." said, "$850." $850,000, $850,000, $850,000, which to us was about $50 million at that time. And again, learning from my grandfather, I figured if he said $850, I should go 1/8 of that. So I offered 1 and a quarter and we settled on 150. Wow. You got it down from 850 to 150.

I did. He was being very proud. That was We also separated some land that we bought much later. So Steven negotiated a somewhat different package, you know, of of property. And can you believe we got that place for $150,000, which I should also add we did not have. Jack, do you remember the first time you walked through the property? 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 Novvician.

And I thought, "This is kind of cool." And then I thought, 80 rooms, you know, a swimming pool, a tennis court, 80 acres of land for 150,000. Looks I mean, it seemed like an unimaginable amount of money, but that just seemed like ridiculous. And I love 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 autrammonts 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 3-month course in Bugsport Maine there was a Catholic nun who sat there and she also made the suggestion at that time that the dascese 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. Joseph, what are your earliest memories? memories? memories? 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 and 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. And then as we were considering all this and this is kind of a 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 model. 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 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. It is worth pointing out that except for Stephen and a couple of others, none of us knew how to either establish or run an organization.

We were all very immersed in Dharma practice and practice and practice and energized and enthusiastic about coming back from India and sharing what we learned. learned. 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. time. time. That was basically about us growing up.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's also 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 because you didn't pay for room and board because everything was offered by the people of the village, you know, or or the community. And so, you know, I remember sitting in those early board meetings and and Stephen or somebody would say, "Well, we have to give the staff health insurance." 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 SA, you go to just go to the SA, 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. I know 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. And then the fathers of the blessed sacrament whose noviciate it was gave us a mortgage for 50,000 and we could not get a bank to give us a mortgage cuz 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.

As Sharon just mentioned, we needed to come up with $50,000, you know, on the 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 Nuropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

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 and 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 there's there's there's I don't know there's been some 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. Of course, the implication of IMS being 50 years old is that we're 50 years older and sometimes that's harder to to take in, but there it is.

And it's been an amazing evolution. 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. you. you. 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 Boggaya, India having first begun my practice with Mindraj my first teacher, I was in the rickshaw going back to the train station train station 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 20s. And it sounded a little hokey to me. You know, yes, the dharma protects those that protect the dharma. dharma. dharma. But over all these years, I've really come to deeply appreciate the truth of that.

It's it's a real inspiration. And it was this community of people mostly who'd been together in India practicing and coming back. And 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 and a few little love experiments between staff members all that. But it there was a kind of communal field that felt actually very positive and healthy and I loved that.

Jacqueline, how was that for you? 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 vajara 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.

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. first retreat. 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 and somebody said, "Let's make it bigger." Jacqueline, let me ask you about something that I have at many times in the past asked Jack, Joseph, and Sharon about, but haven't just met you, I have not had a chance to ask you about it. So, the founding team includes two Schwarzes, although you've subsequently changed your last name to Mandel, a Goldstein, a Salsberg, and a cornfield.

cornfield. cornfield. So, So, So, and we're all in a book called The Jew and the Lotus. So, I I have not read that book. Thank you for the heads up. Page eight. Page eight. Page eight. Do you think is this a coincidence or is there something about the the story of the Jews in America that makes this make sense to you? 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 um like what were all these Jewish people doing here so I think later I mean I do think there is a sensitivity to suffering I mean certainly my own upbringing um and I'm sure you know everyone else's there was just an attunement to I mean I was born you know 2 years after the end of World War II so everything in my family, you know, people whispering, speaking Yiddish and so forth.

Um, you know, there was kind of a kind of haze that there is suffering. So, that was not hard. not hard. not hard. Yeah. We also 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 motivations 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, 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 in early 20s when you know many people at that age are still trying to figure out their lives in the world and their place in the world and just looking at kind of the inner anst and confusion that is often there you know in one's early 20s and I remember at one point this was still when I was in the peace corp in Thailand before coming back to the states and before my practice in India India India just looking in the mirror in the midst of kind of this inner confusion really and want who is it that's behind the reflection who's in there inside and then when I first went to India and met man man man you know he said something so simple and so straightforward so straightforward so straightforward when he said if you want to understand your mind sit down and obs 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 that people really do come to dharma practice from many different sides you know in different motivations different motivations 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 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 a functioning center.

Was that the hardest part of the endeavor or was it something else? That was difficult and challenging for sure. You know, looking back, the 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 personally co-signed personally co-signed loans so that we could get that last 50,000 and open up. So, our mantra like in 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. completely unknown. completely unknown. you know what would happen and it seemed so large physically you know it was like could sleep so many people and who in the world was going to come but we took care not to repeat that mantra in front of the people who personally co-signed the loans the loans the loans like we had rather a different spirit than than they had it was all challenging and 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 motiv motivations.

But in those days, whatever your motivation was, it was strong, you know, because you had you had to be willing to shle 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. But still, you know, as you know, it can seem so woowoo and odd and and not very palatable or understand and understandable.

So there was that hurdle and then you know really what should it look like here and what are the different expressions and uh even the architecture and 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 because we'd all you know Jacqueline Joseph and I in India Jack in in Thailand had teachers who were not kind of holding the dharma as a possession. You know my first retreat was with SNA.

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 Ajan Cha 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 and Ajan said to him just call it Christianity Christianity Christianity you know so that was one whole orientation that would argue like maybe don't have Buddhas you know and 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 let's honor that and have Buddhism. I just found it so amusing that it was phrased like should we have Buddhas in public places, you know, because 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 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 challenge challenge remained you know and it was also very interesting and important that we consider those aspects of things. It's hard to communicate how young Sharon and Jacqueline who's a little older than Sharon but not much were. I mean, you were 21 or 22 looking around it and I remember the kind of 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're like looking at each other. I guess we're it. No, like tag. Okay, Jacqueline, now you're you're it. But it was also immensely exciting in some way. Exciting maybe a little too strong a word. Buddhists don't get that excited, right? But there's something about like being together in an amazing challenge and not cuz 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. How do we do this?

So, and the youth of it also I think built off the 60s. 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. So we're also living in a cultural stream or countercultural stream that brought other young people in especially and that was again both in tune with the times and how do we change ourselves and maybe how do we change the world around us.

Jack, just picking up on your comment about the, you know, being part of the cultural stream or countercultural stream of the 60s leading up into the the founding of IMS in the mid '70s. 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 straits 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 60s. We're not normies and never will. 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 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 lineages 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 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. 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 Code 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 the church. But to be a church, to be organized and incorporated as a church, you get a number of privileges and immunities from federal government oversight.

So that was ideal. But the problem was that the rules of the IRS was in order to be a church, you had to demonstrate demonstrate demonstrate a tight connection to a lineage and the actual practice of what was called sacraidal functions. I had no idea what sacraidal 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 it didn't want to be associated with one teacher, but many of us, but especially Jack, Joseph, Sharon, and and Jacqueline were connected to to three teachers.

Manindra's teacher in Burma, Mahasi Sadon, Mahasi Sadon, Mahasi Sadon, Gena's teacher Ubakin from Burma and Jack's teacher from Thailand. So we decided to have three lineages and three sacred 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 Jacqueline's 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.

I remember there were moments when we had a conversation should there be robes for our teachers right what should they wear was really you know an unknown pallet but a few of the things that were really important are to IMS and spir 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 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 3-month retreat and Joseph was you know maybe reading some passage from our patriarchal Buddhist text and some feminist at that time there was a you know a lot of them beginning of widespread feminist was 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 used to not only include women as teachers more and lay people which was unknown in Asia to have very rare Genko 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 and have multi-raditions which was really healthy for people cuz 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 in some way inspiring for each of the different people that come multi- tradition multi- tradition multi- tradition multi-lineage multi-lineage multi-lineage but really focused I think in one of the many schools of Buddhism the old school terravada 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 years years everything creates controversy and turmoil it's like you're talking about 50 years you know like not knowing what we're doing and trying the best we And it was a conscious decision even though in our personal lives many of us maybe in all of us have 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 terra tradition and there was enough variety and richness within the 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 sasheen sasheen sasheen you know with Zen teachers and things like that.

We did make a decision that if we're 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. I asked Sharon a little while ago what were the biggest challenges over the years. Jacqueline, let me bring you back in. Did from your POV, what in those early days or or beyond, what were some of the biggest hurdles?

Well, for me and I think for some of us, you know, my first teacher was Essen Goena. As Sharon mentioned, that was her first retreat. It's also where I met Sharon. That'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 reverence reverence and then coming to IMS and realizing that that that you know I would not always be following the exact way that Gena 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 Gena and I'm telling Gowena telling Gowena telling Gowena that I'm going to study with other terra teachers teachers teachers and I was absoluted imagery and I'm like nervous and because I just respected Gowena so much and he gave me everything, 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 bodhic 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. started chanting. started chanting. And to think that I was going to be leaving this person who gave me everything. everything. everything. It was really hard. And when he came to visit in Massachusetts after I'd already been a nun with Mahasi Sai and Tangpul Sai and Tangula 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.

sit. sit. And you know I went up to him and I said you know I ordained with Mahasi Sidal tur tur tur and he was so kind I was so grateful because I had been I don't know he expected so much so it was a huge hurdle and I think as all of us went through that with Gena but especially for myself it was my first teacher was my art. Let me just give you an example because something Jacqueline said not really on the topic she was talking about which is very true not just for her but when she mentioned Tampulus mentioned Tampulus mentioned Tampulus I remembered a time when we Tuluaya was a very great Burmese 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 and 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 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 you have like zero glimpse of their face, their eyes, their smile, if they're smiling.

And so he sat there [clears throat] 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 was making this offering to you. And it's meant to not be a sense of the human being making the offering, but just this kind of old pervasive truth. And and that would just be an example of, you know, east and west and, you know, what do you do here?

And 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 to be working. So hearing Jacqueline talk about Tonfua brought that back. There's another Tongulus story from the other side and this involves Jack. We were both visiting Tpulido in California at the monastery that was set up for him there and there and there and we had been teaching I don't know a couple of years by then and it was very busy full schedules.

we're 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 know it 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 something like 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 Tangulu 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 shorter retreats and more vacations. We should have followed that as much and one of the beautiful things at IMS even though we were quite deeply committed are to the terravada tradition we have been able to host this wide range of teachers both within the terravada tradition like Tungpulu and Lassi Saido Ajan Sha and Upandita Siadau and many others but we also have been able to host at least as visitors the 16th Karmapa, you know, and Sunsim, 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 ways also, I think, fostered an open-mindedness in our community where people really learn. They learn from other traditions and psychological ways and so forth, not in conflict, but in a 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 cuz some communities still are very bounded in a way and and you can't deviate from that and we're deviators so we just owned it.

And also on that list is the Daly Lama, of course, when he came to visit in 1979. And I recall him, this could be my hallucin hallucination. I recall him going bowling in the one lane bowling alley. He did. He threw the ball. I don't think he got a strike, but he threw a ball down there. down there. down there. 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? then? then? Yeah. The foamies on the floor basically a little foam mat and that's it. Some places in in Asia that we slept. 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. 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 sin walls or whatever.

So then some staff member discovered the moss garden that if you walk back of 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 twisting place and there was even a thing in the kitchen where you could sign up the mosque the mosque the mosque garden garden garden space which couple could go enjoy I trrist in the boss guard. 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 had come from a practice where no one ever paid you didn't pay to do a retreat with goan or mahasi sadob mahasi sadob mahasi sadob so our first inclin ation 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, as we said at the outset, $6.50 a day. We got that number by adding up all the costs the costs the costs 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 Maninja had taught us, we trusted the dharma. the numbers turned out to be in the ballpark until the costly note.

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 the dorm room 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.

Just to highlight the commitment to that from early on. the first st our first staff I think there were 10 eight or 10 people on the first staff and and their monthly stipend was $25 was $25 was $25 $25 a month. So a lot of people went 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. that. that. Of course things have changed since then but it was inspiring in those beginning years.

Yeah, we were all young and we were able to do that. But it was really inspiring that people joined together to create this place which leads me to this the state of IMS today and it's really changed and it's not just IMS you know in in Barry 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 Barry Center for Buddhist Studies you've at the forest refuge. Soon a new retreat center as yet unnamed across the street from the former Noviciate.

And so Sharon, I just let me go back to you. Just your thoughts on what has what has what has grown out of that initial seed planted 50 years ago right there in Barry. 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 Kittson had his big thought sitting at IMS where he had the thought, you know, you could take all this, relanguage 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, he it just like this 20-year plan came up in his head in his meditation. He got up, he wrote it down, and 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 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 I I'm not on the receiving end of all this communication, you know, but every once in a while somebody who's very accomplished in their own field will say to me, 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 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 is it head spinning for you to consider the tr my word I don't know if you'll cosign on it but the really momentous implications of what you all launched 50 years ago years ago years ago 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? Mayonnaise, mindful mayo, mindful mayo. And then somebody sent me an article and you can have micro mindfulness if you don't have time. And oh my oh my oh my No, the way that it has I I think cuz 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. Well, it's very much as Sharon and Jacqueline said, I mean, I share those same kind of amazement of 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 SA news announcement about about the new center. Some years ago I was teaching in Italy Italy Italy at a Catholic monastery in the mountains of Tuskanyany.

Catholic monastery was a thousand years old and and and that was unbelievable to me, you know, and and and we think we think we think 50 years is a long time or even the the duration of our country of 250 years or 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 possibility possibility of IMS still existing in a thousand years and people having come to practice over all that time.

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 history 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 to me as we've explained um 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.

There were so many times where there were were were challenges or doubts about what to do and every single time it's worked out. 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 boiler boiler um has really happened is Maninja G's little phrase is no longer a phrase. It's the way we live. It's the way that we think about the next center, think about the next generation, the next group of teachers, our next incarnation or everything else like that.

It's 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 is unshakable. is unshakable. is unshakable. Jack, let me bring this bring you in on this. You you have gone on to start a center on the 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?

Well, Well, Well, 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 bodhic sattva and and so forth but then as it grew as we know through John kebabs and lots of people's work it became really important in education in child hearing, in healthcare, in in in a lot of other ways. And now it feels like we're in a global cultural moment 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 those are 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 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 especially 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. itself. itself. We just practiced 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. Well said, Jacqueline. Your hopes and dreams as it pertains to the future of MS. MS. MS. 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 the Burmese Vajara 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 I 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 3 and I'm inspired by that level of practice because I know result I know totally know all the results results results And that's my hope and dream for IMS and for as many people who are interested it 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. years. 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 know how to do, but we did it.

You know, how do you do that? 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 accessibility 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. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And I thought, "Oh, this is how she's finding community." finding community." 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 our 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 on into all of these decisions. decisions. decisions. And Sharon's 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 meta." 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 become it's a really important wave of understanding across the culture and the possibility of living a life that's grounded in meta and compassion. So that's also apparently part of what we get to do. Just in in closing here, let let can we just do one last loop? I would like to hear hear 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. Any you. Any you. Any start with me because Yeah. The man with the worst memory. 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 goaround at the end of a three-month retreat and one of the participants said the thing that astonish astonishes me about IMS is that it was founded has grown and is flourishing without any adult supervision whatsoever. supervision whatsoever. supervision whatsoever. So that was both accurate and pretty funny.

funny. funny. Well, but wait, Sharon, your other memory I know because you sent me a coffee mug that has the words on it. The hindsight meditation society. Oh, yeah. Since we were called the Insight Meditation Society, within a month we received received 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 made 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 for our 40th anniversary separately some friends made me like 10 or 20 mugs at the hindsight meditation society. But now moving on to I'm not normal normal normal you know. So so just to build a a memory came back just to build on what Sharon said about us starting without any adult supervision supervision supervision in the early years of the three-month course.

So people would be calm and practicing in silence and very intensively. intensively. 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 room with music and strobe lights. I mean people are coming just out of silence into this crazy energy and looking back now one can only laugh. I didn't find that much fun at but 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 Tonulo Siador 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 a beautiful walk-in closet which I used to make I had a heating coil so I could make chai and not have to leave the room.

Anyway, Tungpulu 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 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.

That was his cave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was also an inspiration. I thought someday I'll move into the cave. It's not a closet would be enough for me. 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 manindra who been there at that time and deep and so was some of our teachers from India and so forth and the karmappa gave a talk on the for noble truths I think knowing it was a terabata center but also knowing that that's kind of the essence of Buddhist teaching and then it was getting translated translated translated from his Tibetan into English and then sitting next to Deepipamal was her daughter I think who was translating the English into Bengali and at some point partway into his teaching teaching teaching deep who'd been in Bodaya with the Tibetan temples and all the Tibetan llamas under the bodhic 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. I am going to note an extension of Yaka Valley Valley Valley because we taught actually many years in Yaka Valley and so one year we all had invited Mahasi Siad to IMS and he was going to be coming first to Yaka Valley and I don't even know if Joseph knows the 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 Siad and we decided well Joseph should leave first.

So somehow a travel agent got Joseph a flight and 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 Sadon. And so then we fly together to Los Angeles and Mahazi Sida is getting off the 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 Yaka Valley, somehow within our conversation, we decided myself and a few other people would be a cultural attendant of Mahazi Sida, which meant I set in on everything. So we asked Mahazi Sida, "How long would you like for your interviews?" And he said, "3 minutes." And there were lines of people outside of the door because no one could keep their interview between us. And then we decided, okay, we'll have a group interview for him.

So then I'm sitting there with a translator in a group interview and somebody starts telling which happened all the time their life story and some drama that took place family and I'm cringing. This would never happen in Burma. So I turned to the translator and I said, "Does Mahasi Sid understand?" And so he translated that and then what came back was, "Yes, Mahasi Sid understands suffering." That's a beautiful story, Jacqueline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, before I let you all go, anybody have anything else they want to get off their chest?

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. The 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. Well said Well said Well said Jack Steven 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 mess 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 uh the good news that the mind is trainable. Thank you sincerely. I mean it. Thank you.