Ten Percent Happier

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.

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." In this episode:

• How the 80 acre property got negotiated down from $850K to $150K

• The Barre town motto — "Tranquil and Alert" — that they took as an omen

• The $15,000 that dropped out of the sky at the exact right moment

• "The dharma protects those who protect the dharma"

• The Jewish-Buddhist question

• The IRS drama of registering as a "church" without a single lineage

• Why IMS's founding was actually unusual: no Asian teacher at the helm

• Team teaching, lay teachers, and the feminist push that changed American dharma

• Taungpulu Sayadaw giving a talk with a fan in front of his face

• The Dalai Lama going bowling at IMS in 1979

• The window wars, the moss garden trysting sign-up sheet, and the $25/month first staff stipend

• Jon Kabat-Zinn's lightbulb moment sitting at IMS

• Funniest memories

If you'd like to support IMS or learn about the new retreat center they're building, visit https://www.dharma.org.

This is a show about how to do life better. It’s hosted by Dan Harris, a former ABC News anchor turned bestselling author. Drawing on a mix of ancient Buddhism and modern science, this podcast covers such topics as: meditation, stress, anxiety, depression, sleep, self-compassion, fitness, relationships (personal and professional), productivity, focus, decision-making, and time management. Interviewees include meditation teachers, psychologists, researchers, and occasional celebrities—from RuPaul to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The animating insight is that happiness is not an unalterable factory setting; it’s a skill. The mind is trainable, and this show will teach you how to do it.