Joseph, after practicing in India for ten years and teaching in this country for more than twenty, you have recently returned from a well-earned teaching sabbatical, in which I understand you did quite a bit of personal meditation practice. Has anything emerged from this experience, in terms of greater clarity? I think one of the pieces that has emerged from the time off is a greater clarity about where I'd like to put my energy in the following years. With so many newer teachers coming … [Read more...]
Joseph Goldstein
How to Understand
Joseph had been scheduled to speak with a group of people at CIMC the day after the tragic events of September 11th. Here are some excerpts from that talk. I’m glad we are able to come together this evening and share some reflections about the events of September eleventh. More than ever, it is timely and necessary to connect more deeply with ourselves, with each other and with the many suffering beings in the world. The question looming large for most of us is how to understand what … [Read more...]
Fear, Pain …and Trust
This article has been excerpted from a course Joseph taught at the study center on September 6, 2003. Meditation practice is a path of opening. To begin with, it opens us to a deeper awareness of our bodies. Usually, we have a sense of our bodies being something quite solid and fixed. But as we develop stronger mindfulness, we experience the sensations in the body as a fluid energy field. The solidity begins to dissolve, which itself becomes a healing process. We also open our sense doors. … [Read more...]
Freeing the Mind
This article is excerpted from a talk given at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on September 18, 1994. One of the most important teachings of the Buddha is the teaching about the nature of mind, the nature of awareness itself. Often in meditation practice we focus predominantly on the arising objects, like sounds, the breath, sensations, and thoughts. But another side of the practice is to also notice the nature of that which is being aware. Of course, that’s much more subtle. … [Read more...]
A Simple Turning in Place: Forty Years in the Dharma
At a program held at the study center in September 2008, Joseph Goldstein was asked to reflect upon his long experience with meditation and the Dharma. These words have been extracted from that presentation. My first real inquiry into any kind of spiritual dimension happened when I was a freshman in college. I became obsessed, as only a college freshman can, with the effort to figure out whether or not God existed. My mind was filled with it, day and night. It felt like my whole life depended … [Read more...]
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening
Having taught Buddhadharma for almost 40 years, Joseph Goldstein has written or been co-author of many books. His newest, to be published November 1, is Mindfulness: A Practical Guide for Awakening. While his earlier books focused on various teachings about meditation and other insight practices, distilling the Buddha's teachings as he learned them from his teachers, Munindra, Goenka, and Sayadaw U Pandita, his new book comes from a deep personal investigation of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, one of … [Read more...]
