When the Center opened its doors some 30 years ago, I gave the very first Wednesday evening Dharma talk and quoted a passage from the Visuddhimagga, an ancient commentary on the Buddha’s teaching. In it, the author Buddhaghosa presented a long list of where NOT to start a meditation center including: intersections where large numbers of people pass, places of political and business activity, locations where loud noises occur, etc. It was quite clear that the selection of 331 Broadway, perched between Central Square and Harvard Square, in Cambridge MA, was one immense error in judgment.
What prompted such a departure from ancient wisdom?
During my 10 years in Zen Buddhism, I had many years of meditation training in Asia and the USA, mainly comprised of long-term intensive practice, much of it for extended periods of silence in remote mountain monasteries in Korea and Japan, and also many three-month retreats at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre MA. Such experience, with both monastics and lay meditators, was invaluable. I have boundless gratitude to the teachers and organizations that made all this formal training possible.
But… I also observed that we lay people, at least the majority of us, were destined to spend most of our life “off the cushion.” Our reality consisted of earning a living, going to school, raising children, living with spouses, intimate partners or alone, and at the same time, having a sincere and devoted interest in meditative living. Yes, whenever possible, we may go off to residential retreats in places that the Visuddhimagga would approve of — such as IMS, the Forest Refuge, or the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies — but then return to wash the dishes, take out the garbage, hug our children and get to work or class on time.
Years of observation of myself and other yogis and the difficult challenges faced in daily life, convinced me that residential formal meditation retreats away from the “hustle and bustle” of urban living was not enough. We needed a new form — and CIMC was born. We did not create a residential center, but rather invited people to come to CIMC for Dharma teachings, meditation instructions, interviews, practice groups, talks, and intensive weekend practice retreat. We strongly encouraged everyone to take whatever was learned at CIMC, and bring it to every aspect of daily living, nothing excluded. Our frame of reference: prior to all forms, there is life itself.
Of course our greatest challenge in daily life is relationship. We humans, with all our scientific, technological and artistic brilliance, have still not learned how to live with each other. Can our training as Vipassana (Insight) yogis help us learn how to live in peace with ourselves, others and nature?
So much more can be said about what has been introduced here…
Please join Narayan and me at the community gathering at 3:00pm on Sunday, March 1 to continue this conversation and to celebrate our 30th year. We will give talks about CIMC, and would love to hear your questions and contributions — and to enjoy each other’s company.