Well, Welcome to the Joseph Goldstein Insight Hour.

This podcast is an expression of our shared interest in self-discovery.

Join Joseph as he shares his deep knowledge of the path of mindfulness.

If you are interested in supporting this podcast,

please go to be here now network.com slash Joseph. Tonight I'd like to share with you some of the experiences in my own practice both to give an idea of the range of things that arise

in long-term practice perhaps to give some kind of perspective to your own experience here.

My first interest in Darma really began at the university was at Columbia and New York studying philosophy.

Even then without any formal introduction of knowledge of Buddha-adoma, of Buddhism,

there was a real sense of philosophical inquiry.

Wanted to find out somehow, some deeper understanding of what my life was all about.

And tuning into a lot of the DOMA that's in Western philosophy and literature, but not finding too many people,

too many of the professors, who had much sense of that.

For them it was a pretty academic study and it was fairly frustrating

actually trying to touch the Dama in Western philosophy and literature without having a teacher or a professor

who was actually living it themselves.

So after four years of that

was quite ready to leave the academic scene.

Applied to the Peace Corps.

That was just a year or two after it had been established. And I applied

to go to East Africa because I had this image and vision of myself of going off to the wild of Africa and climbing Mount

Kilimanjaro, very Hemingway-like. And it was a very romantic image in my mind and I thought that would be great.

You'll leave Columbia, leave Manhattan.

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