{"id":4094,"date":"2018-11-27T15:52:37","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T20:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dharma.org\/?p=4094"},"modified":"2023-04-06T15:39:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T20:39:07","slug":"sarah-doering-beloved-ims-teacher-friend-and-benefactor-1926-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dharma.org\/sarah-doering-beloved-ims-teacher-friend-and-benefactor-1926-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Doering: Beloved IMS Teacher, Friend and Benefactor\u20141926-2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
By John Spalding<\/h6>\n
Sarah Doering, a spiritual guide, meditation teacher, dear friend to many in the IMS community and major benefactor of the Insight Meditation Society, died peacefully at Hospice of the Fisher Home, in Amherst, MA, on November 16, 2018. She was 92.<\/p>\n
Through her teaching, counsel and financial support, Doering played a vital role in helping Buddhism flourish in the West. The Insight Meditation Society (including the Forest Refuge,) the Barre Center for Buddhist studies, Spirit Rock and Cambridge Insight Meditation Center either took original life or new, transformed life as a result of Sarah\u2019s generosity. Over the years, these centers have been able to offer retreats and life-transforming opportunities to tens of thousands of people from around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cSarah exemplified an unusual combination of dignity, wisdom and warm heartedness,\u201d said Sharon Salzberg, co-founder of IMS. \u201cShe took a rare delight in simple pleasures, beautiful aesthetics, harmony between people, and more than anything, being of service. Sarah knew that large, magnanimous acts interspersed with immediate direct moments of kindness\u2014listening to someone, encouraging them\u2014make up a life of compassion. She lived a life of compassion fully.\u201d<\/p>\nSarah Doering, portrait by Sarah Belchetz-Swenson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Born Sarah Cowles on August 11, 1926, in Des Moines, Iowa, Doering was the second of four children of John Cowles, Sr., and his wife, Elizabeth. In the 1920s, Doering\u2019s father became vice president, general manager and associate publisher of the Des Moines morning and evening newspapers. In 1935, her paternal grandfather, father and uncle bought The Minneapolis Star,<\/em> and in 1938, her father moved the family to Minneapolis so he could manage the paper. Her mother was active in women\u2019s rights and civil rights, helped found the first branch of Planned Parenthood in Iowa and was a lifetime member of the NAACP.<\/p>\n
After graduating with a Ph.B. from the University of Chicago in 1947, Doering studied for a year at Radcliffe College before marrying John Marshall Bullitt, a graduate student who became a professor of English literature at Harvard. The couple had four children, whom they raised for many years in Harvard\u2019s Quincy House, where John served as House Master, entertaining thousands of Harvard students, faculty, staff and guests of the university. After this marriage ended, Sarah married William von Eggers Doering, a professor of chemistry at Harvard, in 1969.<\/p>\n
A new chapter in Doering\u2019s life began in the mid-1970s, after she turned 50. While caring for her husband\u2019s aging father, who lived in their home, she began to wonder, \u201cWhat is this life all about? And what am I, anyway? Am I Christian? Am I Buddhist?\u201d The last question startled her, for she knew little about Buddhism.<\/p>\n
She decided to pursue answers at Harvard Divinity School, located next door to her home on Francis Avenue in Cambridge. She enrolled in one course, signed up for another, and before long was immersed in studying the New Testament. Seeking a stronger sense of community, she transferred to Episcopal Divinity School, then in Cambridge, where she received a Master of Theological Studies degree in 1980.<\/p>\n
During her last year in seminary, a line she read in The Inner Eye of Love,<\/em> a book by the Jesuit William Johnston, stuck with her: \u201cThe practice of vipassana helps one to discern the will of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remembered that sentence in 1981, the year after I graduated from EDS,\u201d Doering later said, recalling her introduction to vipassana, or insight, meditation. \u201cI was walking in Harvard Square and on a lamppost someone had taped a sign, \u2018Introductory Class in Vipassana, taught by Larry Rosenberg.\u2019 I went to the first meeting of the six-week course, and found myself so fascinated that I signed up [for the course] again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following year, she registered for a nine-day silent retreat taught by Rosenberg at Insight Meditation Society, marking the beginning of a profound and enduring relationship with IMS, its founders, teachers and extended community. Before long, Doering was sitting IMS\u2019s annual Three-Month Retreat, which she sat for some 17 years.<\/p>\n
In Cambridge, she continued to take Rosenberg\u2019s courses, which were held wherever they could find space\u2014an acupuncturist\u2019s office, a bookstore, a church and Rosenberg\u2019s own apartment, which was so small that participants had to practice walking meditation standing in place.<\/p>\n
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