Hi there, I'm Jason Gautz, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

Love, money, health, great sex, peace of mind.

However you define it, happiness in this world is impermanent and unreliable.

But we're all invested in the illusion that we're just one career move

or one Amazon purchase away from permanent bliss. To quote Darth Vader, search your feelings.

You know it to be true. Life is sometimes exhilarating and sometimes devastating, but it's always,

always in flux. This is the first noble truth of Buddhism that everything in this life is unreliable

and unsatisfactory. Maybe it doesn't sound to you like the beginning of a message of hope, but that's

exactly what it is. A couple millennia ago, the Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, better known as Buddha,

offered anyone who would listen a system of training the mind to free it from the suffering

that comes from clinging to impermanent things like how many followers you have on Instagram.

My guest today is Joseph Goldstein.

He is one of the most influential Buddhist teachers and writers of the past half century.

In 1975, along with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Cornfield, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts.

Since then, he has done immeasurable good worldwide with his books, Dharma talks, and meditation retreats.

Four decades ago, he started a journey that he's still on today, helping Westerners very much including myself, benefit from

the Buddha's ancient insights and techniques. Welcome to think again, Joseph. Good to be here.

That introduction covered it at all. Yeah, we're done now. I may have to leave. Yeah, we can just,

yeah, like, we can, I think what we should do is maybe sit here in silence from the next 50 minutes

following our breathing. Not a bad idea.

I think it's very difficult, I mean, speaking from my own experience, I think it's very, very

difficult for a lot of us moderns or contemporaries or whatever we are to figure out where to begin

...