Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How a Group of Broke 20-Somethings Accidentally Launched the Mindfulness Movement | Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

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.  Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel 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. To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

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 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 Salzberg, Jack Cornfield, 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 Stephen Schwartz, who were right there at the beginning. I 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, 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 the roundtable 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 4 p.m. 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 eight-fold path. If you're looking to get into Buddhism, a great place to start is one of the foundational Buddhist. the 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 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 4 p.m. Eastern. Go to Dan 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. Growing businesses deal with the same problem. Too many tools, too much back and forth, and not enough time. Odu helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform, fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, so your team can spend less time chasing information and focus on growth. Whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service, Odu gives you one place to manage your business. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's Odo. O'D-D-O-O-O-O-com. 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, Lowe these many years? Lowe 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 own. We were living in California in various places. And somebody came through this house that Jacqueline and I, and at Times Jack, were at kind of running at 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 U.S. It can 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, their own Massachusetts. So we went back to the East Coast. I'd never even been in Massachusetts. And it 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, like, diocese 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 novitiates and so on were for sale. And sure enough, we went to this town called Barry, Massachusetts, and there was a novitiate 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 calls 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 was put an ad in the New York Times. And we put an ad in the real estate section in the New York Times. And of course, what we got were million-dollar mansions and East Hampton, completely inappropriate. So then we went back to New England, looked at other places like Sharon said, and then when Sharon called it, 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 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 Barry 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, $8,000, which to us was about $50 million at that time. And again, learning from my grandfather, I figured if he said 8,50, I should go one-eighth of that. So I offered one in a quarter, and we said, it'll done 150. Wow, you got it down from 850 to 150? I did. He was being very proud.

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. 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 novitiate.

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

Joseph, what are your earliest memories? Well, when we all came to look at it, I think we had different takes on it. I remember Stephen talking about, 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. 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 because those are

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 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. That was basically about us growing up.

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. 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. And I think, oh, 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 sign. You go to the community. But we just went to them yesterday.

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 the story that the financing of it from the beginning was really interesting because it was $150,000 to 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 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 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 down payment,

so to speak, on the property. And a few of the frames 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 Noropa 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. 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. needed to raise to actually purchase it. So from the beginning, it felt like there's, as you 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 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 heard it from somebody else. But if you take care of the Dharma, the Dharma will take care of 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 Bogaya, India, having first begun my practice with Mnindraji, 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 20s, and it sounded a little hokey to me. Yes, the Dharma protects those that protect the Dharma. But over all these years, I've really come to deeply appreciate the truth of that. It's a real inspiration. It was this community of people mostly who've 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 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? 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 at 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. 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 had 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 Schwartz's, although you've subsequently changed

your last name to Mendel, a Goldstein, a Salzburg, and a cornfield. So. And we're all in a book called The Jew and the Lotus. So I have not read that book. Thank you for the heads up. 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 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, 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 kind of haze that there is suffering. So that was not hard. 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. 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. And that just was such a compelling force in me. And especially at that young age in early 20s when 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 20s.

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, just looking in the mirror in the midst of kind of this inner confusion, really. And what is it that's behind the reflection? Who's in there inside? And then when I first went to India and Metamunidriji, 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 emerge 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. 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 that we've worked with. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says good luck. brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit odu.com to book a demo. It's ODOOO.com.

Sharon, looking back 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? 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, 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. Like we had a rather different spirit 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 motivation.

But in those days, whatever your motivation was, it was strong. You know, because you had to be willing to schlep to Asia, you know, and adopt a completely different lifestyle 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, as you know, it can seem so woo-woo and odd 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? 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 expressions. 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 Ajan Cha said to him, just called Christianity. 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 his expression. There is a lineage and

let's honor that and have Buddhists. 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 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 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 was a little older than Sharon, but not much.

I mean, you were 21 or 22 looking around. And I remember that kind of come, 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 in. No, like, dad. I go, okay, Jacqueline, now you're thinking. But it was also immensely exciting in some way. Exciting, maybe a little too strong word. 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. And the use 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 were also living in a cultural stream or countercultural stream that brought other young people with 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. Dick, 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 founding of IMS and the mid-70s. I sometimes think about, and I don't have any math on this, but I think the vast majority of the people who were part of the counterculture then got absorbed into 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. 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, 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 Cup, there's a section for charitable organizations that many other nonprofits have. But within that, there is 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. 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 sacerdotal 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 it didn't want to be associated with one teacher.

But many of us, but especially Jack Joseph, Sharon and Jacqueline, were connected to three teachers, Mnindhraji's teacher in Burma, Mahasi Saedong, Goankas teacher Ubakhin from Burma, and Jack's teacher from Thailand. So we decided to have three lineas. 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 larger practice goal of being what we called at that point a teacherless center, not having a specific Asian person.

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? It was really, you know, an unknown palate. But a few of the things that were really important are to IMS and Spiroc 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 three weeks, about the retreat, and Joseph was, you know, maybe reading some passage from our patriarchal Buddhist text. And some feminists at that time, there was a, you know, a lot of the 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, more,

and lay people, which was unknown in Asia, to have very rare, Gawank 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-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 carried 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 to cone. Multi tradition, multi-lineage, but really focused, I guess. think in one of the many schools of Buddhism, the old school, Tara Vada, 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? Everything creates controversy in turmoil. It's like, you're talking about 50 years.

I'm 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 Taramata 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 Sashines, you know, with Zen teachers and things like that. We did make a decision that 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, and let me bring you back in. From your POV in those early days 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 S. N. Goenka. As Sharon mentioned, that was her first treat. 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, And realizing that, you know, I would not always be following the exact way that Gawenka 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 Gawanka.

and I'm telling Goenka that I'm going to study with other Tiravada 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. 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 Mwasi Saida and Tangpula Saida, and Tang Pu Suida 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 Saeedal, and Tadu, Sayada. 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 Goenka, but especially for myself, it was my first teacher, it was my heart. Let me just give you an example. Something Jacqueline said, not really on the topic she was talking about, which is very true, not just for her, but when she mentioned Tampu Lusayyah, I remembered a time when we, Tampuuu Saita 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.

So all these people came to hear him give a talk. And in the tradition, really old style tradition, when a monk is speaking, 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 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 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 all-pervasive truth. 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 Tung Fu Lsaita brought that back. There's another tongueful Lus story from the other side. This involves Jack. we were both visiting Tung Pulisado 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.

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 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 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 Tungpulu 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. Yeah, I 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 Theravada tradition, we have been able to host this wide range of teachers, both within the Terabata tradition, like Tangpulu and Lasi Saido, Ajun Shah, and Upandita Sayado, and many others.

But we also have been able to host, at least as visitors, the 16th Karmapa, you know, and Sun Tsun San Sanin, 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 or psychological ways and so forth, not in conflict, but in a way that we now know can deepen their presence and mindfulness and understand. and I'm really pleased about us 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

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 alleys. He did. He threw the ball ball. I don't think he got a strike, but he threw a ball 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 we brought to mind the conditions for yogis. Right now it's pretty nice.

What was it like back then? Yeah. The foamy's on the floor, basically. A little foam mat. 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, much 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 you wouldn't be in your room,

and there'd be somebody making love in the room next to, store that you'd hear through the sand walls or whatever. So then some staff member discovered the mosque garden that if you walk back with IMS and follow the wall on the southern side, on the other side of the property, there's this beautiful garden of a thick moss, and that became the tristing place. And there was even a thing in the kitchen where you could sign up for who got the mosque Hardens phase which couple

could go. Enjoy a trist in the loss card. 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 Goinkin or Mahasi Saadab. 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, as we said at the outset, $6.50 a day. We got that number by adding up all the costs that were mandatory like heat and food, divided by the number of projected yogi days and hope for the best. We hope that there'd be that many yogis who would come to that many retreats, so the budget would not be a major shortfall. As Minja had taught us, we trusted the Dharma. The numbers turned out to be in the ballpark until the Konsa know. 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 Dharma for free, dealing with realities like maybe we should buy bids 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 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 staff, our first staff, I think there were 10, eight or 10 people on the first staff. And their monthly stipend was $25, $25 a month. So a lot of people when contributed to the founding and the development of IMS because of their passion for the dormant. you know, and at that time, people were willing to do that. Of course, things have changed since then,

but it was inspiring in those beginning years. We were all young and we were able to do that, but it was really inspiring with people joined together to create this place. Which leads me to the state of IMS today, and it's really changed, and it's not just IMS, 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 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,

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 Cabinson had his big thought sitting at IMS where he had this 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, he just like this 20-year plan came up in his head and his meditation. He got up, he wrote it down, and then he did it, you know, which obviously had huge influence. And so I never could have imagined what has happened. I go to places sometimes, you know, at 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, who 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 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 and 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 now loving kindness practice, you know, coming up behind it in terms of research and interest and applications. And it's remarkable. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another.

Your spreadsheet says good luck. O-Doo brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit O-D-com to book a demo. It's O-D-O-O-O-com. Jacqueline, is it headspinning for you to consider the true, 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? 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? Maynes, mindful mayo. And then somebody sent me an article and you can have micro-mindfulness so you don't have time. So my. So the way that it has,

I think because it's practical, you know, just the way that it has made sense to people. 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 the unfolding. And my mind also looks ahead, not only back or, over the past 50 years. And I've told this story, actually in the Sangha News announcement 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. And that was unbelievable to me. You know, and we think 50 years is a long time, or even 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'd just love to imagine the 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, why not? 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, 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 so on, and merging traditions and practices and so on. there were so many times where there 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 has really happened is Minja 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, 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 face in the practice is unshakable. Jack, let me bring this, bring you in on this. You have gone on to start a center on 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, 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 virtual transformation. We spoke about Bodhisattva and so forth. But then as it grew, as we know through John Kavitsyn and lots of people's work, it became really important in education, in child rearing, in health care, 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 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 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 it happened.

We didn't do it. It did. It said, we just practiced. And then we talked to people and said, yeah, okay, I know you're a restless way. You're sitting. It's okay. You could be mindful of it. And I go, oh, thank you.

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

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 don't totally know all the results. And that's my hope and dream for IMS and for as many people who are interested. Karen. 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. I just want to make it to 50. We're so close. 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? And even though online Dharma is available in so many places now, I still think it has a vital role in IMS because it represents accessibility and real openness. I had an unforgettable moment when I was teaching online 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. 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 there in some restricted circumstance. And so both online and in person, I think that is one of the strongest values is accessibility and availability and openness. And so I really hope that just continues and grows and develops through time, you know, and that it's really like a cardinal value that we bring forth into all of these decisions. And Sharon from the beginning when we walked into 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 it at Sharon, when we were talking earlier, that that actually also become a really important way 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 closing here, let, 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. The paper. 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 go-around. at the end of a three-month retreat. And one of the participants said,

the thing that astonishes me about IMS is that it was founded, has grown, and is flourishing without any adult supervision whatsoever. So that was both accurate and pretty 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, 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 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 that's a hindsight meditation society. But now moving on to I'm not normal. You know, so. 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 room with music and strobe lights. 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 I'm just doing. But lots of things I did find,

but it wasn't a place where I did a lot at giggling. I thought one time that I do remember Gatling is back to the story that Jacqueline was telling about Tung Pula, Sajado. 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 the room had a beautiful walk-in closet, which I used to make a little 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 hole. He just moved into the closet. That was his cave. Yeah. So that was also an inspiration. I thought someday I'll move into a cage, 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 doing the black cat ceremony and being a transmitter of Dharma in remarkable ways.

And we set up a throne for him. the meditation hall and he was sitting there we were all receiving teachings and in the front row was also menendra who had 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 formidable truths i think knowing it was a terravada 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 Deepemau was her daughter, I think, who was translating the English into Bengali.

And at some point partway into his teaching, Deepama, who'd been in Bodhaya with the Tibetan temples and all the Tibetan llamas 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. 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 know an extension of Yucca Valley, because we taught actually many years in Yucca Valley. And so one year, we all had a... invited Mahasi Saeedah to IMS, and he was going to be coming first to Yakovalli. 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 Sayada, and we decided, well, Joseph should leave first. So somehow a 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 Sayada. And so then we fly together to Los Angeles, and Mahasi Saeedah is getting off the plane. 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 Mahazis which meant I sat in on everything. So we asked Mahasizai-ah, how long would you like for your interviews? And he said, three minutes. And there were lines of people outside of the door because no one could keep their interview three minutes.

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 in family. And I'm cringing this would never happen in Burma. So I turned to the translator and I said, does Mahasi Saeedal understand? And so he translated that. And then what came back was, yes, Mahasi Saeedal understand suffering.

That's a beautiful story, Jacqueline. 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, 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. 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 Vassili. 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 Kashmir, 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 me slash us a solid. but 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.