Urban Buddhism:
Awakening Anywhere, Anytime

An Interview with Rodney Smith

Rodney Smith began practicing insight meditation in 1975. He came to IMS in 1976 as the center’s first long-term retreatant. Over the last 30 years he has spent time on staff, explored practice as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, served hospices in a variety of positions for 16 years, authored Lessons from the Dying and offered the Buddha’s teachings across the country. He lives with his wife, Ellen, in Seattle, where he founded and guides the Seattle Insight Meditation Society (www.seattleinsight.org).

Rodney, how would you define ‘Urban Buddhism’?

‘Urban Buddhism’ is the practice of taking all environments as opportunities for spiritual awakening. Work, family, relationship and other avenues of life are all acknowledged as vital areas for investigation. Those who fully embody the entire spectrum of their lives, without spiritually prioritizing any one aspect or activity, are what I term Urban Buddhists.

From this perspective, all moments are equally precious. Whether we are practicing formal meditation on retreat or showing up for ordinary moments of our daily lives, the same unobstructed inner freedom is always available.

Any facet of life can be used to resolve the suffering of disconnection. The Urban Buddhist harbors no defense, seeks no shelter and avoids no conflict for the resolution of her/his wholeness. Nothing is avoided or passed by as mundane. Wherever there is discord and struggle, there is insight into contraction and resistance to life. This is true on emotional, psychological and spiritual levels.

What brought you to this understanding?

When I was new to meditation retreats, the final instruction given was to bring the mindfulness we had been cultivating during the course into our daily lives. I was never very good, however, at being mindful out of retreat – the harder I tried, the less successful I became. In fact, I found it almost a burden – something I had to add to my already full life. I began to feel like a spiritual failure.

So I started to look at the Buddha’s teachings, at what might speak to me in every moment and across all settings. I found the answer within the Noble Eightfold Path. This is the path the Buddha taught to those seeking liberation from suffering, and its eight elements are wise view, wise intention, wise speech, wise action, wise livelihood, wise effort, wise mindfulness and wise concentration.

How does the Noble Eightfold Path help us awaken?

The entire Noble Eightfold Path serves as a system for dismantling the sense of self. It is our clinging to a solid sense of self that causes our suffering. Unless we see that our identity is constructed from a set of beliefs, it’s easy to get sidetracked into further supporting the illusion of the sense of self. We then add to the problem rather than end the suffering.

Wise view, the first step of the Noble Eightfold Path, can help us get back on track. It says that our lives are interconnected beyond what is immediately visible. When we don’t understand this interconnection, we erroneously assume we are separate. In this state of separation, we think we have to get over ourselves, get over our mind states. We try ever harder to find freedom in some other timeframe outside of the here and now.

But we can’t ‘effort’ ourselves to freedom. Instead, if we simply open to our suffering, rather than resist it, we come back into a state of connectedness. Whether we connect with our knee pain while sitting on the cushion or with a deep wound in our psyche, we have automatically entered wise view.

Wise view helps us frame all of the other steps on the Noble Eightfold Path. It allows us to move away from individuation and towards wholeness.

How does the Urban Buddhist work with wise intention?

Wise intention - the second aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path - is the heart’s deepest longing. This longing is always available to us but gets sidetracked by secondary intentions such acquisition, fame or power. The spiritual practitioner must first discover that these secondary gains are ultimately unsatisfactory. Then, energy aligns towards the wise intention to awaken.

Much of spiritual practice is about redirecting the pursuit of those secondary intentions into awakening. For the Urban Buddhist, inquiry and investigation are essential tools in this transformation and fully complement retreat practice. Inquiry allows our ordinary lives to unfold with the same depth available to us on intensive retreat.

Asking simply, “Who am I?” “What is this?” or “Where is contentment in this moment?” adds a seamless continuity to daily life practice. This kind of inquiry contributes to the natural unfolding of the Noble Eightfold Path, from one aspect to the next. Ultimately, we move away from differentiation and the separation that causes suffering. We then find ourselves at the door to the infinite.

What other forces have molded your spiritual journey?

Some decades ago, I found I had a lot of fear around my mortality. So I decided to go into hospice care, because I sensed a potential for great learning.

I noticed that when people were facing imminent death, they often came to extraordinary places of spaciousness and depths of understanding, independent of any spiritual practice. I attributed this to the loss of future time. I couldn’t help but wonder how we would practice if we had no future.

When we project into an abstract future, we reinforce our self-doubt. If we approach practice in terms of developing certain states of mind, our self-doubt refuses to acknowledge our readiness for freedom here and now. It’s very easy for us, as Westerners, to assume that we’ll never be ready, that there is always more to cultivate. This assumption keeps us from the very awakening we yearn for!

Once I witnessed how hospice patients were so powerfully affected by the quality of immediacy, I realized this was a missing piece in most people’s practice. I saw the enormous potential for awakening in this very moment.

Did hospice work offer you other insights?

I saw how the process of dying affects the sense of self. Those facing death can no longer project themselves into the future. And without the future, the sense of self cannot take charge. On the surface, imminent death can seem like we’re about to lose so many hopes and dreams, whereas actually the reverse is true. I noticed a few patients who were willing to look inside. They saw something profound after their initial loss of hope. They discovered something that could not be taken away despite physical immobility and certain death.

What I witnessed from the dying helped form the basis for my ‘Urban Buddhism’ theme: our practice has to be expansive enough to embrace that which cannot be diminished by time or decay. We cannot afford to be contracted. We cannot afford to protect a limited sense of ourselves, when a greater reality awaits us beyond our narrow view.

Can you say more about working with self-doubt in our practice?

Instead of believing our self-doubt, we can take its very arising as part of the intrinsic purity of each moment - as opposed to seeing it as a distraction from the moment.

Awareness of doubt is actually a great summons to arrest our procrastination. It’s an opportunity to stop looking at this very moment as being incomplete. It’s a call to stand up and embody the dharma, regardless of what might be manifesting. Whenever we can heed this call we will be met by the infinite. And therein lies liberation.

How do you imagine Buddhism in the West developing over coming decades?

One of the issues unique to the West is the distinctive sense of loneliness and isolation many of us feel. I believe Western Buddhism can focus on these issues of the heart more directly, by placing greater emphasis on our interconnectedness and by encouraging the development of sangha, of spiritual community. Metta - lovingkindness practice – addresses these themes and has helped Buddhist teachings enter many people’s hearts. But we have more still to do. 

Related to this is the sense of inadequacy we can also feel. I see this is a product of our market driven economy and its onslaught of advertisements that tell us we can have it all. Over time, however, we know we don’t and cannot have it all. We can feel as though we have failed, and this can lead to spiritual lethargy and despair. From there, it’s often an uphill struggle to ignite the spirit with new possibilities. Our ability to do so will determine how well Buddhism will flourish in the West.

Rodney Smith will lead the New Year’s course at the Retreat Center, December 28, 2007 - January 6, 2008.