Three Strategies for Getting Over Yourself | Joseph Goldstein

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every year, Joseph Goldstein does a three month silent meditation retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. In this conversation you're about to hear, Joseph had just emerged from one such retreat with a bunch of thoughts on what are called the three proliferating tendencies or three papañca to use the ancient Pali term.

These are three ways in which we perpetuate an unhealthy sense of self. Joseph has explained that you can think about the process of going deeper in meditation as a process of lightening up or getting less self-centered. You're about to get a masterclass in doing just that.

For the uninitiated, Joseph is one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. His co-founders are two other meditation titans, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Joseph has been a teacher at IMS since it was founded in the seventies and he continues to be the resident guiding teacher there.

In this episode we talk about:

The framework for understanding the three proliferating tendencies; the basic building blocks of our experience in the world
Six things that make up what the Buddha called "the all"
What non-self means and why it's essential to the Buddhist teaching of liberation
The two levels of truth: conventional and ultimate
Why language is so important in conditioning how we experience things
How the three proliferating tendencies provide a very practical guide to understanding how we manufacture our own suffering

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:07.7	Hey, hey, how we doing everybody?
0:25.8	Every year, the great meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein does a three-month retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts.
0:28.3	And every year, he emerges with a bunch of really interesting thoughts about how to do life
0:33.2	better and often very specifically about how to improve your meditation practice. And in the conversation
0:39.1	you're about to hear, Joseph had just emerged from one of his retreats with a bunch of thoughts
0:44.1	on what are called the three proliferating tendencies, or the three propanches to use the ancient
0:50.8	poly term. By the way, poly was the language in which the teachings of the Buddha
0:55.2	were written down. Anyway, these three proponsches are there ways in which we perpetuate a sense of self.
1:01.6	Not a healthy sense of self, which we all need, but an unhealthy sense of self, like the Beatles
1:07.0	sang about in that song, I need mine. the sense of self that locks you in and blocks you
1:12.1	from full connection and happiness. As Joseph has explained to me and to many others before,
1:17.6	you can think about the process of going deeper in meditation as a process of lightening up or
1:23.1	getting less self-centered. And you're about to get a master class in doing just that.
1:29.4	For the uninitiated, Joseph is one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in
1:34.0	Barry, Massachusetts.
1:35.1	He's written several books, including one Dharma and Mindfulness, both of which I highly recommend.
1:41.5	In this conversation, we talk about the three proliferating tendencies or proponsches,
1:46.0	the basic building blocks of our experience in the world, six things that make up what the
1:51.0	Buddha called the all, what not self or selflessness means, and why this idea is essential
1:58.0	to the Buddhist teaching of freedom or liberation, the so-called two truths, conventional reality and ultimate reality.
2:06.1	I'll let him unpack that. Why language is so important in conditioning how we experience things.
	...

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