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Week 1: Life and Practice

In this four-part video retreat, Larry Rosenberg will teach us how to use the dharma to skillfully navigate our day-to-day life. Far from being a remote and esoteric monastic practice, Larry’s teachings are designed for the here-and-now: jobs, kids, traffic jams—the challenging situations we meet every day.

Larry writes: “When we study the Buddha’s original teaching, two subjects emerge frequently: (1) the impermanent and uncertain nature of all forms, and (2) the urgency of learning to live skillfully, i.e. with wisdom and compassion.  I take this to suggest that a challenge we face as humans is learning how to live skillfully in an uncertain world.  Can we unlearn what is harmful to us and the people in our life; and nourish that which is beneficial, enabling us to flower as human beings?  We will take up this challenge.  Formal meditation practice at home and on retreat as well as every aspect of daily life will be viewed within a unified perspective. The emphasis will be practical. Meditation can be more than a collection of beautiful verbal teachings, techniques and forms of practice: It is a way of life!”

Larry Rosenberg is the founder and a guiding teacher at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. He is also a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. Larry is the author of Breath by Breath – The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation and, more recently, Living in the Light of Death – On the Art of Being Fully Alive.