IMCW's Second Sunday Dharma Series presents Tuere Sala, with host La Sarmiento
The Urban Contemplative
In traditional Buddhism, a “contemplative” is someone who leaves lay life to become a monastic. They are wanderers who leave the householder’s life to take up a homeless spiritual life. The monastic community lives noticeably different than the lay community and yet there is such a symbiotic relationship between the two that one could not survive without the other.
I am intrigued with the idea of how someone in this Insight tradition would take up a spiritual life as a contemplative, or as Jack Kornfield put it in his book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, I am interested in “[t]he difficulties of finding a wise expression of spiritual life in modern circumstances…”. If Insight meditation is primarily a lay-oriented practice, is it possible to live a contemplative life as a lay practitioner, and if so what would it look like? Is there space in this practice for what I would consider an Urban Contemplative?
Please note the ASL video is missing for four minutes during the start of Q&A.
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