Insight Hour with Joseph Goldstein

Guiding us in three short, guided meditations, Joseph Goldstein helps us break down our identification with the body and the self.

This talk from the Insight Meditation Society was originally published on Dharmaseed.

 In this episode of Insight Hour, Joseph Goldstein guides us in: 

• Accessing deeper meditative states outside of a retreat
• Turbo-charging our practice through shorter meditations we can do in our daily lives
• Finding the mental areas where our mistaken sense of self is created
• Listening to sounds and considering the ‘knowing’ rather than being a “knower”
• Breaking through the identification we have with the body
• Directly experiencing bodily sensations and their changing nature
• Watching our thoughts and being aware in their moment of arising
• Enlivening our understanding of the Buddha’s teaching through a combination of practices

“This exercise allows us to see the selfless nature of thought and gives us the ability to choose which are helpful, which are not. Which do I act on, which do I let go of.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Focusing on equanimity and compassion, Joseph Goldstein teaches about staying open and responsive to collective and individual suffering.

This talk from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on Dharmaseed.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/insighthour

This time on Insight Hour, Joseph Goldstein divulges : 

• How to stay open and responsive while experiencing both individual and global challenges
• Compassion and equanimity as tools to work with difficulties
• The definition of equanimity and seeing all things as a whole
• Equanimity as the basis of wise discernment and skillful responsiveness
• Re-framing difficult experiences as an opportunity to practice openness
• An invitation to look within rather than blaming outside forces
• Examining what emotions are underneath our reactions
• Letting go of the illusion of being in control
• Accepting our feelings instead of allowing them to limit us
• Freeing ourselves through the awareness of impermanence
• How compassion arises out of our willingness to come close to suffering
• Sorrow as the near enemy of compassion
• Having humility on our path to explore equanimity and compassion

“Equanimity gives us the foundation, the ability to approach the suffering without reactivity. And compassion, precisely arises out of the willingness to come close to suffering.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Joseph Goldstein describes the steps along the Buddha’s path to awakening, helping us see the significance of the Buddha in our own lives.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/insighthour

This dharma talk from The Insight Meditation Society was originally published on Dharmaseed.

In this episode, Joseph Goldstein lectures on:

• The sacred journey of the Buddha’s life
• The Buddha as a universal archetype for awakening
• Connecting the Buddha’s journey with our own journey
• Materialism and the wheel of becoming
• Discovering the real value in our lives
• Reflecting on the inevitability of death
• The uncertainty of the time of death
• What actually matters when we reach our end
• Our own calls to destiny
• Giving up a conventional way of viewing things
• Our own power over the way we are
• Confronting the forces of Mara
• Relative and absolute bodhicitta

“In order to awaken to the hidden possibilities of life, we need to renounce, we need to be willing to give up our ordinary or conventional way of viewing things. Things are often not what they seem to be. If we stay just on the surface, we are often living in ignorance and illusion.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Explaining the ways our minds can be seduced, Joseph Goldstein teaches us how to let go into non-clinging.

This 2007 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/insighthour

In this episode, Joseph Goldstein teaches listeners about:

• Letting go into the wisdom mind of non-clinging
• Awakening to the nature of the mind
• Working with the hindrances of mind
• Noticing how the mind can be seduced
• Skeptical doubt and being frozen in indecision
• The ways that doubt can masquerade itself as wisdom
• Telling ourselves that it is okay not to know
• Resting in experience rather than being caught in thought loops
• Investigating our aversions and their hold on the mind
• Seeing everything with perfect wisdom
• Transforming our attitudes about our aversions
• Being inclusive to our difficult experiences

“Struggle is a great feedback because it signifies non-acceptance of something. Because if we were accepting, we wouldn’t be struggling. Whenever we’re in that sense of striving, of struggle, of tension, take that as a feedback, not as a problem. That’s telling us something. That’s saying something is going on in the body, in the mind, in the emotions, in the thoughts, in our external experience, something is going on that we’re not open to, that we’re trying to exclude, and that’s why we’re struggling.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Taking a journey through the Buddha’s history, Joseph Goldstein reveals how we can relate the Bodhisattva’s experiences to our own lives.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/insighthour

In this Episode, Joseph teaches on:

• The history of Siddhartha Guatama
• Archetypes and myths within the Buddha’s journey
• Connecting individual experiences into universal principals
• Joseph Campbell’s description of the Buddha’s life stages
• Calls to destiny and the illusion of having a self
• The profound truth of impermanence and change
• Anxiety and unease from trying to posses things
• Facing realities such as death and disease
• One of Joseph’s first major insights into his mind
• Renunciation and getting out of the seduction of appearances
• Meditation and recognizing vastness
• Examining what is a hindrance and what is skillful
• The great struggle and developing a courageous heart
• The Bodhisattva’s three watches of the night
• The great awakening and working for the good of others

“In this archetypal level, the Buddha’s life reveals to us aspirations in our own. It helps us find a deeper meaning, a deeper purpose, a fuller context for our own life choices. On this archetypal level, it connects the Buddha’s journey with our own.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Joseph Goldstein joins Rohan Gunatillake to share the meditative story of how he first learned to integrate his spirituality into everyday life.

This episode was originally aired on Meditative Story, a podcast that combines the emotional pull of first-person storytelling with the immediate, science-backed benefits of mindfulness practice – all surrounded by breathtaking and cinematic music. You can find Meditative Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more!

 Joseph Goldstein shares a personal story about:

• One of the most transformative moments in Joseph’s life
• The beginning of Joseph’s enlightenment journey
• Integrating the spiritual gifts Joseph learned from the East into his everyday life in the West
• Learning to embrace the uncomfortable feeling of not-knowing
• How Joseph first connected with Ram Dass
• Joseph’s first job teaching a meditation class
• Saying yes and allowing opportunities to present themselves
• A guided mindfulness practice

“It’s as if my life exists as two separate strands. One is the strand of my practice, which feels clear and stable. The other is how that practice will manifest and how I can ever hope to apply it to the world. Spiritually, I am flying high. But I have no idea where to land.” – Joseph Goldstein

About Joseph Goldstein:

Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and loving-kindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he is one of the organization’s guiding teachers. In 1989, together with several other teachers and students of insight meditation, he helped establish the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

About Rohan Gunatillake:

Rohan Gunatillake is a writer, entrepreneur, and host of the podcast Meditative Story. By artfully crafting meditations to compliment each guest’s story, Rohan blends mindfulness with narrative to create a unique listening experience, encouraging listeners to use someone else’s transformative moment as the basis for their own. He’s also the founder of the best-selling app Buddhify, and author of Modern Mindfulness: How to Be More Relaxed, Focused, and Kind While Living in a Fast, Digital, Always-On World.

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Discussing the differences between knowing, awareness and wisdom, Joseph Goldstein helps deepen our insights into the nature of body and mind.

This 2007 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/insighthour

This time on Insight Hour, Joseph lectures on:

• The Satipatthana Sutta
• The four foundations of mindfulness
• Overcoming suffering and attaining freedom
• How wisdom combines awareness and investigation
• Struggling as the manifestation of non-acceptance
• Grounding in awareness of different sense objects
• Attuning to the patterns and conditioning in our minds
• The attitudes and judgements we have about experiences
• The ability to learn about our minds in any situation

“Wisdom arises out of awareness and it combines the qualities of investigation, of what the Buddha called right understanding/right attitude. With mindfulness as the platform, that is the foundation. Without mindfulness none of this happens.“ – Joseph Goldstein

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Going through questions submitted by meditators on retreat, Jill Shepard asks Joseph about discernment and other Buddhist practices.

This episode was recorded as part of a three-month retreat at the Insight Meditation Society and originally published by Dharmaseed

In this episode, Joseph answers questions on:

• What it means to waste your suffering
• Turning attention inward and looking at the cause of suffering
• Attachment, resistance, and false perception
• Self and anatta (not-self)
• The wholesome and unwholesome roots of all skillful actions
• Looking honestly at our intentions and motivations
• Honoring the presence of our emotions versus being caught by them
• The message we can receive from anger
• Discernment and bringing mindfulness into love
• Liberation through non-clinging
• Working with doubt and the inner voice that fools and seduces us
• Surrendering to the Dharma
• How practice prepares us for growing old

“It’s really important to be honest about the range of our own motivations because if we’re not honest about it, we’re not going to see it. If we don’t see it, we may very well be acting on the unwholesome motivations.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Describing how perceptions and constructs shape our experiences, Joseph Goldstein teaches on the concept of self.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/insighthour

In this episode, Joseph describes:

• The liberating jewel of the Buddha’s teachings
• The Self as the fabrication of our minds
• The relief of selflessness
• Abandoning unwholesome qualities
• Using Buddhist psychology to understand how The Self is created
• Recognizing, naming, and remembering
• Perception in the service of mindfulness
• Seeing the frame instead of the picture
• How concepts can limit our understanding
• Division and the concept of space
• Past, present, future, and the concept of time
• The constriction within self-image
• Projection and self-assessment
• Age, culture, race, and other created constructs
• When concepts can be useful

“Our perceptions are concepts about what we are experiencing. This overlay on experience very often conditions how we feel about that experience. And, one of the startling things about all this, is that often our perceptions are inaccurate and yet they are conditioning the experience we are having.”– Joseph Goldstein

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In a world that often feels like it's teetering on the edge, it's not surprising that so many of us grapple with feelings of instability and overwhelm. 

On Tuesday, December 19th, join acclaimed Buddhist meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Ethan Nichtern for a free online conversation on staying grounded, available, and engaged, even when the world is on fire.

Sharon and Ethan will also discuss the upcoming Dharma Moon Yearlong Buddhist Studies program and offer their insights on how studying Buddhism can help us show up more fully for ourselves and others during these challenging times.

Visit dharmamoon.com/event for more info and to reserve your free spot!

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In this question-and-answer session, Joseph Goldstein explores skillful means for non-clinging, how to work with the comparing mind, the intricacies of walking meditation, and much more.

This dharma talk, recorded on October 20, 2023, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

In this episode of Insight Hour:

• Joseph offers a series of tips on walking meditation
• He responds to questions about working with the comparing mind and working with the mind that is desperate to fix everything
• Joseph talks about how it is possible for a layperson to awaken and why enlightenment is all about lightening up
• He explores the importance of not being attached to our beliefs or our disbeliefs and keeping an open mind
• Finally, Joseph offers his perspective on how the Dharma has helped him in difficult times and why the Buddhist teachings are all about skillful means for non-clinging

“So when I began to hear these different teachings, rather than frame it – ‘Which is true?’ or ‘Which is right?’ – just to take the teachings as skillful means. So then the question is, skillful means for what? And here is where all the traditions of Buddhism are unified, and that is a skillful means for non-clinging. That’s the essence of the free mind in all the Buddhist traditions.” – Joseph Goldstein

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