The World Exists to Set Us Free: Straight-Up Dharma for Living a Life of Awareness

Down-to-earth wisdom on how to live a life of authenticity and spiritual integrity, from one of the West’s most respected teachers of vipassana meditation.

How does dharma wisdom show up in our lives every day? This collection of teachings by the beloved Insight Meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg offers clear, down-to-earth guidance on learning how to live a life informed by Buddhism—through questioning, reflective observation, and self-understanding. Rosenberg is known for presenting the essence of the Buddhism in a way that is unvarnished, utterly accessible, and that resonates with a wide audience. Here he unpacks—with his signature engaging and iconoclastic style—such topics as meditation, silence, use of the breath, self-knowing, working with strong emotions, intimacy, illness and grief, among others.

There are few teachers who so epitomize the idea of “spiritual friend” in the way that Larry Rosenberg does. His teachings give a clear sense that dharma is very much a part of everyday life. This book is also informed by what Rosenberg considers his deeper and more immediate understanding of dharma that has come in recent years—a period marked in his own life by illness and disability—and in the life of the planet by a deadly pandemic, war, an existential climate crisis, and pervasive technological distraction.

An introductory essay, written by journalist and author Madeline Drexler, serves as a spiritual biography of Rosenberg, presenting his reflections on more than half a century of dedicated dharma practice and instruction. This essay illuminates what, for Rosenberg, were profound turning points and moments of realization—his long apprenticeships with foundational figures in twentieth-century Buddhism, including Ajahn Chah, Thich Nhat Hanh, Seung Sahn, and Ajahn Buddhadasa, as well as Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti.