Written by Connor Yu

Background

The Insight Meditation South Bay (IMSB) is a fairly young community, founded in January 2006, and functions in the Silicon Valley and South Bay area of California. As of November 2021, they do not currently have a permanent building that they operate out of. Instead, the community gathers in churches, community buildings, private homes, and conference rooms, though they are currently trying to get a more permanent location. Due to this, they meet in many different local areas throughout the South Bay and have offered a variety of online programs since 2014. 

When looking into IMSB it is almost immediately evident that it is not a ‘traditional’ Buddhist community, with the founder Shaila Catherine putting a more American spin on traditional Theravadan practices. Instead, IMSB focuses on the teachings of mindfulness meditation, or Vipassana, with their goal being to support the development of ethical living (sila), meditation (samadhi), and wisdom (panna). All in all, they take a meditative approach to spiritual awakening, and largely ignore the religious beliefs of Buddhism. 

This uniquely American approach is prevalent in convert Buddhist communities. IMSB has adopted the meditation practices of Buddhism to cultivate mindfulness in modern life while largely disregarding its religious practices. [1] That is not to say they completely ignore Buddhist teachings. IMSB has a large amount of material on traditional Buddhist subjects, such as the Three Refuges, the Four Noble Truths, the Five Aggregates, and much more. [2] However, the IMSB has a more western take on these ideas. Instead of viewing them from a perspective of achieving enlightenment over many lifetimes or world cycles, IMSB uses them as topics to meditate on to cultivate mindfulness solely in this lifetime. For example, when discussing the Noble Eightfold Path, IMSB interprets each of the steps as leading to the cessation of suffering. Traditionally, this means Nirvana and the cessation of suffering of all future lives. However, this interpretation is never discussed, and instead of followers reaching Nirvana after the cessation of suffering, it is implied that the cessation of suffering is the final step. IMSB uses the meditative aspect of Buddhism to help modern-day Americans cultivate mindfulness, detaching them from a fast-paced world. Though it does not completely ignore the historical teachings of the Buddha, it has reinterpreted them through a new, unique lens. 

Founder

The founder, Shaila Catherine, is the main teacher at IMSB, and teaches the vast majority of lessons, though there are a large number of guest teachers that have taught at IMSB. [3] From her profile, it is almost immediately evident that Catherine is not a Buddhist in the purely traditional sense, as she has not shaved her head as most Theravada nuns do. She has been practicing for a very long time, though, starting to meditate in 1980. Following this, Catherine would later travel throughout Asia, studying under various teachers including H.W.L Poonja, a Hindu teacher in Northern India, and Buddhist masters Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche in Nepal. Afterward, she studied at a Theravada monastery in Thailand. Throughout her travels across Asia, Catherine became most interested in insight meditation, later studying and teaching at a few western meditation centers in 1996. She started training under Pa Auk Sayadaw, a Burmese Theravada master, in 2006 and founded IMSB. She has written two books on mastering meditation and now teaches both in the U.S. and internationally.

 

Practices & Events

The most frequent program of IMSB is a weekly meditation group on Monday and Thursday evenings. [4] This is interesting as it highlights the nature of the community’s demographic. IMSB mainly serves to teach regular workers about meditation, starting their practices after the majority of workers are done with their job. It does not expect them to practice meditation every day of the week and instead accommodates the average American worker’s schedule. This emphasizes the Americanization of Buddhism. IMSB has removed most of the religious dogma from traditional Buddhism and lowered the barrier to entry for the community, making it as accessible as possible for everyone, even hosting a beginner meditation session every month. On top of this, IMSB offers a monthly day of meditation, which involves an entire day of different kinds of meditation and optional consultation with Shaila Catherine. [5] All in all, IMSB is very much convert Buddhism. It has lowered the barriers to entry and commitment required to practice traditional Buddhism and instead offers a way to cultivate mindfulness in modern life. 

While IMSB has changed many aspects of traditional Buddhism, the community still participates in a few of the traditional events of Buddhism. Traveling across the country and sometimes internationally, Catherine leads retreats with the goal of further deepening concentration and insight. [6] These normally involve sitting and walking meditations as well as dharma talks and meetings with the teachers. They have modified traditional Theravada practices to fit their American community, providing them with an escape from their daily routines and immersing themselves in their meditative practices. Generally, they occur every two months and last one or two weeks. This does diverge a small amount from the traditional rains retreat of Theravada Buddhism, which occurs once every year and lasts three months. Again, IMSB has modified existing practices to better fit American culture. 

The most interesting modification that Catherine has created is the online format that IMSB provides. [7] Called the Bodhi Courses, Catherine has offered an online classroom format since 2014. This is what has expanded the reach of IMSB to an international level, as Catherine can teach interested practitioners around the world. These lessons involve lectures, sutta readings, discussions, and assignments, meeting once a month. This shows another way that American Buddhism has adapted to the modern era, widening its reach through an online format to better spread its practices. 

IMSB Buddhism

It is evident that Catherine’s teachings, and by extension IMSB as a whole, are contributing and creating a new form of Theravada Buddhism in America. They disregard some of the religious aspects, such as karma, rebirth, and samsara, and recontextualize the rest as topics to meditate on to cultivate mindfulness, which is becoming more relevant in our modern lives. Not requiring their constituents to fully integrate Buddhism into their modern lives, they instead lower the barriers to entry and accommodate the general American public. This shedding of the spiritual aspects of Buddhism could be due to a number of factors, such as Christianity being prevalent throughout the U.S., or there not being a real spirit religion in place when Buddhism made its way over. These changes have created a type of practice at IMSB that is distinctly American, and different from any other form of Buddhism we have seen in any Asian country so far. 

That is not to say that IMSB is not tied to other traditional Buddhist communities. Pa Auk Sayadaw has taught Catherine since 2006, and IMSB is still close to all of the Buddhist communities and masters that Catherine learned from. However, a lot of IMSB’s relationships are with more western communities that have similar practices to IMSB. Though Catherine is the principal teacher at IMSB, many guest speakers from other Buddhist communities teach there as well, with around 67 guest teachers speaking in total. Just looking at the constituency of the teachers, however, we can see that IMSB is mainly comprised of convert Buddhists. Of the 67 teachers, only 3 of them seem to be of Asian descent, and only 5 have shaved their heads. As mentioned earlier, Catherine herself has not shaved her head, which is typical of Theravada nuns. This is indicative of the IMSB community. While only around 4.5% of the guest teachers are Asian, around 15.5% of California is Asian, most likely meaning that more devout Asian Buddhists most likely go to other communities. [8]

Another interesting aspect of IMSB is how it is funded. Currently, they are trying to gather the funds to establish a permanent residence that they can operate out of. Most of the programs are free, though they do collect donations during them. What is interesting is that many of the retreats with Catherine, as well as her talks, can range from $225 to $625. This monetization departs from traditional Buddhist practices in that they usually teach for free. Some of her free talks as well only offer a set amount of free tickets, and the rest of the tickets require the attendee to donate some amount to attend. IMSB also has a donation page on their website, and you can donate to the organization or a particular teacher. Furthermore, they accept payments of airline mileage credits, various professional services, and investment assets. This further shows how IMSB has taken a more open approach to donations than other communities.

Conclusion

IMSB is the prototypical example of American convert Buddhism. Its constituency is generally comprised of those who are most interested in the meditation and mindfulness aspects of Theravada Buddhism and are not interested in the religious dogma or the spiritual aspects of the religion. Though it is inspired by traditional practices, it has reinterpreted all of the teachings in a way that seamlessly integrates with modern American life. Only 17 years old, the community will most likely continue to grow and further shape modern American Buddhism as we know it. 

Works Cited

[1] https://www.imsb.org/about-us/imsb-overview/

[2] https://www.imsb.org/teachings/buddhist-lists/

[3] https://www.imsb.org/about-us/teachers-2/

[4] https://www.imsb.org/programs/weekly-sitting-group/

[5] https://www.imsb.org/programs/daylong-and-half-day-programs/

[6] https://www.imsb.org/programs/retreats/

[7] https://www.imsb.org/programs/online-courses/

[8] https://www.imsb.org/programs/online-courses/

The image is taken from the IMSB website. There are not a lot of public images of IMSB.