Lust, Addiction, and Ambition: Why Your Desires Are Wired to Disappoint You | Joseph Goldstein
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why you'll never find happiness where you're looking for it–and where to look instead.
Joseph Goldstein is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of many books including, most recently, Dreamscapes of the Mind.
In this episode we talk about:
- Why desire and wanting can keep us stuck in cycles of dissatisfaction
- The difference between momentary pleasure and deeper happiness
- A practical way to watch cravings arise and pass without reacting
- Why "not wanting" can feel surprisingly relieving
- The Buddhist framework of gratification, danger, and escape
- How to think about contentment and the question: how much is enough?
- The difference between guilt and wise remorse
- How desire, lust, and craving can distort judgment
Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!
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Additional Resources:
-
Dharma Seed - freely offered talks from Western Buddhist Vipassana teachers
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:07.8 | Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing today? I have this memory, and this will be a brief story, but I have this memory from many years ago when I was sitting at dinner with a very smart friend who described his life strategy as accumulating as many pleasurable experiences as possible as a way to avoid looking into the abyss. |
| 0:39.8 | And that's kind of an extreme articulation of what is, I think, an MO consciously or subconsciously |
| 0:45.9 | for many of us. We're all trying to collect as many dopamine hits as possible in order not to |
| 0:51.2 | think about the fact that we're all going to die. But from the Buddhist POV, we're really looking for happiness in the wrong places. |
| 0:59.0 | While the Buddha was in no way anti-pleasure, he didn't say that, you know, we shouldn't |
| 1:04.6 | sip lattes or eat pizza or go to parties or anything like that. |
| 1:07.5 | But he did describe this kind of pleasure as being like licking honey from the edge of a razor. |
| 1:14.3 | It's dangerous psychologically because while we can derive pleasure from these experiences, |
| 1:20.2 | they are fleeting and they cannot provide lasting fulfillment. |
| 1:25.3 | The good news is that the Buddha recommended a kind of, and you'll hear me |
| 1:28.7 | use this phrase in this episode, a kind of counterintuitive upgrade, methods for finding happiness |
| 1:34.7 | in other more reliable sources. Here to do that is my old friend and meditation teacher Joseph |
| 1:41.1 | Goldstein. He's the author of books such as One Dharma. He's also the |
| 1:45.8 | co-founder of the legendary retreat center, the Insight Meditation Society. This episode, |
| 1:51.7 | what you're about to hear, is part of an occasional series we've been running with Joseph, |
| 1:56.0 | where I interview him about the various teaching phrases he uses. Let me explain what I mean by that. |
| 2:02.3 | Joseph likes to teach using these pithy little mottos, these Buddhist earworms that kind of |
| 2:08.0 | weasel their way into your brain and surface at the moments when you need them the most. |
| 2:12.9 | By the way, the eventual goal of these interviews is to turn them all into a book, a collection of Joseph's |
| 2:18.5 | phrases. So you're really getting a chance here to eavesdrop on our process. This is a great |
| 2:23.1 | episode. You're going to love it. I do want to say, though, while I'm on the subject of Joseph and |
... |
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