Joseph Goldstein discusses how working with fear is absolutely essential in our practice of understanding, opening, and accepting.

This 1983 dharma talk was originally published on Dharmaseed.

This week on Insight Hour, Joseph Goldstein teaches us about:

• Releasing tension through awareness
• The body as an energy system
• Opening up to the Buddha nature
• Working with fear and emotional pain
• Resistance and unwillingness to be uncomfortable
• Becoming open to pain and discomfort
• Insecurity and the fear of being judged
• How the fear of feeling certain emotions keeps us bound to negative habits
• How openness allows our hearts to be touched
• Death and fear of the unknown
• Being okay with being afraid
• Having space for fear without demands
• Lovingkindness as the antidote for fear

“What we’re doing in our practice is learning how to work with those experiences which often cause trouble, which often cause resistance, which we’re afraid of.” – Joseph Goldstein

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Offering instruction for metta practice, Joseph Goldstein explains the many flavors of loving-kindness that we can try.

This 2018 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 Goldstein explicates:

• The unconditional quality of metta
• Helping each other see our individual loveliness
• Using mantra to evoke the feeling of loving-kindness
• Metta as a tool for deep concentration
• Experimenting with the different ways metta can be applied in meditation
• The three aspects of practicing of loving-kindness
• A 12-minute guided metta practice to settle into the feeling of well-wishing

“There are two main purposes for doing metta meditation. One is metta, or loving-kindness, which can be used as a vehicle for developing concentration. So, not only for the metta quality itself, but it is a technique or a method for developing strong concentration, even to the point of absolution.” – Joseph Goldstein

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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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