Show Notes
Joseph Goldstein is one of the pioneering figures in bringing Buddhist meditation and insight practice to the West. A cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Barre, Massachusetts, Joseph has studied and practiced meditation since 1967 under the guidance of teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet. He has led insight meditation retreats around the world and is the author of numerous books, including Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma, Insight Meditation, and The Experience of Insight. He has also coauthored books with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield.
In this conversation, Joseph reflects on the unexpected beginnings of his own path - from his first encounters with Buddhism as a young Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand to years of intensive study and practice in Asia - and on what insight meditation can reveal about the nature of mind, suffering, and impermanence. He shares the Buddhist teaching that “things are always becoming otherwise,” and offers a striking way of understanding dukkha, or suffering, as “the inevitability of unwanted experience.”
We also explore the life of the Buddha through Joseph Campbell’s understanding of the Hero’s Journey. Joseph reflects on the power of myth to “universalize the particular,” allowing the Buddha’s ancient story to become a map for our own lives. Together, we discuss renunciation, conditioning, the figure of Mara, and Campbell’s memorable description of the Buddha beneath the Bodhi tree: “And the mind of the Great Being was not moved.”
The conversation ultimately turns toward the fruits of practice in everyday life: the difference between craving and wholesome aspiration, the importance of generosity, and the relationship between wisdom and compassion. Joseph shares one simple question that has become a guiding principle in his own life:
“How can I help?”
It is a conversation about awakening, myth, the stories and habits that shape us, and the possibility of meeting life with greater clarity, steadiness, compassion, and freedom.
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