What we are here for
Why We Practice
What this practice is for, and what it asks of us.
Why people come
Life holds joy and difficulty, and all of it matters. A friendship, a meal, the satisfaction of work done well, a child laughing in the next room. A diagnosis, a loss, a job that asks too much, an argument that keeps coming back.
People come to practice for all of it. Some come because something hurts, and some come well, wanting more of the life they already have. Some want a practice that finally lasts. Some want to be there better for the people they love, or to let go of old judgments and patterns. Some are looking for company on the way, and some for a path that goes all the way. Some come because the state of the world has left them shaken, or unsure that anything they do can matter. Many come for more than one of these at once, and the reasons tend to widen the longer we stay.
If this is a dark time, this practice has room for it, and so do we. Many people have arrived here in the hardest season they had known. Nobody needs to feel better before they come. And for anyone who wants to deepen the light already in their life, there is always further to go.
Something already here
Something clear and caring is already here in each of us. We can find it in an ordinary moment. The mind drifts into a plan or a worry, and then something knows that it drifted. Nobody built that knowing. It arrived on its own, and it saw the drift without having to fight it.
We call this wakefulness. It is not on a mountaintop, and it is not reserved for special people. It is here in the middle of an ordinary day, alongside all our usual thoughts and moods, and our practice is learning to live from it more often. That takes patience and effort, and every day offers new chances to begin again.
The same is true of our goodness. We trust in the goodness and potential we share as human beings. It is part of who we are, and it is easy to lose touch with, for one person and for a whole society. Long stretches of stress, loss, or hurry can cover it until it seems gone. It is not gone. Practice is how we come back to it.
What gets in the way
We care about our lives, the people around us, and what happens in the world. And our ways of seeking happiness, protecting ourselves, and reacting to difficulty often undermine the very things we care about. The parent who loves a child and still snaps. The person who wants rest and reaches for the phone. The friend who wants closeness and defends instead of listening. Good intentions alone do not give us the freedom to respond differently. Old patterns limit our capacity to see clearly and to act from what we care about.
These habits have familiar shapes: grasping at what we want, pushing away what we do not, and holding on to old stories about ourselves and others. There is the pain that comes with being alive, and there is the suffering we add in reaction to it, the replaying and bracing and blaming. Practice cannot always remove the first. We can learn to stop adding the second.
The moment of choice
Every moment of our life is a meeting: with the world around us, with other people, and with our own body, thoughts, and feelings. This meeting is our relationship with our life. It is where we are actually alive. And it is where we have a choice. Here we can see how the mind is meeting this moment: reaching, pushing away, telling an old story, or meeting it clearly and with care.
In that seeing there is room. There is room to let an old reaction pass without obeying it, to remember what matters, and to respond with understanding instead of repeating the pattern. A caring response depends on understanding what the situation needs: listening more closely, speaking firmly, asking for help, or making a change. What we choose there, again and again, becomes who we are. Taking CARE is how we train this moment.
At first we may recognize a pattern only afterward. Looking back with honesty and care is part of learning, and over time recognition can come sooner, while there is still room to choose.
How practice benefits our lives and our world
None of this asks for a different life. It asks for this one, met from wakefulness more often, and its benefits are for ourselves, those we care about, and our shared world.
In our own lives
In our own lives, the first benefit is often steadiness. The difficulties may stay, and we add less to them: less replaying, less bracing, less blaming. Rest comes more easily, and a hard day becomes workable. Many people come for this, and it is already the path.
Life also becomes more available. We taste more of what we are already living, and we can delight in something without needing to hold on to it. This is health in the larger sense of the word, closer to wholeness than to cure. It makes room for a realistic happiness, one that does not depend on everything going well and so can include difficulty.
Over time, something more lasting changes: our relationship with our own patterns. A reaction seen early is one we do not have to obey. We respond where we used to react, and more of our days line up with what matters to us.
With others, and in our world
With the people we care about, that steadiness gives us more to offer. We listen more fully, stay present when someone is struggling, and speak clearly when something needs to change. Care widens too, toward people we used to overlook and toward the conditions that shape all our lives.
Practice also changes how we meet the wider world. Hard news can leave us stirred up or numb, and helplessness is often part of what we add: real conditions, met with the belief that nothing we do can matter. Seen clearly, there is nearly always something that is ours to do: a steadier response, a kinder word, one act of care taken up with others. Small actions, repeated, change conditions, and none of us has to carry all of it alone.
A whole-life practice
How we teach is informed by mindfulness-based programs, and we keep the practice in its whole setting: with intention, with ethics, with community, and with the understanding that clarity is already within us. That setting is what lets relief open into a whole life.
Well-being, as we mean it, is the whole of a life: a body and mind that can rest and recover; attention we can give to work, learning, and the people in front of us; relationships that hold, and a place to belong; meaning, and a way of living we do not have to regret; a part in the life of our community; and, in the tradition’s words, a happiness that does not depend on circumstances. Research on mindfulness programs supports much of this, and no practice helps everyone. What matters here is what you can check for yourself.
For some, practice opens onto a deeper freedom: the discovery that the clarity and warmth we keep returning to were never missing, and do not depend on circumstances. The tradition calls their fullness great wisdom, great compassion, and great action, great because they are no longer confined to our limited view of things. Nobody here is keeping score.
What we practice for
Our practice has a direction: to be more awake and present in our lives, and freer of what binds us, so that we understand with greater wisdom, care with kindness and compassion, and act from both. Along the way we heal, promote, and protect well-being, in ourselves, in those we care about, and in our shared world, and we reduce harm.
The work itself is simple to name: coming to know ourselves, cultivating what is healthy and wholesome, and releasing the patterns that bind us, so that we come to live from the wakefulness already here.
A garden makes the direction plain. What we water grows. So we stop watering what harms, and we stop planting more of it. We tend what already hurts, patiently, until what harms loosens its hold. We water what is healthy so it can take root. And we look after it once it is growing, so it can last.
The old word for this is wholesome, and it shares a root with heal, health, and whole. What is wholesome is what makes us whole. If the trying itself turns tight or harsh, we have found one more thing to tend. We can be sincere about changing a harmful pattern while meeting the person caught in it with compassion, including ourselves.
Together, and in our lives
Most of this happens away from the meditation hall, at home, at work, in our relationships, and in the world. We practice together to support those lives. Being together also shows us habits we might not see on our own, and gives us chances to practice care in our relationships. We bring the practice into our days, and we bring our days back to the community, the difficulties and the successes alike. Then we go home and practice again.
It is the same movement as meditation itself: the mind wanders, we come back, and each return makes the next one a little easier.
This is an intentional community, and each of us takes part in our own way. We ask the same of everyone who comes: to hold our care agreements, to come with a sincere wish to practice as the practice is offered here, and to help keep RIM a safe place for everyone. The agreements are intentions we share, and holding them is a practice. People practice at their own pace and depth, and the practice we share is the ground we stand on together.
Our own practice and the life of RIM hold each other up. RIM is sustained by the generosity, time, and care of the people who practice here, and what it offers in return is support for each person's practice.
Beyond ourselves
Care that takes root does not stop at our own door. It shows in how we treat a stranger, how we do our work, and what we make of the conditions around us. Some suffering comes from illness, poverty, isolation, or harm, and needs more than a changed mind: practical care, and changes in the conditions that sustain it.
Needing support is part of the path, and so is offering it. Many of us offer it by helping to co-create RIM, and some train to share the practice, within RIM and beyond it. We also help organizations bring this practice to the people they care for, and to their own caregivers.
The tradition we practice in has a name for this way of living: the bodhisattva, who walks the path of awakening for the benefit of all beings, themselves included. Our Roots says more.
Families, communities, and whole societies can lose track of their goodness and their health. They can also remember it together. When one person comes back to clarity and care, the people around them feel it: a calmer voice at the dinner table, a kinder word at work. Showing up for ourselves, for the people we care about, and for the world makes a difference. Health in one life supports health in the lives around it.
All of this matters. The time we have is finite. Many of us can sense when we are living in line with what we care about and when we are not, and practice can begin right there. Something clear and caring is already here in each of us, and our practice is learning to live from it.
And so we practice together,
to bring this wakefulness to as many moments as we can,
and to heal, promote, and protect well-being
for ourselves, those we care about, and our shared world.
How we practice
Learning to take CARE.
Taking CARE is our way of practice, a mindfulness-based framework for meditation and mindful living, and a program through which we learn and practice together.